Inside Amazon’s robot revolution

Amazon is investing a billion dollars in new industrial technology, including Digit, a robot working in their Seattle Robotics Research and Development facility. Amazon says the robots will be used to support human employees, but labor experts and Amazon warehouse employees say they are concerned about the future of human work.

UPDATE: This story’s headline and description have been updated to include Amazon’s statement that its robots are meant to support human employees, not replace them.
 

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[Proj_Doomsday]

Robots don't pay taxes. City and states are going to have to tax robots to pay for society.

[Caleb-rx]

"This robot doesn't need to go home and see his family, doesn't need health care benefits"

[anneahlert]

Andrew Yang predicted this. He also said that as technology replaced human jobs, we would find it increasingly more difficult to find new jobs for those unskilled humans and humans without transferable job skills. A majority of workers cannot be retrained every few years for an entirely new job, so the only answer is a Universal Basic Income-- funded by taxing Big Data and the other multibillion-dollar companies whose tech has taken away those jobs.

The old economy won't work after the new Industrial Revolution. We need to rethink how we provide for people, and give people a sense of intrinsic worth, instead of placing the worth of a person on their job.

[yosvaniflako]

It's scary that our value is below $250, 000.

[rooster]

Proof that humans are 100% replaceable especially when these robots start building one another and have advanced AI running them.

[brucebarratt]

I worked at amazon for 3 months. I thought the whole time it should be done with robotics. The humans who do it for a long time will get permanent injuries.

[ColburnClark]

I worked in inbound stow at Amazon and I support this. That said, I think it's going to be bad for workers as there will be less jobs available the more these robots are developed. There should be universal basic income paid in lieu of workplace taxes by these companies to offset the job loss as a result of automation. Otherwise, poverty and crime will increase.

[normanoro]

The technology itself is amazing and a wonder. I personally am a technology optimist and find recent developments in AI, robotics, etc very exciting. Of course, technology doesn't exist in a vacuum; and this news report is as much about that as it is about robots like Digit and their capabilities. In fact, it's easy to imagine how the amazing pace of technological innovation and resulting waves of automation could one day fuel social unrest. We're not there yet thankfully. It's still relatively early days. And let's hope we never reach that point. However, as the old saw goes, hope (though arguably essential to human existence) isn't a plan. Consequently, I think it's imperative to look down the road and think through how these technologies will benefit and potentially disrupt the world so society can plan accordingly.

[daddy]

Who’s gonna buy all these products when people don’t have jobs?

[timbercladdingcn]

I always thought Amazon’s customer service were robots.
They finally admitted it.

[nstark]

Bezos must be ecstatic! No bathroom breaks, no medical emergencies, just AI that requires zero paychecks...

[supernova]

I work for Amazon and I’m not complaining. I’m going to be the doctor for those robots. What he said is right, “what is your worth?” Is your career lifting 35 pound boxes all day? Anyone can do this so the question is, what is your worth? Make yourself valuable! You are worth much more than just lifting a 35 pound box and then end up with back pain injury and in a wheel chair the rest of your life, let the robots do it. Let me ask you, would you walk 35 miles to work or would you drive there? 😊 you’re going to drive there or you could walk there but you’ll get tired, the car doesn’t get tired. So we have machines that work for us and use them every day but we’re to ignorant to see the benefits because we’re blinded and caught in obnoxious every day social media nonsense.

[Stonefly]

He is excited about putting people out of work

[MrApw]

We need advancements like this. The problem is, however, that our human labors acted like something of a relay race where owners got to use the labor to survive and even thrive who then kept them alive long enough to pass the torch to automation that replaces people who will be forgotten. At what point do we care about each other in this whole new thing we created called 'society' that took away our equality and expectations of having each other to rely on and made us all sad individuals who are at fault for whatever happens to us, even the automation that goes on around us and used us to make itself?

[Nona-business]

Amazon was like, I got something for your lawsuits.

[phototristan]

Warehouses can be made to be relatively safe, these robots would be better used in places where it's not safe for humans to be such as mining or factories where there are a lot of chemicals, etc.

[jjohnson]

It’s gonna be really tense in the break room with these bots

[clothingdesigns]

Imagine if someone hacks these robots. Can't hack a human but I'm sure it's possible to hack all of them at once some how.

[lanabyk]

Eventually, the robots will be driving the vans that deliver the goods...

[SimplyElectronicsOfficial]

The answer is education. People should strive to achieve something more than moving things around factories.