Amazon hid its safety crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#41

Post by Barrin92 » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #31

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I see capitalism eventually failing. On one hand, I think it's great that these mind-numbingly boring jobs can be automated away. On the other hand, the end result is that more profits go to Amazon, while many more people have fewer opportunities to participate in the economy. For the old predictable arguments of "Well, these people can do something else, do you expect buggy whip makers to still be around…

Is that a failure of capitalism or of our education systems or simply an oversupply of humans?

well given that Capitalism also increasingly optimises the education sector in the way it optimises conveyor belts it arguably is.

In all of these discussions about automation, Capitalism, economic dynamics and so on a lot of people seem to try to argue that the process can be divided into the automation part, call it capitalism with a small c, and the education/political/human part, when in reality, technological process changes both in the exact same way.

I mean even the term you went with "oversupply of humans", from which vantage point does such a label come? Sounds more like a rogue AI than a humanistic consideration. That would be Capitalism with a capital C speaking, I guess.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#42

Post by mardifoufs » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

buildbot wrote: post #18

Judgmentality wrote: post #10

> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is customer obsession. “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” it reads. And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem. I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at…

Yep, I got counterfeit parts for my 3d printer that resulted in it need a lot of repair, and fighting with Amazon only got them to pay half the cost of the repair...It's the last thing I'll order from them for sure. Canceling prime, just done with them.

What 3d printer part was it? I've been shopping mainly on aliexpress for my parts since amazon.ca has a very anemic offering (and what it has is basically dropshipped parts from aliexpress anyways). But I'm curious to know what I should be cautious of. I always thought most 3d printer parts are usually not "genuine" and made by a 3rd party anyway.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#43

Post by HenryKissinger » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

buildbot wrote: post #18

Judgmentality wrote: post #10

> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is customer obsession. “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” it reads. And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem. I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at…

Yep, I got counterfeit parts for my 3d printer that resulted in it need a lot of repair, and fighting with Amazon only got them to pay half the cost of the repair...It's the last thing I'll order from them for sure. Canceling prime, just done with them.

Some guy below you:

> I work at Amazon, we are hiring all the top ML people to work on this problem. Legions of ML PhDs.

It doesn't take legions of PhDs in machine learning to fix a basic counterfeit problem on a glorified online shopping store.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#44

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #20

logicslave wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No interest in solving the problem? I work at Amazon, we are hiring all the top ML people to work on this problem. Legions of ML PhDs. Its not easy and you are just making stuff up

Fulfilled by Amazon products ship with offers to buy reviews inside them, lol. Could start by inspecting the merchandise. You don’t need legions of PhDs. You need eyes and ears on the ground doing checks.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#45

Post by 8note » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

qppo wrote: post #39

Animats wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled Here's an old Kiva Robotics video that shows how picking works.[1] It's an utterly mindless job. An automated laser pointer points to the bin from which to take an object. A lighted button shows which box to put it in. A new bin then moves into position, and this goes on. Training time req…

> It's an utterly mindless job I worked as a picker/packer one summer. This is an understatement, even before the robots did the walking for you. It's interesting that the only thing left is to make a robot that can handle the objects to be placed, currently they cost more than minimum wage human labor unless the thing being picked is designed to be handled by a machine. Ultimately that's what I think will happen, th…

That's essentially what's happened with shipping containers

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#46

Post by JoshTko » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

ColanR wrote: post #16

Judgmentality wrote: post #10

> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is customer obsession. “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” it reads. And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem. I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at…

> And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem I don't get this Amazon hate. Weren't they the ones who originally came up with the idea for putting purchaser reviews with the product, and the 5-star rating system? It seems like their solution was to 'crowdsource' the problem. Now people have learned to game the system, but I buy plenty of electronics from amazon and from ebay, and I'm carefu…

The mental overhead spent checking if the order could be counterfeit or choosing a more reliable seller is exhausting.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#47

Post by TheRealSteel » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

logicslave wrote: post #19

Judgmentality wrote: post #10

> Jeff Bezos’ 14 leadership principles are famous inside and outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the company’s leaders. The first is customer obsession. “Leaders start with the customer and work backwards,” it reads. And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in solving its safety problem. I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at…

No interest in solving the problem? I work at Amazon, we are hiring all the top ML people to work on this problem. Legions of ML PhDs. Its not easy and you are just making stuff up

Wouldn't it be easier to... stop buying and selling counterfeit products? This is what almost every other shop in the world does. Verify your suppliers. What does ML even have to do with it?

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#48

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #11

Aperocky wrote: post #4

> The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled, according to a former senior operations manager who saw the transformation. And they kept climbing. At the most common kind of warehouse, workers called pickers – who previously had to grab and scan about 100 items an hour – were expected to hit rates of up to 400 an hour at robotic ful…

I'm curious as to what political issue you think they will face by replacing all their warehouse workers with robots? Do you think people would demand they pay more in tax? Wouldn't that be a political issue that all large companies face together?

In the past, unionized workers negotiated compensation schemes when their jobs were automated or moved overseas. This isn't going to happen for Amazon's employees, though. That's the issue.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#49

Post by reaperducer » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #25

Animats wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled Here's an old Kiva Robotics video that shows how picking works.[1] It's an utterly mindless job. An automated laser pointer points to the bin from which to take an object. A lighted button shows which box to put it in. A new bin then moves into position, and this goes on. Training time req…

This is why I see capitalism eventually failing. On one hand, I think it's great that these mind-numbingly boring jobs can be automated away. On the other hand, the end result is that more profits go to Amazon, while many more people have fewer opportunities to participate in the economy. For the old predictable arguments of "Well, these people can do something else, do you expect buggy whip makers to still be around…

The response to this is usually, "Well, then people should be retrained." It's kind of an elitist, SV bubble trope at this point.

There are millions of people who simply cannot be retrained.

Yes, pick-and-pack is mind-numbingly boring for many people. But for others, it's good. Or even challenging.

I've worked on an assembly line three times in my life. I found it tedious and pointless, and to keep my mind busy, I mostly just focused on what I was going to do after work. But there were people there for whom the work was a perfect fit.

Not everyone has the intellectual capacity of a SV keyboard jockey. Not everyone has average motor skills. These people still need jobs. Still need to earn money. Still have the right to participate in society.

The solution is not to just throw UBI money at them and warehouse them in apartments like cattle. The solution is to automate an appropriate amount of factory jobs, but also keep an appropriate amount of low-skill jobs so that these people can be part of society.

Re: Amazon hid its safety crisis

#50

Post by WalterSear » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #25

Animats wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled Here's an old Kiva Robotics video that shows how picking works.[1] It's an utterly mindless job. An automated laser pointer points to the bin from which to take an object. A lighted button shows which box to put it in. A new bin then moves into position, and this goes on. Training time req…

This is why I see capitalism eventually failing. On one hand, I think it's great that these mind-numbingly boring jobs can be automated away. On the other hand, the end result is that more profits go to Amazon, while many more people have fewer opportunities to participate in the economy. For the old predictable arguments of "Well, these people can do something else, do you expect buggy whip makers to still be around…

I don't see how any of that leads to the failure of capitalism: it is, and will continue to succeed at explicitly everything it set out to accomplish.