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This sort of hand wringing seems like a distraction from the likelihood that Amazon has moved up the date* in which these jobs will be eliminated. Whether emplo

This sort of hand wringing seems like a distraction from the likelihood that Amazon has moved up the date* in which these jobs will be eliminated. Whether employees are netting out the same or not is going to be moot. If it's similar though then that really doesn't seem like a good deal longer term. *Robots will be able to do the jobs for $15 hour sooner than they'll be able to for $7 an hour. The math will accelerate the move to automation.

beat 8y ago
I don't buy this argument. The problem usually isn't that robots are too expensive to do the human jobs, it's that robots can't do the human jobs, period. If something can be done by machine, it is done by machine, and that's been true since the beginning of the industrial era. Entire job classifications get wiped out by new automation, all the time. At this point, the jobs that are still done by humans are jobs that require judgment and intuition. Those things are very, very difficult to emulate in software, unlike repetitive motions and data lookups.
- maym86 8y ago
  Exactly, and Amazon is still growing so even as some jobs are gradually replaced by machines the total number of workers is still increasing.
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    But they are being replaced with engineers, salesmen, and customer support, not with warehouse employees. Different skill sets and likely, a net loss of jobs for the poorest and a net increase of white collar positions.
    - maym86 8y ago
      I specifically mean wearhouse workers. The automotation technology isn't good enough and whether or not they implement it has little to do with these wage changes.
    - beat 8y ago
      200 years ago, 95% or more of the population was employed as farmers. Today, it's less than 3%. Somehow, we survived.
      - pixl97 8y ago
        Because we created millions, if not billions of new jobs that machines couldn't do. Physical work -> thinking work -> ??? Also, you forgot that many of the Luddites actually starved to death in the streets.
      - cromwellian 8y ago
        That replaced mostly manual labor with mostly manual labor. The millions of people involved in the horse industry supply chain, went to cities and they and their descendants worked in factories. A horse required a lot of non-mass-produced infrastructure to support, the feed, the shoes, the buggy, the saddle. There were millions employed in this industry. That was replaced by cars. And while industrial machines automated a lot of what used to be manual blacksmith/tradeskills work, cars were made from thousands of parts, which required a massive new supply chain. Software automation is completely different, it scales and replicates in ways that don't require new replacement labor. WhatsApp serviced 1 billion users with 33 employees. That's scale. So when self driving trucks kill 8 million trucking supply chain jobs and self driving cars do reduce the need for car ownership, for parking attendants, valets, meter maids, traffic cops, uber drivers, etc, low skilled people won't suddenly find those millions of jobs replaced with similar jobs with similar skill levels in another vertical. They'll just be....GONE. And keep in mind, the "gig" economy largely replaced good, reliable, jobs with temporary, inconsistent, jobs. The industrial era, with it's big centralized unions, who regularized pay, the work week, benefits, pensions, et al, was not re-invented for the new service and gig industry. The idea that technological advancement doesn't create structural unemployment is largely an article of faith. What it means to have a middle class, blue collar, skilled position with predictable work/life balance, income, and benefits has largely evaporated for a good chunk of the country. What comes next after automated logistics, automated factory assembly, automated deliver and self-driving vehicles? Hell, Google Duplex even shows you a lot of the frontdesk services can be reduced along with concierge services to only those instances that go off the rails. We better start thinking about these problems and stop with dogmatic faith that something big will come along to employ all the displaced people. I'm talking about either universal basic income, government make-work, or something no one's thought of yet.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  The Amazon of China, Jingdong, has a fulfillment center that handles hundreds of thousands of packages a day and employs just five people: https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY Amazon used humans because the investment to build full automation was too expensive and take too long to build out compared to spinning up human labor. However now the logistics of the fulfillment center are well understood and they can be rebuilt with full automation. It was clearly a matter of time and money, not “these jobs are impractical hard to do with automation”
  - maym86 8y ago
    That video looks like a demo/marketing video. Are there any videos of the factory working at full load?
  - beat 8y ago
    What part of fulfillment, though? In my area, Amazon has its own trucks delivering packages, for the most part. That's not exactly something that can be automated.
    - cromwellian 8y ago
      Not yet, but one self driving takes off, delivery drones are probably one of the first use cases to be used. Hell, they don't even have the 'unrestricted left turn' problem that cars have, because UPS already restricts its drivers to right turns only or restricted left turns only. You just need a self-driving UPS truck, and for a certain subset of packages in a certain weight class, just a self-propelled dolly that comes out of a ramp in the back of the truck. I'm guessing no more than 20 years before all of this is automated. And then what for low skilled labor?
  - pkaye 8y ago
    Automation doesn't work for everything. Like when the product being shipping is of varying size and shape. Like clothing, books, pouches all in one box. Or stacking the boxes in a truck. Or look at something like car assembly. Tesla still uses people to route wiring harnesses through the car body because robots can't do it well. Many simple things can get automated but there is still a lot not yet possible.
- Retric 8y ago
  iPhones are assembled by hand and Amazon uses human pickers over automated warehouses which have been around for 30+ years. Human labor is both cheap and dependable where automation takes capital and introduces risks. Just look at Tesla who cut back on automation at their factory. The trend is for companies to do things by hand as they scale, and only automate when it's either required to stay competitive or the business enters a near steady state.
- michaelt 8y ago
  If something can be done by machine, it is done by machine, and that's been true since the beginning of the industrial era. Imagine an online retailer that employed 1000 people January-November, and 2000 people during December. Automating the seasonal jobs would have a payback time 12x longer than automating the non-seasonal jobs. The December robots lock up capital during the 11 months of the year they're idle.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    So the 1000 jobs will be automated. The 1000-2000 jobs will not. Then again I don't think people working only 3 months out of a year at minimum wage creates a valid economy.
maym86 8y ago
> Robots will be able to do the jobs for $15 hour sooner than they'll be able to for $7 an hour This doesn't make sense. Increasing workers wages doesn't change the rate a which automation technology becomes available. The bottle neck is the availablity of capable automation systems which is unrelated to workers wages. Even if there was a technology available that cost $15 an hour and worker wages were $7, increasing the workers wages doesn't decrease cost of the technology.
- ameister14 8y ago
  >Increasing workers wages doesn't change the rate a which automation technology becomes available. Sure it does. If your current costs increase significantly, the math on funding research to automate the process changes. Not simply because you may fund research to fix your increase in cost, but also because there is now a more viable market for others to do the same.
- pixl97 8y ago
  Hmmm, what you are saying doesn't make sense. Lets say there is an industrial machine that TCO is $50,000 per year to operate. Lets say a human doing the same task, same quantity, and same outcome, for low pay only costs $20,000. It would be crazy not to use humans. Trying to drop the cost of the machine is likely going to be very difficult because there will be no demand. Now, give the humans a raise and insurance. Lets say that brings up the total human cost to $48,000. We'll, it is actually worth getting the machines now. Seems counter intuitive even when the machine is $2000 more. But it is almost granted the cost of the machines will drop now there is a mass market for them.
  - maym86 8y ago
    Raising the wages of humans so they are the same cost as machines doesn't make the machines cheaper. Amazon could keep workers wages low and still buy machines and create the market. One doesn't necessitate the other.
    - pixl97 8y ago

beat 8y ago

I don't buy this argument. The problem usually isn't that robots are too expensive to do the human jobs, it's that robots can't do the human jobs, period. If something can be done by machine, it is done by machine, and that's been true since the beginning of the industrial era. Entire job classifications get wiped out by new automation, all the time. At this point, the jobs that are still done by humans are jobs that require judgment and intuition. Those things are very, very difficult to emulate in software, unlike repetitive motions and data lookups.

maym86 8y ago
Exactly, and Amazon is still growing so even as some jobs are gradually replaced by machines the total number of workers is still increasing.
- cromwellian 8y ago
  But they are being replaced with engineers, salesmen, and customer support, not with warehouse employees. Different skill sets and likely, a net loss of jobs for the poorest and a net increase of white collar positions.
  - maym86 8y ago
    I specifically mean wearhouse workers. The automotation technology isn't good enough and whether or not they implement it has little to do with these wage changes.
  - beat 8y ago
    200 years ago, 95% or more of the population was employed as farmers. Today, it's less than 3%. Somehow, we survived.
    - pixl97 8y ago
      Because we created millions, if not billions of new jobs that machines couldn't do. Physical work -> thinking work -> ??? Also, you forgot that many of the Luddites actually starved to death in the streets.
    - cromwellian 8y ago
      That replaced mostly manual labor with mostly manual labor. The millions of people involved in the horse industry supply chain, went to cities and they and their descendants worked in factories. A horse required a lot of non-mass-produced infrastructure to support, the feed, the shoes, the buggy, the saddle. There were millions employed in this industry. That was replaced by cars. And while industrial machines automated a lot of what used to be manual blacksmith/tradeskills work, cars were made from thousands of parts, which required a massive new supply chain. Software automation is completely different, it scales and replicates in ways that don't require new replacement labor. WhatsApp serviced 1 billion users with 33 employees. That's scale. So when self driving trucks kill 8 million trucking supply chain jobs and self driving cars do reduce the need for car ownership, for parking attendants, valets, meter maids, traffic cops, uber drivers, etc, low skilled people won't suddenly find those millions of jobs replaced with similar jobs with similar skill levels in another vertical. They'll just be....GONE. And keep in mind, the "gig" economy largely replaced good, reliable, jobs with temporary, inconsistent, jobs. The industrial era, with it's big centralized unions, who regularized pay, the work week, benefits, pensions, et al, was not re-invented for the new service and gig industry. The idea that technological advancement doesn't create structural unemployment is largely an article of faith. What it means to have a middle class, blue collar, skilled position with predictable work/life balance, income, and benefits has largely evaporated for a good chunk of the country. What comes next after automated logistics, automated factory assembly, automated deliver and self-driving vehicles? Hell, Google Duplex even shows you a lot of the frontdesk services can be reduced along with concierge services to only those instances that go off the rails. We better start thinking about these problems and stop with dogmatic faith that something big will come along to employ all the displaced people. I'm talking about either universal basic income, government make-work, or something no one's thought of yet.
cromwellian 8y ago
The Amazon of China, Jingdong, has a fulfillment center that handles hundreds of thousands of packages a day and employs just five people: https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY https://youtu.be/RFV8IkY52iY Amazon used humans because the investment to build full automation was too expensive and take too long to build out compared to spinning up human labor. However now the logistics of the fulfillment center are well understood and they can be rebuilt with full automation. It was clearly a matter of time and money, not “these jobs are impractical hard to do with automation”
- maym86 8y ago
  That video looks like a demo/marketing video. Are there any videos of the factory working at full load?
- beat 8y ago
  What part of fulfillment, though? In my area, Amazon has its own trucks delivering packages, for the most part. That's not exactly something that can be automated.
  - cromwellian 8y ago
    Not yet, but one self driving takes off, delivery drones are probably one of the first use cases to be used. Hell, they don't even have the 'unrestricted left turn' problem that cars have, because UPS already restricts its drivers to right turns only or restricted left turns only. You just need a self-driving UPS truck, and for a certain subset of packages in a certain weight class, just a self-propelled dolly that comes out of a ramp in the back of the truck. I'm guessing no more than 20 years before all of this is automated. And then what for low skilled labor?
- pkaye 8y ago
  Automation doesn't work for everything. Like when the product being shipping is of varying size and shape. Like clothing, books, pouches all in one box. Or stacking the boxes in a truck. Or look at something like car assembly. Tesla still uses people to route wiring harnesses through the car body because robots can't do it well. Many simple things can get automated but there is still a lot not yet possible.
Retric 8y ago
iPhones are assembled by hand and Amazon uses human pickers over automated warehouses which have been around for 30+ years. Human labor is both cheap and dependable where automation takes capital and introduces risks. Just look at Tesla who cut back on automation at their factory. The trend is for companies to do things by hand as they scale, and only automate when it's either required to stay competitive or the business enters a near steady state.
michaelt 8y ago
If something can be done by machine, it is done by machine, and that's been true since the beginning of the industrial era. Imagine an online retailer that employed 1000 people January-November, and 2000 people during December. Automating the seasonal jobs would have a payback time 12x longer than automating the non-seasonal jobs. The December robots lock up capital during the 11 months of the year they're idle.
- pixl97 8y ago
  So the 1000 jobs will be automated. The 1000-2000 jobs will not. Then again I don't think people working only 3 months out of a year at minimum wage creates a valid economy.

maym86 8y ago

> Robots will be able to do the jobs for $15 hour sooner than they'll be able to for $7 an hour This doesn't make sense. Increasing workers wages doesn't change the rate a which automation technology becomes available. The bottle neck is the availablity of capable automation systems which is unrelated to workers wages. Even if there was a technology available that cost $15 an hour and worker wages were $7, increasing the workers wages doesn't decrease cost of the technology.

ameister14 8y ago
>Increasing workers wages doesn't change the rate a which automation technology becomes available. Sure it does. If your current costs increase significantly, the math on funding research to automate the process changes. Not simply because you may fund research to fix your increase in cost, but also because there is now a more viable market for others to do the same.
pixl97 8y ago
Hmmm, what you are saying doesn't make sense. Lets say there is an industrial machine that TCO is $50,000 per year to operate. Lets say a human doing the same task, same quantity, and same outcome, for low pay only costs $20,000. It would be crazy not to use humans. Trying to drop the cost of the machine is likely going to be very difficult because there will be no demand. Now, give the humans a raise and insurance. Lets say that brings up the total human cost to $48,000. We'll, it is actually worth getting the machines now. Seems counter intuitive even when the machine is $2000 more. But it is almost granted the cost of the machines will drop now there is a mass market for them.
- maym86 8y ago
  Raising the wages of humans so they are the same cost as machines doesn't make the machines cheaper. Amazon could keep workers wages low and still buy machines and create the market. One doesn't necessitate the other.
  - pixl97 8y ago