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Before people bring their pitchforks to this headline, take a look at existing automation in factories [1][2] and ask yourself why would we ever want humans to

Before people bring their pitchforks to this headline, take a look at existing automation in factories [1][2] and ask yourself why would we ever want humans to do something that robots can do this well? Also despite the fact that humanoids are all the hype now (and included in the article), note that amazon has been investing in much more specialized approaches for quite some time [3][4]. There are so many things we can be doing with our time, and moving objects from a left-bin to a right-bin simply does not need to be one of them. The real question is if we have the collective will to get all these folks education and opportunities to do something else before they feel too much pain in the near term. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/1iwgb19/a_dark_factory_in_china_where_everything_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/1iwgb19/a_dark_factor... [2] https://www.fortna.com/ https://www.fortna.com/ [3] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-vulcan-robot-pick-stow-touch https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-vulcan-ro... [4] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/10-years-of-amazon-robotics-how-robots-help-sort-packages-move-product-and-improve-safety https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/10-years-of-amaz...

RaftPeople 1y ago
> Before people bring their pitchforks to this headline In addition to your points, something people forget is that in the previous model of brick and mortar stores, the consumer is the person that did the walking around the store and picking the items off the shelf and carrying them to the checkout. So a portion of what Amazon is automating used to be performed for free by the consumer. This was one of the big arguments about their business model for shipping books early on, the additional costs in a competitive retail market seemed like it would be unprofitable.
- CrackerNews 1y ago
  That leads to the cost of cleaning up after the customer to make sure they can buy what they need. Before Amazon, there were the club warehouse retail models like Costco where the frontend experience was cut down and the backend infrastructure scaled up. This all led to cost savings passed onto the customer. Amazon seems like the next step where the last mile delivery infrastructure was expanded and the retail frontend was replaced by a website. Instead of millions of frontend retail workers, it's software knowledge workers with an accompanying expansion of the backend retail workers. Now, the software knowledge workers are eating backend retail.
- tekbruh9000 1y ago
  Imagine the crash in book sales if humans were not hustling and could spend time socializing meaningfully. Job culture is nothing but empty competition. Billions of normalized thinkers reduced to nothing but tools of a "trade". Where trade is normalized to time for money. Not a fan of the racism and gender bias, but am 1000% indifferent to bougie labor exploiting office workers being handed their hat. "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" Yeah but you all suck to work with because that's all you are; HR slang, marketroid speak, programming language gibberish. Yawn. Am psyched the zeitgeist is turning on "knowledge workers" who ignored worker exploitation and devaluation of others just the same.
CrackerNews 1y ago
We could be spending our time more wisely, but our addiction to quarterly cycles needs something now as opposed to a hypothetical better future for the displaced workers.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
> if we have the collective will to get all these folks education and opportunities to do something else I hear this often, but have not read a single explanation of what the "something else" is that these people are supposed to do (a "something else" that we aren't also actively trying to replace with AI or AI driven processes). Barbers? Nail salons? I think we have enough of those already.
- mattnewton 1y ago
  I think that, basically, we need a way for people to participate in society beyond spending their economic output. Or else we will have masses of disenfranchised and dissatisfied people with no incentive to keep society working.
  - insane_dreamer 1y ago
    absolutely; but nobody is planning for this or even seriously considering it. to the contrary, we now have a government that is happy to take away healthcare and food stamps from its working class citizens > we will have masses of disenfranchised and dissatisfied people I fear this is coming > with no incentive to keep society working as long as the rich get serviced, they won't care much whether society is "working" or not
- Rebuff5007 1y ago
  How about nurses? Or elderly care? Or environmental remediation? Or dramatically improving student:teacher ratios across the board? Theres plenty of things that are worth investing in, and can easily sustain jobs for people...
  - Tadpole9181 1y ago
    Oh, yes, everyone can "just" switch careers into difficult, underpaid, passion-driven work paid for with money that already doesn't exist, let alone in an economy where Amazon & friends rake in 90% of all cash flow and has no employees to pay it out to.

RaftPeople 1y ago

> Before people bring their pitchforks to this headline In addition to your points, something people forget is that in the previous model of brick and mortar stores, the consumer is the person that did the walking around the store and picking the items off the shelf and carrying them to the checkout. So a portion of what Amazon is automating used to be performed for free by the consumer. This was one of the big arguments about their business model for shipping books early on, the additional costs in a competitive retail market seemed like it would be unprofitable.

CrackerNews 1y ago
That leads to the cost of cleaning up after the customer to make sure they can buy what they need. Before Amazon, there were the club warehouse retail models like Costco where the frontend experience was cut down and the backend infrastructure scaled up. This all led to cost savings passed onto the customer. Amazon seems like the next step where the last mile delivery infrastructure was expanded and the retail frontend was replaced by a website. Instead of millions of frontend retail workers, it's software knowledge workers with an accompanying expansion of the backend retail workers. Now, the software knowledge workers are eating backend retail.
tekbruh9000 1y ago
Imagine the crash in book sales if humans were not hustling and could spend time socializing meaningfully. Job culture is nothing but empty competition. Billions of normalized thinkers reduced to nothing but tools of a "trade". Where trade is normalized to time for money. Not a fan of the racism and gender bias, but am 1000% indifferent to bougie labor exploiting office workers being handed their hat. "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" Yeah but you all suck to work with because that's all you are; HR slang, marketroid speak, programming language gibberish. Yawn. Am psyched the zeitgeist is turning on "knowledge workers" who ignored worker exploitation and devaluation of others just the same.

CrackerNews 1y ago

We could be spending our time more wisely, but our addiction to quarterly cycles needs something now as opposed to a hypothetical better future for the displaced workers.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

> if we have the collective will to get all these folks education and opportunities to do something else I hear this often, but have not read a single explanation of what the "something else" is that these people are supposed to do (a "something else" that we aren't also actively trying to replace with AI or AI driven processes). Barbers? Nail salons? I think we have enough of those already.

mattnewton 1y ago
I think that, basically, we need a way for people to participate in society beyond spending their economic output. Or else we will have masses of disenfranchised and dissatisfied people with no incentive to keep society working.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  absolutely; but nobody is planning for this or even seriously considering it. to the contrary, we now have a government that is happy to take away healthcare and food stamps from its working class citizens > we will have masses of disenfranchised and dissatisfied people I fear this is coming > with no incentive to keep society working as long as the rich get serviced, they won't care much whether society is "working" or not
Rebuff5007 1y ago
How about nurses? Or elderly care? Or environmental remediation? Or dramatically improving student:teacher ratios across the board? Theres plenty of things that are worth investing in, and can easily sustain jobs for people...
- Tadpole9181 1y ago
  Oh, yes, everyone can "just" switch careers into difficult, underpaid, passion-driven work paid for with money that already doesn't exist, let alone in an economy where Amazon & friends rake in 90% of all cash flow and has no employees to pay it out to.