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Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

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341–350 of 400 posts

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#341

This is self-reported: remember the 1000 Indians that were watching people shop at the Amazon Go stores? Amazon told us it was all "sensors" because it fit their company narrative to do so. I am not saying that Amazon doesn't have 750k robots and hasn't laid off 100k people... but they usually have some seasonality, plus, the quoted number is from 2021, the height of at-home shopping. "The world's second-largest priv…

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Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#342
post #52

It's clear that technological development creates a shift in jobs, i.e some jobs are lost, but new ones are created as a result. Whether the total #jobs increases or decreases is debatable. The issue that I see addressed less often is that the new jobs require by definition, a higher skill set. (You wouldn't displace 100 manual labor workers with a machine that requires 105 workers to maintain). So by definition, the…

Just like the Turing test turned out to be the wrong problem, AGI is the wrong goal. As long as AI can stoichastic parrot its way to success, who cares if it's AGI? My washing machine broke and I want my robot to fix it. it doesn't need AGI to diagnose and fix the problem, it just needs to have seen that in the training data. The real shift comes when the robots are dexterous enough to fix each other. that's when no…

> dexterous enough to fix each other.

Dexterity isn't the issue, it's the lack of training content. Also, I would be happy with a real-time feed of a robot telling ME, a dexterous being, what I should do to repair something. I don't have access to such technology.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#343
post #197

This is self-reported: remember the 1000 Indians that were watching people shop at the Amazon Go stores? Amazon told us it was all "sensors" because it fit their company narrative to do so. I am not saying that Amazon doesn't have 750k robots and hasn't laid off 100k people... but they usually have some seasonality, plus, the quoted number is from 2021, the height of at-home shopping. "The world's second-largest priv…

Agreed. These numbers are being cherry-picked. From Amazon quarterly filings[0][1], here's their employees count: - Q3 2019: 750,000 employees - Q4 2019: 798,000 employees - Q1 2020: 840,400 employees - Q2 2020: 876,800 employees - Q3 2020: 1,125,300 employees - Q4 2020: 1,298,000 employees - Q1 2021: 1,271,000 employees - Q2 2021: 1,335,000 employees - Q3 2021: 1,468,000 employees - Q4 2021: 1,608,000 employees - Q1…

Wow, that shows a surge of about 800k employees from Q4 2019 to Q4 2021, just two years! Wild.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#344
post #138
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eugenics

Sure, who's volunteering to be the first one? For sure I won't volunteer for it :-)

The embryos I just had implanted in my surrogate are the result of eugenics. I hand picked the egg donor based on SAT. When the embryos were created, I got their 23andme reports and validated that the ones implanted had the appropriate SNPs for intelligence by cross referencing snpedia.

Almost everyone does step 1, but very few people do step 2.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#345
post #197

This is self-reported: remember the 1000 Indians that were watching people shop at the Amazon Go stores? Amazon told us it was all "sensors" because it fit their company narrative to do so. I am not saying that Amazon doesn't have 750k robots and hasn't laid off 100k people... but they usually have some seasonality, plus, the quoted number is from 2021, the height of at-home shopping. "The world's second-largest priv…

Agreed. These numbers are being cherry-picked. From Amazon quarterly filings[0][1], here's their employees count: - Q3 2019: 750,000 employees - Q4 2019: 798,000 employees - Q1 2020: 840,400 employees - Q2 2020: 876,800 employees - Q3 2020: 1,125,300 employees - Q4 2020: 1,298,000 employees - Q1 2021: 1,271,000 employees - Q2 2021: 1,335,000 employees - Q3 2021: 1,468,000 employees - Q4 2021: 1,608,000 employees - Q1…

Hard to say how much is seasonality vs laying people off due to increases in robots based on historical numbers. Thanks for breaking this out.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#346
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and they are building it for NASA's Artemis program. SpaceX evaporates the moment the juicy billion dollar public contracts dry up. Mars is still a pipe dream. You might as well give the credit to Edgar Rice Burroughs for as far as realizing it has come.

"SpaceX evaporates the moment the juicy billion dollar public contracts dry up." So, not in the foreseeable future, given the new Space Race with China. Ofc the government is an important customer for any launch provider (not just SpaceX), given that a lot of current space activity is military in nature. That just comes with the territory. Edgar Rice Borroughs died before the first man-made rocket reached the orbit.…

"So, not in the foreseeable future"

I agree, but the point was they are tied to NASA and NASA's projects for the foreseeable future, not that they are going away tomorrow.

"But I don't think that manned flight to Mars is wild and unattainable fantasy"

It wasn't too long ago you were talking about colonization. So which is it? Colonization or a manned flight?

Yeah I believe a manned flight is possible. If we were really motivated it would have been possible before my lifetime, certainly before SpaceX.

Colonization is leaps and bounds beyond that.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#347
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe robots should pay taxes like humans since they are taking the jobs and the tax base that goes along with them.

Or you could tax the companies on revenue, the way employees are.

Sure, if you enjoy higher prices or lower wages

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay. The problem, of course, is that wages stagnated from '99 to 2014 and the job participation rate has been decreasing since 2000 while cost of living and general production increased; so no, in a dynamic market work does not necessarily come with higher pay. It actually wouldn't really make sense for all new w…

wages stagnated, not total compensation which continued to grow employee preferred form of compensation has just shifted towards other benefits

> employee-preferred

More like Congress-imposed (through tax incentives)

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first crewed mission to Mars is very likely going to be a join SpaceX-NASA mission... to set up a crewed research station. Basically the same thing as Artemis Base Camp, except further away. Yes, SpaceX wants to ship millions of people to Mars, but realistically they are several decades away from even starting that. You want to get a small permanent settlement on Mars (like a crewed research station), and get som…

I don't think anyone can say what will 'very likely' happen, but NASA often hires many contractors and also does much work internally (e.g., at JPL) for a major project. Also, there may be other national space programs partnering in the mission.

My point is - I doubt the first crewed mission to Mars will be a purely private SpaceX-led venture. Almost certainly be done in cooperation with NASA, quite possibly some partner agencies such as ESA, maybe some other firms involved too (e.g. Axiom). And that mission is essentially just going to be “Artemis Base Camp on Mars”, a long way off Musk/SpaceX’s dream of sending a million people there.

Not saying the dream won’t eventually come true, but it if it does, it will take many decades. Come 2100, I think there will be a lot less than 1 million people on Mars.

Re: Amazon grows to over 750k robots, replacing 100k humans

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, why would an AGI be interested in programming? My kids are AGI, and they're not interested. I think there's a real moral conundrum when we say "programmer AGI" because, I think, we're implicitly talking about terminating every non-programmer AGI, to meet our labor force whims. Replace "programmer" with intellectual task of your choice.

Your kids are artificial general intelligence?

Fine. Artificial intelligence. I'm still waiting on the General.
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