Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 48 posts

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#11

Post by imaginenore »

startupfounder wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human jobs. As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services. My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is replacing human jobs faster than humans c…

Robotization and automation will leave tens of millions of people in the US without jobs. There's just no way around it.

This is happening as we speak. The next 30 years will be absolutely nuts.

That's why some form of socialism will become inevitable. We will absolutely have to provide millions of people with food, shelter and basic medicine. Or face famine and revolts.

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#12

Post by Crito »

startupfounder wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human jobs. As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services. My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is replacing human jobs faster than humans c…

Ultimately better education isn't going to be good enough. 100 workers replaced by a robot won't all get 100 jobs fixing or making that robot. Buggy-whip factory workers may have found new jobs in car factories, but it would be a mistake to assume that is how things will always play out.

Unless we want serious societal unrest, I am convinced that we need to get something like basic income off the ground sooner rather than later.

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#13

Post by trhway »

Crito wrote: post #12
startupfounder wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human jobs. As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services. My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is replacing human jobs faster than humans c…

Ultimately better education isn't going to be good enough. 100 workers replaced by a robot won't all get 100 jobs fixing or making that robot. Buggy-whip factory workers may have found new jobs in car factories, but it would be a mistake to assume that is how things will always play out. Unless we want serious societal unrest, I am convinced that we need to get something like basic income off the ground sooner rather…

>100 workers replaced by a robot won't all get 100 jobs fixing or making that robot.

they will get jobs servicing each other as doctors, teachers, nurses, lawyers, soldiers, playwriters, government clerks/officers, etc... Basically actively employed in a re-distribution of the products made by the robots. Government for example one can see as an instance of such basic income program (it just comes with such strings attached as spending 9to5 in the office and regular kissing of the lower back of your superior)

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#14

Post by Crito »

trhway wrote: post #13
Crito wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately better education isn't going to be good enough. 100 workers replaced by a robot won't all get 100 jobs fixing or making that robot. Buggy-whip factory workers may have found new jobs in car factories, but it would be a mistake to assume that is how things will always play out. Unless we want serious societal unrest, I am convinced that we need to get something like basic income off the ground sooner rather…

>100 workers replaced by a robot won't all get 100 jobs fixing or making that robot. they will get jobs servicing each other as doctors, teachers, nurses, lawyers, soldiers, playwriters, government clerks/officers, etc... Basically actively employed in a re-distribution of the products made by the robots. Government for example one can see as an instance of such basic income program (it just comes with such strings a…

> "they will get jobs servicing each other as doctors, teachers, nurses"

Are those robots going to create increased demand for doctors, teachers, and nurses, by virtue of automating away a welding job? Is your typical factory worker a viable doctor? If I lost my developer job, I don't think I would make a viable doctor, and I am a fairly smart university educated person. Not everybody is cut out for that kind of work; I sure aren't.

> "soldiers"

Military inefficiencies aside, don't be so sure they'll be safe from automation either. Furthermore, I shudder to think what future developments would necessitate even more soldiers.

> "playwrights"

The arts may flourish with some form of basic income in place, but without it, it is doubtful that it will become a viable career that can feed families for a significant portion of ex-factory workers.

> "government clerks"

Definitely not safe from automation. Computer automation alone, no robots required, eliminates many of those sort of jobs.

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#15

Post by bdamm »

startupfounder wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human jobs. As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services. My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is replacing human jobs faster than humans c…

Are you familiar with the writings of Karl Marx?

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#16

Post by ereckers »

Does anyone know of a good video or presentation that both describes and visually shows us how this will work in practice?

I've seen the earlier news clips showing the drone delivering a package to the back porch of a house, which got a simple shrug out of me, but how's this envisioned at scale?

Do I look out my second story window and see a drone pass by every 10 minutes? Or is there initial use cases outside of residential that will be the first to adopt the technology?

I just want to see it with my own eyes, before actually seeing it with my own eyes.

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#17

Post by digisth »

If delivery-by-automated-drone ever actually becomes a serious service, might it be a good idea to start considering "building/structure electronic tagging"? That way, drones don't have to rely solely on GPS, or (I'm guessing) OCR of addresses and such. Obviously, with "guided" delivery, which is what we're going to have for now, this is less of a problem, but the ideal would be to have them be fully automated end-to-end (pickup, fly, dropoff, return with no human intervention.) With a beacon, we could give rough coordinates, then have the drones hone in on the beacon signal with the proper address.

I'm not sure what would make a good "beacon with address metadata" technology, but it seems worth thinking about.

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#18

Post by mblevin »

startupfounder wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human jobs. As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services. My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is replacing human jobs faster than humans c…

The best-case scenario here is articulated well by Tyler Cowen in "Average is Over"[1] - new, future blue-collar equivalent jobs are going to be created to interact with and train the Cambrian explosion of narrow AI applications and robotics, assuming an ongoing paradigm of mostly supervised learning.

The worst case scenario on the other hand is pretty dystopian.

I for one, welcome our new overlords.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Average-Is-Over-Powering-Stagnation-eb...

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#19

Post by manachar »

startupfounder wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human jobs. As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services. My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is replacing human jobs faster than humans c…

If you see a human doing something it's only because it's too expensive for a robot/machine/software to do it.

Delightfully, robot comes from a Czech word originating in "hard work, servitude, serfdom". Basically a slave. Any business looking to drive down costs push their human components as close to slavery as is allowable by law or acceptable to the workers.

So when people fight to preserve human jobs in say, fast food, agriculture, or factories, in general you see them preserved by humans opting to work for less or in worse conditions. Cheap human labor actually starts to limit technological progress at this point.

So, where's that leave the future? Hopefully we can move to a post-employment world, where people don't need masses of near-robot human resources to make profits. I don't know what the world looks like, but to me it's better than a world where humans compete with each other to be better robots for their bosses.

Re: Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S

#20

Post by hsuresh »

serge2k wrote: post #4
startupfounder wrote: post #3

I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human jobs. As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services. My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is replacing human jobs faster than humans c…

We shouldn't be impeding progress to save jobs. I believe an ultimate goal should be to reach the point where people don't need jobs.

As much as i like technology adoption to go up, i am not sure if progress is really about replacing humans from jobs. I am not yet convinced that people don't need jobs. Besides, technology progress can happen much faster than change in governance, policies and culture.
Post reply on HN