Domo Arigato Mr Roboto - Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

[79wjd]

30 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

So basically business as usual for the last few hundred years.

 

Don't get me wrong, the social side really does worry me because at the end of the day sooner or later where going to hit the point where we have so much stuff so automated that we can't employ anywhere near all of the people in a given country, and that's going to be one hell of a thing to deal with. But trying to hold back automation to prevent it isn't the answer. It's never worked before, i don't see any reason it would start now.

The same "problem" also occurred when *insert ___ revolution here*. Something else will come along and replace jobs as old jobs get lost to automation.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

According to the article I read earlier today on this, Amazon already has a problem with high turnover among packers so jobs lost will be absorbed through natural attrition as automated packing is implemented and by reassigning any diehard remaining packers. It will be curious to hear if the machines can do a better job than the half arsed job the humans have been doing due to Amazon expecting to much from them (one of the many reasons, except for e-books, I have been eschewing Amazon for the past few years).

[thorhammerz]

 

6 hours ago, yian88 said:

cry me a river.... jobs exist because they suck and you need to get payed, otherwise they wouldnt be called jobs we would all work something we enjoy and doesnt suck

A partial (and emotional one at that) description of at best one factor in the equation (the supply of open positions vs. demand for said positions).

 

"Work" (termed as a "job" when structured in the context of modern employment) exists as an exchange of labour (one's skills whether they be physical/manual, intellectual, social, etc) for money (whether that is paid by an employing entity such as a company in the context of a 9-5 job, or directly received from end consumers in the context of a small business). 

 

2 hours ago, 79wjd said:

The same "problem" also occurred when *insert ___ revolution here*. Something else will come along and replace jobs as old jobs get lost to automation.

As human civilization finds new sources of energy (or finds new ways to drastically increase the efficiency in which said energy can be directed into), human input into industries and professions will progressively move into obsolence.

Spoiler

 

The industrial revolution dramatically increased the amount of energy available to civilization - that is to say, humanity no longer had to solely rely on biological muscle power (whether they be human or animal), small-cap wind/water (such as your very basic water/wind mills turning a couple of wheels, or sailing ships), but allowed us to harness into the energy stored within hydrocarbons such as coal and oil. Thus much "work" involving manual labour were lost.

 

The technological revolution we are in the midst of today allows us to drastically increase our logistical capabilites (computational and organizational) and more importantly, direct the energy we have at our disposal to complete exponentially more complex (e.g. useful to humans) tasks. Much of the "work" being lost to automation is currently just simple brain work. As we develop better software and AI, we'll see more and more complex white-collar work become automated as well.

 

 

[Unixsystem]

41 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

 It will be curious to hear if the machines can do a better job than the half arsed job the humans have been doing due to Amazon expecting to much from them (one of the many reasons, except for e-books, I have been eschewing Amazon for the past few years).

Honestly this is one of my biggest hopes. I used to place 1-2 Amazon orders a week minimum (mostly small items that I could get from the store but lmao Prime shipping), but ever since they rolled out their own shipping service it has become a complete crap shoot as to whether or not I'll get any package or not. "One-day shipping" doesn't mean much when it's actually "One day for failed delivery, then spend 15 minutes on hold with Amazon support in order to have the delivery rescheduled for the next day which may or may not even arrive".

 

At this point I trust random Ebay sellers more than Amazon to actually deliver the shit that I pay for. Once Amazon has full drone delivery, then maybe they'll be worth supporting again. 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

50 minutes ago, Waffles13 said:

At this point I trust random Ebay sellers more than Amazon to actually deliver the shit that I pay for...

The problem with eBay is many of the vendors there are Amazon Fulfilled vendors (vendors who ship their goods to Amazon to list, warehouse, pack, and ship) advertising on Fleabay but not disclosing that they are Amazon Fulfilled vendors. I have nothing but utter contempt for those jerks!

[Unixsystem]

32 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

The problem with eBay is many of the vendors there are Amazon Fulfilled vendors (vendors who ship their goods to Amazon to list, warehouse, pack, and ship) advertising on Fleabay but not disclosing that they are Amazon Fulfilled vendors. I have nothing but utter contempt for those jerks!

If I pay money and receive the product I asked for, I could not give less of a fuck what is going on behind the scenes.

[justpoet]

This is what happens when workers are more expensive than the cost to automate their positions.  You can thank the various bills/laws for increasing minimum wage all over (and/or the threat of doing so) for things like this, self checkout machines, and McDonalds ordering Kiosks.  That being said, it is NOT just minimum wage that makes stuff like this happen, that's just one of the most major contributing factors in unskilled labor jobs (usually equally weighted with error rates like missing/extra/broken product showing up).

 

Automation is also not limited to low end jobs though.  Even when I was working in media and computing companies, I automated a lot of things, including most of the difficult and time consuming portion of my job as an intern.  They could've used that to hire fewer interns or employees, but they instead used it to let us work on more complex and interesting things going forward.  So, not all automation means loss of jobs, though it is certainly harder when the workers are unskilled to retrain them for something else.

[Kenji the Uke]

I hear of these "bad working conditions" but i have two friends who work at seperate fulfillment centers, and they both love it? Amazon even gives out free PTO to those who get there first and i dont even get PTO period so like whut

[Lady Fitzgerald]

23 minutes ago, Waffles13 said:

If I pay money and receive the product I asked for, I could not give less of a fuck what is going on behind the scenes.

You should care because it affects the results you receive. Items sold by Amazon Fulfilled vendors on eBay have to charge more to cover the extra cost of advertising on eBay.

 

Except for e-books, I am boycotting Amazon due poor customer service, wrong products being shipped (often, repeatdly), receiving damaged products due to Amazon's half-arsed packing, problems with the Amazon's idiotic delivery personnel, etc. I shop on e-Bay to avoid Amazon so I DO NOT appreciate it when some arsehole Amazon Fulfilled vendor advertises on e-Bay without disclosing that they are Amazon Fulfilled vendor. That's consumer fraud and should be illegal!

[justpoet]

14 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

I shop on e-Bay to avoid Amazon so I DO NOT appreciate it when some arsehole Amazon Fulfilled vendor advertises on e-Bay without disclosing that they are Amazon Fulfilled vendor. That's consumer fraud and should be illegal!

While I don't really care for EITHER company, and can understand why you feel the way you do, I use them both.  That being said, I want to touch on this to try and help clarify for you, and point out that there's nothing fraudulent at all here.  

 

Most of eBay, Amazon, NewEgg, Walmart, etc are all "vendor" items not carried by the company itself.  The only thing they are required to do is tell you that they aren't the native site (nothing on eBay is an eBay product, so that's already done), and to actually get you the product or a refund if they can't after best effort.  Half of amazon/ebay/etc products are the same sellers on all of the platforms, and often even through other third party distributors (several Chinese companies use US based distributors so it looks like product ships from the US when it doesn't, as an example).  They then may choose to do the packing/shipping/handling themselves, or offload that to a company (which may be most of those listed, or other third parties), and may even use those when you buy "direct" through their website.  So, you don't gain anything by trying to limit yourself to ebay.  To gain something in that regard, you'd have to only shop local.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

11 minutes ago, justpoet said:

While I don't really care for EITHER company, and can understand why you feel the way you do, I use them both.  That being said, I want to touch on this to try and help clarify for you, and point out that there's nothing fraudulent at all here.  

 

Most of eBay, Amazon, NewEgg, Walmart, etc are all "vendor" items not carried by the company itself.  The only thing they are required to do is tell you that they aren't the native site (nothing on eBay is an eBay product, so that's already done), and to actually get you the product or a refund if they can't after best effort.  Half of amazon/ebay/etc products are the same sellers on all of the platforms, and often even through other third party distributors (several Chinese companies use US based distributors so it looks like product ships from the US when it doesn't, as an example).  They then may choose to do the packing/shipping/handling themselves, or offload that to a company (which may be most of those listed, or other third parties), and may even use those when you buy "direct" through their website.  So, you don't gain anything by trying to limit yourself to ebay.  To gain something in that regard, you'd have to only shop local.

I don't have a problem with Amazon accepting products from other vendors to list, warehouse, pick, pack, and ship. At least amazon posts upfront when a vendor is an Amazon Fulfilled vendor or a vendor just advertising on Amazon but doing their own picking, packing, and shipping.

 

I've already reduced the amount of buying I do on e-Bay dramatically due to the number of Amazon Fulfilled vendors, unauthorized Chinese arbitrageurs, and the Chinese crooks that just take your money and run infesting the site. It's easy to deal with the problem Chinese vendors; there are so many, I just avoid them all.

 

I still feel all vendors on e-Bay should disclose when products will be coming from another vendor. Also, the practice of vendors listing under a name other than the name they normally use should also be banned. 

[Belgarathian]

If you didn't see this coming even Stevie Wonder has better vision than you.

[mxk]

ITS HAPPENING GET THE GUNS

[kasugatei]

Packing order is something than anyone with functioning body can do. It is quite repetitive job and there are NO special skills needed for this work. All those kinds of jobs WILL be replaced by robots. As I said before, repetitive and no extra skills required equals (relatively) easy to develop robots to replace humans. What now, should we kept carriage drivers back in the days because cars have replaced them? Some jobs are dying and there is no point of keeping them just for the sake of having those jobs.

 

My point is, specialize in something that robots can't do. There are many factories which are highly automated, but they still require human labor for some specific tasks. Aim for those kinds of jobs. 

 

P.S. my whole thought is a general one. I don't know (nor care) about any particular companies, their business practices in this thought.

[Bcat00]

16 hours ago, MeatFeastMan said:

.

 

You don’t care for those days but I’m sure many more people do.

 

i for one say kill those jobs.

[mr moose]

Job losses are only temporary as cultures shift the balance to account for the change in working requirements.   As others have already pointed out, each revolution we have alters the work landscape dramatically and only two things have ever resulted: quality of living has gone up and lives lost at work has gone down.  Some of the poorest of today's 1st world countries are living better than kings did even 200 years ago.  

 

Although having said that, most of the previous revolutions have all occurred in countries that have strong social supports.  I.E the Victorians in England were the first to recgonise mental illness as an illness and try to make them better rather than just lock them in prison,  hospitals were funded by more than just churches in the 19th century. Factory laws were enacted in 1833 and 1844 to curb hours and pay of children and woman in factories.   not too sure how the US culture and social constructs will deal with it, I don't know much about the history of the US or it's underpinning social economy.

 

 

[Tech_Dreamer]

this is kinda good right? other than the obvious  automation taking away jobs, it's progress in it's fields.

[TacoSenpai]

South Park predicted the future.

 

Spoiler

They had a funny Amazon episode on something similar.

 

 

They took err jerbs

 

[79wjd]

12 minutes ago, TacoSenpai said:

South Park predicted the future.

 

  Hide contents

They had a funny Amazon episode on something similar.

 

 

They took err jerbs

 

Tomorrow will be Wednesday.

 

/Crystal ball

And the next day will be Thursday.

/Crystal ball X2

[Misanthrope]

Jeff Bezos be like "Ok shut up just tell me: Do the robots need pee breaks? Ok sold: here's 40 billion go do it"

[rcmaehl]

2 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Jeff Bezos be like "Ok shut up just tell me: Do the robots need pee breaks? Ok sold: here's 40 billion go do it"

Jeff Bezos be like:

Do humans need pee breaks? No, right?

 

[79wjd]

3 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Jeff Bezos be like:

Do humans need pee breaks? No, right?

 

If you don't let then drink, then they obviously won't need to pee.

[Techstorm970]

On 5/13/2019 at 7:51 AM, The Benjamins said:

when those noisy, slow, smelly humans can't keep up you got to replace them with fast efficient machines.

Loving the Portal reference!

[Techstorm970]

I actually like this.  Working on an assembly line (which is essentially what was going on before) is an absolutely DEPRESSING job for those employees.  The more we can automate assembly lines, the better it will be for people.

 

Also, many of these workers could be switched over to the package delivery department.  We've already seen that automating deliveries still needs a LOT more work before it can even be considered feasible.  Package delivery isn't exactly a glamorous job, either, but would you rather be working on an assembly line or driving a car or truck around for money?  Trust me, this change benefits everybody, and it simply shifts the job market a lot more than it hurts it.

 

Whoever reacts to this by playing the victim card and complaining that "i LoSt My JoB tO a MaChiNe," well...they've got more issues.  First and foremost, if you actually got fired after this change, some serious introspection and/or reevaluation of your choices need to be made (unless you're mentally ill/impaired...that kinda changes a lot here...).  It is also less likely that you were directly replaced by the robot and more likely that you were gonna get fired soon anyway.

 

Also, there are still a ton of jobs out there.  For example, we need more trade workers, and the last Taco Bell I worked at was short-staffed (and not for money or greed reasons).  Plenty of jobs out there.  Losing your job ultimately has a simple solution: find another job.  Yes, there are potentially more complicated matters surrounding it, but the bottom line is that you gotta survive, which means you gotta get paid, which means you gotta work.  Welfare is meant to help you while you're job hunting or while you're working a low-wage job and trying to get your life together; that's it's intended purpose and nothing more.  You can't (and shouldn't) ride through your whole life on just welfare.  Sorry.

[79wjd]

17 minutes ago, Techstorm970 said:

I actually like this.  Working on an assembly line (which is essentially what was going on before) is an absolutely DEPRESSING job for those employees.  The more we can automate assembly lines, the better it will be for people.

 

Also, many of these workers could be switched over to the package delivery department.  We've already seen that automating deliveries still needs a LOT more work before it can even be considered feasible.  Package delivery isn't exactly a glamorous job, either, but would you rather be working on an assembly line or driving a car or truck around for money?  Trust me, this change benefits everybody, and it simply shifts the job market a lot more than it hurts it.

Putting aside the environmental impact of more drivers (since they would likely exist in any case), driving can be incredibly aggravating experience. So I'm not so sure it's better for ones mental health than working on an assmely line.

 

To be clear, I don't have a problem with automation or what's happening here. Just that I don't know if driving 8hrs+/day is an improvement to ones mental (or physical) health.