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

finance.yahoo.com

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

#291

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jmilkbal wrote: post #216
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption here is that an AI with IQ 100 could do anything a human with an IQ of 100 could do, only cheaper. But that's just averages. Really it would do half the things better and half worse, and then people have jobs doing the things that it does worse. That would continue until it doesn't do anything worse, which may or may not ever happen, but if it did and we're all still alive then the result would be post…

The power structures will never allow it. The conditions for a society of leisure have theoretically existed for some time now. We will simply end up with a a planetary ruling class that lives opulently while the other 99% live in abject poverty.

"The power structures" want people to need to work so they have to work for them. Better to keep you occupied with the rat race than have you spending time advocating for political reform.

Which is why work expands to fill all available time. They want you to have a job, because what they don't want is what you might do if your time was your own. For some subset of "they" that represents the most malicious pricks.

The thing that happens if they win is that everybody still has a job even if they're not doing anything useful. Which in a lot of ways is what's happening already.

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

#292

Post by int_19h »

dhosek wrote: post #61
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once the capital owners possess the technology that brings the cost of labor near zero Most Americans are capital owners. You’re describing a world in which most Americans live in a utopia.

A quick google says that 53% of Americans own publicly traded stock, but that means that 47% do not. There will be some fraction of that 47% who have their own businesses, but I’m guessing that these would be people at the bottom end of the business scale. Would it really be fair to call the guys driving a truck through the alleys collecting crap metal capital owners who would live in a utopia? The same article that…

And for most Americans who own publicly traded stock, the income that is derived from it is supplemental, not primary.

You're not really a full-on capitalist unless you can stop working and still have sufficient income derived from economic rent collected from somebody else who is working to sustain you in perpetuity.

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

#293

Post by int_19h »

EasyMark wrote: post #262
cactusfrog wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jobs robots replace aren’t good for the human soul

Being homeless and unemployed isn't good for the human soul either.

Those two things don't have to be correlated. It is our choice as a society to make them so.

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

#294

Post by int_19h »

VHRanger wrote: post #166
nabla9 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All what you say is true, if the wage share stays constant. The "working poor" phenomenon where you can't pay for necessities like rent, healthcare etc. while working full time is the result of declining wage share. Wage share has steadily declined in OECD countries since early 1970s. In the US since 1960s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRS84006173 Wages make smaller and smaller portion of national income while…

FWIW, the wage share declining is a result of many other factors. See here: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2008/where-has-all-th... Health insurance and other benefits, household composition have hurt wage share. Not that it didn't decline in real terms for the lower skilled workers, just less than the naive chart you put. Here is good reading on the topic (maybe my favorite paper of the last decade): https:/…

Your first link points out that income inequality is still growing, however. Which unambiguously means that those at the top are increasingly taking larger and larger slice of the pie.

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

#295

Post by int_19h »

ed_balls wrote: post #50
aczerepinski wrote: post #25

I wish I could believe that all this automation would lead to more leisure time for all of humanity, but it certainly won’t happen on its own out of generosity from the robot owners.

It would in places where robot owners care about. To avoid social unrest they will be forced to pay for UBI. The two remaining problems would be: - purpose and identity. - places like Bangladesh where industries like textile will disappear.

They certainly talk about UBI a lot, but somehow it never materializes. What does materialize, however, is tax cuts on corporations.

Perhaps they believe that you can automate policing as well, at least enough so that social unrest can be suppressed effectively?

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

#296

Post by int_19h »

rcstank wrote: post #134
LadyCailin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s too hard to do. What is “a robot” and “a job?” Replacing workers is easy enough to calculate that with, but what if I start a brand new factory that only ever used robots? The solution is wealth tax and UBI. Get rid of regular income tax, then do a progressive wealth tax, which is enough to pay for a progressive UBI. This way, it’s no problem if you lay off all your workers to replace them with robots. In fact…

Many people on UBI would be content enough to not search for more work.

Good, because the whole point of taking automation to its logical conclusion is that there isn't more work for them.

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

#297

Post by skissane »

inglor_cz wrote: post #285
zztop44 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proclaiming things is very easy.

SpaceX aren't just proclaiming things. They are building a skyscraper-sized fully reusable rocket with completely new engines to get away from the Earth cheaply.

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 some experience with operating it, before you start sending heaps of people. And probably the initial focus will be just on growing that crewed research station (from 20 people to 200 people to 2000 people). And only then will you have enough information to really plan making it significantly bigger. I doubt we'll get there until some time in the second half of this century.

In the medium term, I think the Moon is a more realistic target for the private sector. The total cost per a person-year of a crewed lunar base is a lot less than a crewed Martian base, so you can pay for a much bigger lunar settlement for the same budget. You can also sell lunar surface tourism to the ultra-rich, and hope that economies of scale will gradually drive the price down; your average billionaire can spare a couple of weeks for a trip to the Moon, not the almost 3 years a Mars round trip would take. How about Hollywood filming on-location on the Moon? Reality TV shows? Professional sports competitions? All a lot more feasible given the much lower travel time (about 3 days) and light distance (a bit over 1 light second). I doubt any of these would be massive revenue sources (at least at first), but they'll be economically feasible long before their Martian equivalents become so.

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

#298

Post by foolofat00k »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #123
dhosek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick google says that 53% of Americans own publicly traded stock, but that means that 47% do not. There will be some fraction of that 47% who have their own businesses, but I’m guessing that these would be people at the bottom end of the business scale. Would it really be fair to call the guys driving a truck through the alleys collecting crap metal capital owners who would live in a utopia? The same article that…

> 53% of Americans own publicly traded stock, but that means that 47% do not Does that include 401(k)s and pensions?

Very probably, yes. I'd be shocked if more than 60% of Americans even have a 401k/pension, let alone one with any meaningful sum invested.

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

#299

Post by lnxg33k1 »

jairuhme wrote: post #181
shrubble wrote: post #152

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…

> 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 think you, like many others, fell into the trap of just looking at the headline. The 1k people were labeling training data, not watching you shop like a puppet master..

If they were labeling data the stores would still be open

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

#300

Post by easyThrowaway »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #190
karaterobot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a minute. Higher skill jobs? For at least a decade, the place jobs shifted to was Amazon. If you lost your job because Amazon put your company out of business, you could get a worse, more humiliating job working at an Amazon warehouse, or as an Amazon driver. It was not higher skill jobs the market shifted to, it was Nomadland jobs. Now that Amazon is switching to robots, where are those people Amazon is putting…

> For at least a decade, the place jobs shifted to was Amazon. It wasn't so much the jobs that shifted there as the customers, and the reason for that is that Amazon had better prices. Then people complained about the jobs they did offer because they're mechanistic and exhausting, so they automate them and then people complain about that. But that too should result in lower prices -- Amazon's retail operation doesn't…

> But lowering prices creates jobs. People pay less for a dress or a phone case and then spend the money on something else. New jobs are created doing the something else.

Isn't this the principle supposedly behind trickle down economics just by another name?

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