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How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

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Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#61

Post by ethbro »

sbov wrote: post #11
ethbro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the point of UBI? Getting us past the local maxima of "this job is soul-crushing and a waste of a person's intelligence, but economics make it cheaper to use a body than a robot"?

No, all you need are cheap robots to get past that local maxima. The point of UBI is to ensure people don't become destitute when we reach that point.

Robotic automation of any sort doesn't occur in a vacuum.

If 50% of the jobs in a field are automated, in the near term you still have 100% of the former labor looking for that job, pushing salaries down towards their minimum, thereby reducing the cost effectiveness of further automation.

Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#62

Post by ethbro »

timv wrote: post #34
lmm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or: "Doing soul-crushing work is better than having nothing to do" ? Are we sure this isn't true? Are people who don't have to work (e.g. those on permanent disability in the US) more or less happy than comparable people in dead-end soulless jobs?

> Are we sure this isn't true? I don't know of any studies, but I suspect there would be some. In addition to the question of "how do we share income in a less-work world?", there is the question "how do we ensure that the are opportunities for everyone to contribute something meaningful to society?" Ideally those questions would connect - we would use our increased product(ivity) to fund a wider range of human endea…

Or even, how many researchers are working at McDonald's because their families' circumstances didn't afford them other opportunities, including ability to further their education?

Maybe not many, but I feel pretty confident that number is greater than 0.

Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#63

Post by kuschku »

nl wrote: post #35
kuschku wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is horrible for the market. A company gaining a huge advantage by getting a total monopoly over another market, which they can enforce due to having patents. That’s not what patents were supposed to create, and what Antitrust regulations were supposed to prevent. If this is the future, it’s quite a dystopia: Monopolies everywhere. Sure, I get that the Silicon Valley business model is to destroy regulation, g…

Patents over physical mechanisms are somewhat defensible IMHO. Generally they really do need to be innovative because physical processes are easier to understand (unlike software) and so they are harder to defend in court. Additionally, from the article it looks like patents were only one reason no one else is as good - it seems more like no one else had tried to build anything like them. Also, Amazon is generally se…

You do know Amazon is now using your history to find out which products you want, and increase the price shown to you for them, or even lock them behind a Prime requirement?

And for the suppliers, it’s also problematic.

That’s why usually the solution is a free market.

Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#64

Post by ximeng »

brc wrote: post #52
lhopki01 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly is the natural end state of capitalism. Once a company is big enough it's easy to destroy or buy out all competition. It's only regulation that prevents all industries becoming monopolies over time. You're confusing monopolies coopting government to maintain control with large government causing and maintaining monopolies.

Sorry, but no. Creative destruction is the end state of capitalism as has been proven time and time again. There are no examples of monopolies lasting more than a few years unless they have overt support from the state. Large governments cause monopolies to happen. You said the same thing. Business co-opting a government to creat a monopoly is only possible when the large government exists. You could argue that water…

Standard oil? Microsoft? At a high level government and big business are very similar in scope. It's not a matter of one or the other - your analysis is too simple. Government created the baby bells, not creative destruction. Government circumscribed ms.

Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#65

Post by ethbro »

brc wrote: post #42
timv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a soul-crushing job is better than no job Really? Do you mean: "Being paid to do soul-crushing work is better than not being paid" ? Or: "Doing soul-crushing work is better than having nothing to do" ? The first is an issue of income and the distribution of product (in the GDP sense of product). There is no axiomatic rule that says "you have to have a job to get paid", it's just how our current economy operates. If…

You can't use terms like 'useful' when measuring jobs or output. It's in the eye of the observer. Apparently nail painting businesses are a viable industry, in my eyes they are totally useless. Most of the businesses we recognise today would have been hilarious to our ancestors. Paying good money for a personal trainer? Paying someone to wash your car? This is an age-old problem which keeps solving itself.

The "eye of the observer" in aggregate is what forms the invisible hand in a free market.

But jobs existing are a consequence of two things: (1) demand & (2) ability to price work output above a minimum.

UBI answers a world where there aren't enough of (2) to satisfy labor supply (whether through automation or increases in efficiency). Because bar repealing minimum wage statutes we're going to reach a point where for {minimum wage salary} there only exist X potential jobs (additional jobs not economically-feasibly offering a sufficient income), and labor pool > X.

Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#66

Post by yuegui »

Shivetya wrote: post #60
karambahh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only downside I see with Autstore is building maintenance. What about maintenance on a column? You have to stop the whole system, unload & disassemble part of the grid just to run a new cable or check for humidity or whatever on your structural columns. That's the only downside I see. It's a very simple concept solving a very real issue and their motto "stop airhousing start warehousing" real hits home!

looking at autostore I was curious how many skus can be done efficiently and how deep you can go relative to the number of fast moving lines? With a million SKUs it might be fun to see what initial mapping can be done. Also, how can hazardous stacks be integrated to they can deliver to the same work station as regular items? as for maintenance I would think a few strategic extra rows could serve that purpose without…

It will depend on the size of the grid, number of positions on one level and number of robots. For fast movers, autostore can prepare those products and bring them to a few of the top levels when users are not actively picking or doing putaway. When the picking starts, those robots can get accessed to fast movers more quickly.

For maintenance, there is an extra area outside the grid where you can move the robot out of the grid to do some maintenance work on it without affecting the rest of the system.

Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#67

Post by joslin01 »

bboreham wrote: post #55
icebraining wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once a company is big enough it's easy to destroy or buy out all competition. Can you provide one single example of this having happened? I'm willing to believe it, I just haven't found one. Typical examples provided fall short of that claim.

Standard Oil "In 1904, Standard controlled 91 percent of production and 85 percent of final sales." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

Yes, and a few sentences later for context:

"Due to competition from other firms, their market share had gradually eroded to 70 percent by 1906 which was the year when the antitrust case was filed against Standard, and down to 64 percent by 1911 when Standard was ordered broken up"

Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#68

Post by sgwealti »

This article really overhypes the Kiva robots. I work in the warehouse automation industry for a fortune-500 retailer with several large e-commerce brands. Robotic goods-to-person is only one of many applications of robotics and automation in warehouses. It is also really only useful for certain types of long-tail operations - many SKUs, low volume per SKU. It also still very labor intensive because someone still has to pack all of those orders.

I think the Kiva robots are an important part of Amazon's fulfillment efficiency but I don't see a huge market for that technology across the warehousing industry because there are a lot of other problems that it doesn't solve at all or doesn't handle very well.

From my point of view the automated storage and retrieval and shuttle systems are much more interesting and more widely applicable. They are also a much more efficient use of vertical space.

Re: How Amazon Triggered a Robot Arms Race

#69

Post by icebraining »

bboreham wrote: post #55
icebraining wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once a company is big enough it's easy to destroy or buy out all competition. Can you provide one single example of this having happened? I'm willing to believe it, I just haven't found one. Typical examples provided fall short of that claim.

Standard Oil "In 1904, Standard controlled 91 percent of production and 85 percent of final sales." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

Yes, Standard Oil is the typical example, which is why I remain unconvinced. They didn't "destroy or buy out all competition" (they had more than a hundred competitors), which is why - as joslin01 points out - their position of dominance was very short lived. And did they abuse that position by charging exorbitant prices? No, the evidence was that they had generally lowered them.

And finally, this little tidbit: "The dissolution had actually propelled Rockefeller's personal wealth." Hurray for the Sherman Act..?

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