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I am still surprised that they didn't buy Boston Dynamics. I would have been all over that. Perhaps they know something I do not.
by at_a_remove 5y ago
I am still surprised that they didn't buy Boston Dynamics. I would have been all over that. Perhaps they know something I do not.
- amelius 5y agoCan they already do order picking?
- throwkeep 5y agoSame, I don't understand it. Also still surprised that Google sold them.
- killjoywashere 5y agoA non-trivial amount of Boston Dynamics' funding came from DoD. Pretty sure Google was not interested in sustaining those contracts but without them it was likely a net loss.
- caseysoftware 5y agoGoogle knew that going in. Even if it hadn't been public knowledge (it was), it would have come out during due diligence. There has to be a different reason, we just can't tell what it is.
- marktangotango 5y agoMy assumption is that the tech makes good videos, but is basically limited in what it can do, without someone always offscreen handling the controls.
- deepserket 5y agoif they automatize too fast then people will call for UBI... that's my guess
- JohnWhigham 5y agoI think UBI is further off than you think. Look at how Andrew Yang was treated during the presidential election. Boomers and their rotten ways of thinking need to die off from positions of power first.
- skciva 5y agoMain arguments I saw (from the left, at least) against Yang's UBI proposals were how he planned to gut social programs to pay for it. I think there will definitely be more discussions about UBI in the US political sphere in the coming years.
- cestith 5y agoMany social programs in theory could afford to be gutted if we just stopped checking for, certifying, and auditing eligibility and started paying people directly with fewer questions. To what extent and how the transition would work out remains to be seen.
- pydry 5y agoUBI is often viewed on the right as a cost neutral way of spreading social Security spending around so that Bill Gates, the unemployed and the permanently disabled all get the same $290 check in the mail every month. The upside being lower spending on things like testing eligibility, the downside being that either the cost balloons to about $4-6 trillion a year or you basically just accept that some people are not gonna be able to survive.
- sangnoir 5y ago> just accept that some people are not gonna be able to survive. Their arguments against unemployment benefits are instructive. I don't think a livable UBI is a possibility in the current US political climate, doubly so since it cannot be sustained by income taxes on a shrunken labor base, necessitating more taxes on robot companies.
- octostone 5y agoAmazon’s demand for warehouse picking and packing is highly seasonal, centered around the American holiday season. I think they do have robots, but it’s still cheaper to hire seasonal humans rather than have a bunch of expensive robots idle for 8 months of the year. One of those dystopian facts that makes me feel some kinda way.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoIs it more or less dystopian than fewer humans being needed due to robots being cheaper?
- deelowe 5y agoMaybe more? I believe the issue with the human race reaching the singularity point isn’t the world post singularity, but the transition period leading up to it.
- garden_hermit 5y agoIdeally, robots doing all of our work should be utopian, leaving humans free to pursue other interests. Unfortunately, the current structure of society instead makes this dystopian.
- xtracto 5y agoThat's where we are going with Capitalism. In 500 years when we had improved robotics to the point of being able to do most of human work (excepting maybe knowledge work), it will be cheaper to buy a robot than to hire a human. With more than 20 billion people at that time (the USA could have 850 million ppl), the only way for people to survive will be through hyper-efficient production processes and equalitarian distribution policies.
- cestith 5y ago4 months full usage, 1 month maintenance, 5 months of Amazon Rental Robots.
- 5y ago
- postingawayonhn 5y agoWhy? Amazon already has significant automation in their warehouses and Boston Dynamics has yet to find a significant market for thier products.
- readams 5y agoThey bought a warehouse robot company Kiva Systems in 2012. They have lots of robots.
- TYPE_FASTER 5y agoYeah, that was a smart acquisition. They have hundreds of thousands of robots working for them now [0]. The Kiva Systems founders were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame last year [1]. It's interesting to read in [1] that one of the founders is working with RightHand Robotics [2] on picking. I wonder if RHH would be another acquisition target for Amazon if they solve that problem. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Robotics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Robotics [1] - https://www.therobotreport.com/kiva-systems-creators-inducted-into-national-inventors-hall-of-fame/ https://www.therobotreport.com/kiva-systems-creators-inducte... [2] - https://www.righthandrobotics.com/ https://www.righthandrobotics.com/
- Clewza313 5y agoBoston Dynamics builds thinly disguised military robots that are meant to be very flexible and can operate in rough terrain (for 15 min or whatever until the battery runs out, but that's another story). They're hugely expensive literal overkill for a highly predictable and controlled environment like a warehouse, which is why the Kiva robots that Amazon actually uses are basically boxes on wheels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UxZDJ1HiPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UxZDJ1HiPE
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sleepybrett 5y agoThey have some demos and robots that are literally designed for warehouse work.