Armies of Helper Robots Keep Amazon's Warehouses Running Smoothly 110
jones_supa writes Amazon is continuing to maintain its vision of an automatic warehouse. Since acquiring robot-maker Kiva, a Massachusetts company, for $775 million in cash in 2012, the e-commerce retailer has been increasingly implementing automation at its gargantuan fulfillment centers. This holiday season, Amazon's little helper is an orange, 320-pound robot. The 15,000 robots are part of the company's high-tech effort to serve customers faster. By lifting shelves of Amazon products off the ground and speedily delivering them to employee stations, the robots dramatically reduce the manual labor to locate and carry items. The Kiva robots, which resemble overgrown Roombas, are capable of lifting as much as 750 pounds and glide across Amazon's warehouse floors by following rows of sensors. Because Kiva-equipped facilities eliminate the need for wide aisles for humans to walk down, eighth-generation centers can also hold 50% more inventory than older warehouses. As Amazon is doing well, the company says that increase of automation hasn't yet led to staff reduction.
not staff increases, either (Score:3)
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That's not entirely true. They've been hiring developers pretty consistently.
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Well, you can not force a company to hire more people, nor blame it for optimizing their warehouse. It they're really not firing people, that's a good thing. I guess their business is growing, too, so to compensate the reduction in manual labor.
Well put. On the other side of it, I don't see how it should in any way be a surprise to anyone who knows Amazon at all (like their warehouse employees) that this kind of thing would be on its way. There is a certain reality to the fact that people must grow and evolve their skills to maintain their own employability no matter what their career path.
A more cynical, if not entirely inaccurate, way to describe the other side of that equation is this. [despair.com]
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In addition, they will be back on profits in about 2 years or less. This investment is smart on their part. Damn Smart.
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$681,000 per employee (Score:2)
With robots doing most of the work, who is going to have jobs that give them the money to buy from Amazon?
That's a very stupid question. Amazon has something around 110,000 employees. Amazon had revenues over the last twelve months of roughly $75 Billion. For 110,000 employees to spend $75,000,000,000 at Amazon they would have to spend $681,818 PER EMPLOYEE which I'm pretty sure is more than most Amazon employees make by more than just a wee bit. Any amount Amazon employees could possibly spend at Amazon would be a rounding error.
And this is coming on top of a long list of Obama administration schemes (i.e. Obamacare and raising the minimum wage) that are making automation more appealing not just to businesses but, in the long run, even to government bureaucracies.
Righhhht. Everything is Obama's fault. [/eyeroll] Never mind the fact that t
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And yet they still lost money and have been for at least the last 2 years (possibly 3 once this years numbers come out).
If Amazon is having losses because of their upgrades (such as this warehouse stuff), then this might pay off down the line. However, if they're losing money because they're over extended, not so good.
Reinvesting in the business (Score:2)
And yet they still lost money and have been for at least the last 2 years (possibly 3 once this years numbers come out).
Because they are reinvesting in the business and experimenting with new businesses. Unless you have a very short term Wall Street-esqe investment horizon that isn't really a big deal. Amazon could be substantially profitable tomorrow if they chose to be.
Re:Reinvesting in the business (Score:4, Insightful)
AMZN is not losing money because they are reinvesting back into their operations. That is not how accounting works. "Earnings" is a balance sheet operation; "Investment" is a balance sheet operation. Think about this way – If I invest $100m of profits in US Treasury Notes, how does that affect my earnings? If I invest $100m in property, plant, and equipment, how does that affect my profits? What if I paid out a dividend? It does not – in all cases one's profit is 100m.
The issue is that AMZN is trading profit margin for market share. Expanding quickly today to reap the profits of tomorrow – in theory.
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On the margin side I am going to have to disagree with you. I assume you are talking about gross margin. Sure, Amazon's gross margin has been going up. The average S&P 500 company has a gross margin of 42%, which has been increasing. I would argue that operation margin would be better than gross margin. There AMZN is at 1% where the S&P is at 14.6%. AMZN's ROI has historically been one of the lowest in the S&P. They are operating a supper thin margins.
As for the R&D - I will have to consider
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Investment involves multiple accounting periods (Score:5, Informative)
AMZN is not losing money because they are reinvesting back into their operations. That is not how accounting works.
I'm a certified accountant so I'm kind of giggling over you telling me "how accounting works".
That is not how accounting works. "Earnings" is a balance sheet operation
I presume you are talking about Retained Earnings which is on the balance sheet. Retained Earnings != Earnings. Earnings = Profit and that comes from the Income Statement, not the balance sheet.
"Investment" is a balance sheet operation
Investment is FAR more complicated than simply transferring items around a balance sheet and it touches the Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Statement of Cash Flows.
Think about this way – If I invest $100m of profits in US Treasury Notes, how does that affect my earnings?
It depends on why you are investing the profits into those Treasury notes and whether you are investing in them as a profit making venture or merely as a place to park cash intended for other uses. The accounting is substantially different depending on the purpose of the investment. Furthermore the effect on earnings can be substantial in future accounting periods which I should think would be obvious.
If I invest $100m in property, plant, and equipment, how does that affect my profits?
The effect on profit depends on the return on the investment though in the immediate period the effect is either neutral or negative most likely. You're making the mistake of only considering the current accounting period. If you buy a building and capitalize the expense it has some effect on the current accounting period but the real effect on profit is depends on what you can do with that asset. It may reduce future profits or enhance them. Without more information no one can say more.
What if I paid out a dividend?
Then you are returning earnings to the shareholders rather than reinvesting them in the company or other assets. Basically a dividend is an admission by the company that the expected return from available investment opportunities is low. The company is foregoing future opportunities so the long term effect on earnings to the company is either neutral or negative.
It does not – in all cases one's profit is 100m.
Not correct and even if it were you aren't considering the net present value of that $100m.
The issue is that AMZN is trading profit margin for market share. Expanding quickly today to reap the profits of tomorrow – in theory.
Which is another way of saying they are investing in the business. Amazon is introducing products (tablets, phones, etc), investing in infrastructure (warehouses, IT) and similar. They have a long term perspective and aren't worrying about quarterly results. Perhaps this will burn them in the end but my thesis that they are investing in the business remains intact.
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Well, since you come here to Slashdot and have a low UID, you should understand something by now:
Most people believe that accounting is the art of fudging your books to look like how you want it to appear, and hide as much money so it can be funneled into executive bonuses, kick back schemes, and hookers.
Something has to happen to sustain that $30 billion in net worth held by Jeff Bezos.
In general we put about must
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Bah, knowing about Hollywood accounting, offshore tax shelters, and everything else ... I mostly don't believe corporations when they say this.
Did they lose money, or did they run a shell game to move around money to make it look like they lost money?
These days, it's highly profitable to "lose" money when you have a network of wholly-owned subsidiaries who can charge you crazy rates to re
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Actually, tax rates could be adjusted to bring highly skilled jobs back. Corporate tax rates are rather high in the US, especially when compared to the other G20 nations. Cut the corporate income tax rate down to a reasonable level (the average of the EU, or the G20) - or better yet, eliminate it as corporate taxes are a small percentage of the total Federal revenues - and you'll see highly skilled, hard-to-automate jobs flood back into the US.
And that is something the President and Congress are most defi
Tax policy is a marginal effect (Score:2)
Actually, tax rates could be adjusted to bring highly skilled jobs back.
You could reduce the tax rates to zero and it would have at most a marginal impact. The biggest driver by far is wages and benefits. The tax burden on companies is trivial by comparison. When you are talking $1/hour labor in China versus $15/hour labor in the US, it doesn't matter how much tax the US charges if the companies are competing directly. The rate could be zero and most of the business would still move to china if the labor content is high enough. Sure it would affect a few companies right on
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When you are talking $1/hour labor in China versus $15/hour labor in the US, it doesn't matter how much tax the US charges
Those jobs don't matter anyhow - they'll all be done by robots. The conversation was about skilled jobs that pay well. That's what we want America to be centered on! Not crap jobs that are going away soon anyhow.
The simple fact is that US labor rates are MUCH higher than in many other parts of the world and you should expect the osmotic gradient of high labor content jobs to flow to where labor costs are lowest.
It's not that simple. When labor costs scale with the number of items sold, then sure. But when labor costs are your R&D budget (or whatever you call the cost of producing, say, a film), and you have vast economies of scale, then it's all about making a great product, not cutting labor cost
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Actually, tax rates could be adjusted to bring highly skilled jobs back.
You could reduce the tax rates to zero and it would have at most a marginal impact. The biggest driver by far is wages and benefits.
Really? Labor costs in China of something like an iPhone or an Xbox are around $6; in the US it would be about $25 more (based upon productivity of the typical US worker versus the typical Chinese worker; it's not a 1-to-1 conversion). The cost of corporate income tax on that $300 product is well in excess of the increase. A huge amount of the offshoring I've been involved in has been because of corporate income taxation; in the case of the aforementioned iPhone, it's $120 for the US-built and sold unit,
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Other people have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's just not a result many people want to hear.
As for minimum wage, in the long run it helps more than it hurts as it widens your customer base.
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You know what the warehouse employees should do? They should throw their shoes at the robots to trip them up. Then the automation scheme will fail so Amazon can't replace the workers with robots.
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But, I thought the age of sabot tossing was behind us?
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Read up on Red Queen's Race Hypothesis. We are constantly running. If Amazon stops and thinks if they should implement these robots, somebody else will.
It is going to happen. It will increase productivity, and increased productivity is the only way to increase income, and thus it should be embraced. I am not saying that technology is some kind of magic wand that we can wave and magically everybody will be better. This will free people from mind numbing work and let them do something more productive. Technol
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This will free people from mind numbing work and let them do something more productive.
This is one of the two the fallacies of the computer generation.
(1) More efficient machines will reduce the length of the work week. Of course it doesn't, because - as you mentioned - we are all competing, and the length of a first world work week is pretty standard at 40 (+/-8) hours, so nobody who actually purchases a machine will voluntarily pay more per hour, or train more people than is necessary.
(2) People with menial jobs can be more productive elsewhere. No, they can't. They're in those jobs becaus
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You are missing my point in a couple of ways.
I said productivity would go up, I never said the hours worked would go down. Some people like working long hours to own more toys – bigger houses, faster cars, and exotic vacations. However, in the last 50 years the people with the highest productivity are reporting that they are working longer hours and enjoying their life more. More work has become more interesting.
Secondly, you mean you can't think of any menial jobs other than warehouse jobs? Cleaning
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Tractors (Score:3)
> Someone at John Deere should engage in deep thought. With machines doing most of the work, who is going to have jobs that give them the money to buy from John Deere?
ftfy. People have been worrying about that for a couple hundred years and what always happens is that a guy with a machine is more productive than a guy without a machine. His pay is about 25% of the revenue matched to his labor, so as long term productivity rises, wages rise to match. In the short term there is some disruption as the
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Training. Now hiring robot repair techs (Score:2)
I hear that Amazon is now hiring people to maintain warehouse robots, program them, and even develop new ones. Historically, using a backhoe required a little different training than using a shovel. Using a laser CNC machine required different training than using a chisel. The new job made a bit more money, so the middle class now has two cars and a giant HD TV. Middle class houses have doubled in size compared to 50 years ago, when typists had to completely retype a page from scratch when they made an e
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Robot Video Overview (Score:5, Informative)
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Is there an updated video of Amazon's bots? ;)
is this actually new? (Score:2)
I could've sworn I've seen videos of big warehouses that are mainly automated, with footage that looked pretty '80s at the latest. And looking around at what's been written about the topic, people as far back as the '70s were already writing algorithms [tandfonline.com] to optimize movement of the robots up and down the warehouse aisles. Maybe that was just in Japan?
I don't think Amazon is really ahead of the curve here either way, just implementing what's pretty standard warehouse technology by now.
This is quite different from existing systems. (Score:4, Informative)
Simple X-Y robots (that have been around for years) that pick regularly-shaped items off of shelves (usually decent-sized boxes) and drop them onto conveyors are pretty standard, and not that difficult. Picking up objects of an infinite variety of shapes and sizes, many of which are quite small, is something it's not possible for robots (at least not reasonably priced ones) to reliably do at this time.
This system (which brings the shelves to the workers, as workers are MUCH better at plucking small, irregularly-shaped items out of boxes) has fascinating challenges all of it's own, mainly related to traffic control, safety, and where to put the shelves after you are done. (A fixed location is very inefficient, but neither do you want to stick the shelf in the first available space.)
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Ah thanks, that makes sense. I guess the videos I've seen were probably of warehouses with at least semi-standardized items, e.g. distribution centers for one company's production.
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The most space-efficient system I've ever seen was in a library and had shelves that moved sideways on rails. There were no
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I've seen a version of that in a handyman shop also, allowed for compact storage of shelves and shelves of tools and parts. It's not good for throughput, though: since you can only have one aisle at a time "open", it's good for things like tools or library books where you have a large archive but only rarely retrieve any individual item. Not sure it'd work great for a delivery-staging warehouse.
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But of course you can have any ratio of alleys to shelves. Just keep tabs on how many alleys you have at use at once on average and concentrate popular items on the same alleys. You can even put that "users who purchased this also often purchase these" database to use and group so an order can b
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The shelves are movable like you said. The position of the shelves within the warehouse can change depending on the hotness a
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This system ([...]) has fascinating challenges all of it's own, mainly related to traffic control, safety, and where to put the shelves after you are done. (A fixed location is very inefficient, but neither do you want to stick the shelf in the first available space.)
Without actually stopping to look up any details I'm going to say the following: It seems like the memory-management algorithms that operating systems use ought to at least shed some light on this problem. It seems like a lot of the same problems are present in both situations: you can move 'pages' of product into and out of the processing units (i.e., people in the factory, CPUs/cores in a computer), you want to keep frequently-used shelves/pages nearby (as opposed to out in the slower-than-cache RAM), e
Remembering the IBM 3850 Mass Storage (Score:1)
The IBM 3850 mass storage system, announced in 1974, held up to 472G on strips of magnetic tape. The 3850 was a rectangular box large enough walk into, with the strips stored along its interior walls in a honeycomb arrangement of slots. A pair of robotic pickers took turns running along a set of rails where they would fetch a tape strip, carry it to a device that wrapped it around a drum for read/write access, and later return it to its slot. You could watch it operating through a window in the box (IBM lov
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It is interesting so far as a job picking at an Amazon warehouse was pretty much the shittiest, most back-breaking (really, foot breaking from running on concrete floors all day with no rest), abusive job Americans still did. You only worked as a picker at Amazon if you had no other option and were on the verge of starvation. When those jobs are eliminated because of robots, those desperate enough to take a picker job will have no where else to go.
I'm not at all suggesting that automation is bad. It's great
where do the workers go? (Score:2)
Many will slide to a lower rung in the employment ladder. Some will ascend to the next rung up. For those jobs, wages will decrease.
We are already seeing this with pseudo-jobs like Uber and taskrabbit.
My mother has frequently said plumbers will always make a good living. When unskilled jobs disappear due to automation, many of those workers will be motivated to study a trade. T
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Those chaufer's licenses and medallions didn't work out so well for protecting cab drivers' revenue stream from the Uber hordes....
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Well, traditionally a combination of desperate people and victim-blaming has led to unrest and eventually to a revolution. The possible responses to this are social security or a police state. The political situation in the US makes the former impossible, and all signs from the actions of intelligence agencies to the build-up of military gear for the police point to the country p
No progress in 40 years? (Score:2)
My point is that none of this is new. It is neither interesting nor innovative.
That's pretty much the same statement as saying nothing interesting or innovative has happened in IT in the last 40 years. Just because someone did a crude version of something 40 years ago doesn't mean there has been no advancement or innovation in the mean time.
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That's pretty much the same statement as saying nothing interesting or innovative has happened in IT in the last 40 years.
Thanks for the clarification, that's exactly what I'm saying. Oh yes, there was nothing crude about the 3850.
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The IBM 3850 mass storage system, announced in 1974, held up to 472G on strips of magnetic tape. The 3850 was a rectangular box large enough walk into, with the strips stored along its interior walls in a honeycomb arrangement of slots. A pair of robotic pickers took turns running along a set of rails where they would fetch a tape strip, carry it to a device that wrapped it around a drum for read/write access, and later return it to its slot. You could watch it operating through a window in the box (IBM loved to show off their stuff).
My point is that none of this is new. It is neither interesting nor innovative.
Yes, yes, and the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached.
All "things that move other things" are not equivalent. Kivas aren't restricted to running on rails. I suspect the IBM picker-bots weren't actively scanning their environment to avoid collisions, either, and so on.
It is neither interesting
Oh, isn't it? I thought it was. I guess I must be wrong about that.
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My point is that none of this is new. It is neither interesting nor innovative.
It's evolutionary, which is just as good as "new". Better even, it rides on proven, reliable technology. "New" is for the laboratory, where people are expected to die in an accident.
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Well, let's think about this:
They're saying eighth generation.
So, just maybe, they're not saying "ZOMG, we invented teh automation bitches" ... and what they're actually saying is "after several iterations, these have gotten better and more efficient".
Since Amazon isn't saying what
This doesn't even vaguely resemble a tape library (Score:2)
A tape library arranged in a straight line with one or two picker robots does not, in any way, even resemble the issues involved with an army of independent transport robots picking things from an entire warehouse. Other than the word "robot", the two really don't have anything to do with each other.
A tape library requires lighting speed, and a very high degree of precision. The issues with this system revolve around route planning, collision avoidance, queuing speed, and battery longevity.
But while you a
Why couldn't it be MSI directly? (Score:4, Informative)
Plenty of companies (including manufacturers) have Amazon storefronts. Some of them use Amazon for fulfillment, some just use Amazon as a storefront. I don't see why MSI can't.
While Amazon's site for computer parts isn't nearly as good as NewEgg's (Amazon's spec search capability is pitiful), I've never had any difficulty telling who the seller for a particular product is. In your case, if it said "Sold By: MSI", you can be pretty sure that's who it was.
As far as not getting a shipping quote until checkout? That's pretty normal for lots of web stores. If you are going to charge for shipping at all, per-item shipping is certainly a choice, but plenty of web retailers do it differently. They can go by actual shipping cost, a rate based on total order size, etc. In Amazon's case, if the item is fulfilled by Amazon, you either go with the free shipping (or prime), or you pay according to their published shipping rate tables. If it's not fulfilled by Amazon, they just do whatever the retailer tells them to.
Personally, I find NewEgg's shipping to be the most confusing: depending on the individual item, shipping is either free (and slow), free (and less slow), per-item, or total-weight. And it's never clear which shipping rates are going to apply if your order contains items in multiple shipping categories.
This article is over a year old! (Score:2)
Guys, I saw this on "60 minutes" over a year ago. Seriously. Seriously. Give up Slashdot and let someone who actually gives a fuck run it instead. Seriously. How much do you want to sell it for? I'm ready to change careers and I could run this site blindfolded better than you guys. Please. Sell. You don't know what you're doing and you're one step away from losing the entire audience.
Please sell.
New CEOs are going to follow .... (Score:2)
warehouse retrevial jobs were dificult, low paying (Score:2)
Hasn't yet led to staff reduction (Score:2)
Usually doesn't, at first. It increases productivity by making it possible to use the current workers more efficiently. Slowly the unskilled workers who move boxes from point A to point B get replaced by slightly skilled workers who supervise the robots.
Thank God we don't allow the underclass to buy firearms here in the USA, otherwise we'd have to worry about a revolution.
Congrats, Amazon, welcome to 1989! (Score:2)
I'm sick of hearing about Amazon's "amazing" robots. The story is everywhere. I remember touring the IBM plant in Rochester, MN, back in 1989 (this is the place where the AS400s were built). There were robots everywhere throughout the factory running all over the place. Congratulations Amazon, welcome to 1989!
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Automation reduces the cost of labor to zero and the cost of product to the cost of raw materials.
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Karl Marx, please pick up the RED courtesy phone. Yes, automation will require a much larger *share the wealth* attitude amongst the public. We definitely do need to base pricing on human cost of production to make it work.
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Which solves the issue of people needing to work to buy that product how?
By lowering prices. Amazon has consistently used cost savings to lower prices and gain market share. As people spend less on these goods, they will spend more on other goods and services, generating jobs for those providing them.
If you seriously believe that rising productivity causes poverty, then you need to explain the last few centuries of economic progress, where 90% of jobs were eliminated by the mechanization of agriculture, and millions more by the automation of manufacturing. Throughout this pro
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"If you seriously believe that rising productivity causes poverty, then you need to explain the last few centuries of economic progress"
If you seriously believe that unbound natality depletes world's natural resources, then you need to explain the last few centuries of economic progress.
See the parallelism?
Re:So instead (Score:5, Interesting)
That hasn't been consistent. After the Luddites there was 70 years of chronic unemployment which society met by executing people who stole a loaf of bread. Then it became necessary for the whole family to work to make ends meet, your kid is now 5 years old? Better put the kid to work. Then as the need for workers fell due to automation, things like compulsory education were introduced to cut down the labour force, then expanded to even more education needed for most jobs until today where kids are expected to stay in school until almost 30 years old. Women were also removed from the work force about the same time with the idea of the stay at home mom. This wasn't so bad as wages did go up for a while due to the efforts of unions and the threat of socialist revolution. Eventually the population was convinced that socialist meant bad and wages stopped going up, women returned to the workforce so the family didn't fall too far behind and whole classes of people were created that were unemployable (felon) to keep the unemployment numbers looking good.
Now we live in a time where the middle class is shrinking, most people have massive debt while production is at an all time high. Meanwhile there are businesses such as Amazon who cater to the more well off (need good internet and a credit card to take advantage of those low prices) which push up the costs of other businesses due to less economics of scale.
Today the people who are doing well are doing very well while the majority are scraping by.
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Some people believe in community and some believe in taking advantage.
Automation does not reduce labor costs to zero (Score:5, Informative)
Automation reduces the cost of labor to zero and the cost of product to the cost of raw materials.
Automation does not and never did reduce the cost of direct labor to zero, nor does it reduce the cost of any product to the cost of raw materials even in a state of the art factory. First off there is always a substantial amount of direct labor in any company, even a highly automated one and the amount is non-trivial. Second there is the important matter of overhead (Sales, Engineering, Marketing, R&D, capital equipment, utilities, rent, property, maintenance, management, etc) which you seem to be completely overlooking. Automation can minimize labor costs but it cannot eliminate them because it is not economical to automate all jobs even when it is technologically possible to do so.
Disclosure: I'm an industrial engineer and a certified cost accountant. I do this sort of stuff for a living.
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The only thing stopping that is that it's still too expensive to build machines to do certain jobs. But that won't last forever. Eventually, with the progress of technology, it will become very economical to replace workers with machines. Some jobs may require a robot that requires 20 years to pay itself off, that probably isn't worth it for
Science fiction (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing stopping that is that it's still too expensive to build machines to do certain jobs. But that won't last forever.
That isn't likely to change in the lifetime of anyone reading this. You actually even explained why below. To eliminate all need for human direct labor you would have to invent a machine that is as flexible as a human and costs less per unit. In other words a human level AI on the cheap. That simply isn't likely to happen anytime soon. (and don't give me any BS about the so called singularity or other paranoid hypothetical dystopian futures) Any scenario where we get human level AI in a robot body for less money than a human would cost is simply science fiction for the foreseeable future.
Eventually, with the progress of technology, it will become very economical to replace workers with machines. Some jobs may require a robot that requires 20 years to pay itself off, that probably isn't worth it for a lot of businesses.
That is exactly why your hypothesis is wrong. The return on investment is simply too long for many projects to make certain types of automation economically feasible without the invention of robots with human level AI at absurdly cheap prices. To make automation practical you have to have large enough volume of product (measured in dollars) to achieve an economic return within the lifetime of the project. There are countless manufacturing projects where the lifetime and/or dollar value of the project is too short to justify complete automation and this will not change any time soon. The labor content of manufactured goods will minimize to a limit function but the need for human labor will not go to zero without invoking science fiction level advances in technology. If you need a model to look at check out agriculture. A lot of automation has gone into agribusiness but the equipment is VERY expensive (and not getting cheaper) and has not come even close to replacing the need for human labor and won't anytime soon either.
The notion that robots will replace all human workers in manufacturing is a paranoid delusion from people who aren't actually involved in manufacturing. I run a manufacturing company. I deal with this daily.
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You don't live in the right place (Score:3)
I'm not going to pretend that I know what technology will bring in the next 50, but it would seem to me that quite a few jobs are going to disappear, and I don't really see a lot of low qualification jobs opening up.
That's because you don't live in the right place. There are LOTS of unskilled labor jobs available in parts of the world other than the US and EU. Go visit China for a while and tell me there are no jobs for low qualification workers. Go out to a farm and tell me there are no jobs for low qualification workers.
Yes a lot of jobs we currently have will disappear and others we cannot even conceive of yet will appear. It's easier to visualize the former since we know what those are. Could you have anticipa
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Go visit China for a while and tell me there are no jobs for low qualification workers.
Of course Foxconn and others have publicly stated that they intend to fix that problem now that wages are rising. The developed nations have already resolved that issue so the solutions are pre-made.
Go out to a farm and tell me there are no jobs for low qualification workers.
You realize that as an employer Agriculture now represents something like 1% of jobs right? Additionally, due to rising labor pressures among migrant workers there is a renewed push for automation that seems to be gaining traction.
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Hi there, previous China resident for 6 years, and now spend half-time there... Heavily involved in manufacturing within China.
There is a HUGE push towards automation within China, mainly as a means to lower costs (to stay competitive with Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand) as well as to increase quality. A serious issue under consideration from most of the provincial-and-down Governments is employment (not so much with the Beijing elite, yet) - job growth is stagnating in the face of automation. I'v
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To eliminate all need for human direct labor you would have to invent a machine that is as flexible as a human and costs less per unit. In other words a human level AI on the cheap. That simply isn't likely to happen anytime soon. (and don't give me any BS about the so called singularity or other paranoid hypothetical dystopian futures) Any scenario where we get human level AI in a robot body for less money than a human would cost is simply science fiction for the foreseeable future.
It is refreshing to see someone else on Slashdot who notices this (unlikely) prerequisite for the robotic dystopia fantasy where humanity is replaced with machines.
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Disclosure: I'm an industrial engineer and a certified cost accountant. I do this sort of stuff for a living.
I wonder how long until they develop robots to do your job.
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Not quite. One has to add the cost of capital, depreciation of assets, insurance and other operating expenses to the product price also. For example, these robots are not "free" and themselves require raw materials to build so their initial and operating costs must be amortized over all the stuff they pick. Similarly, the warehouses don't just spring spontaneously from the ground when Bezos says "let there be a warehouse".
Re: (Score:1)
With full automation, the planet can sustain many times the population we have now. Our only impediment is bad management that emerges from any one or more of the *seven deadly sins*.
Re: (Score:2)
The limitation is energy.
Re: (Score:1)
Well, as Ted Kennedy once said, *We'll drive off that bridge when we get to it*
I think the numbers says we're good for maybe 150-200 years, only with the best tech yet to come, solar, nuke, geothermal, all of it, at the present growth rate, which is very unlikely.. especially considering that we are still petro-burning cavemen... Maybe the wall is *closer than it appears*...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why didn't you google it you lazy ****
My week as an Amazon insider | Technology | The Guardian [theguardian.com]
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave | Mother Jones [motherjones.com]
'Being homeless is better than working for Amazon' | Money ... [theguardian.com]