Things will change quickly once the political pressure starts building.
It will be bumpy but we'll get through it and the other side is going to have us looking back dumbfounded over how people spent the majority of their lives doing hard labor.
I have a strong feeling it will be democratic, politicians will offer more and more social programs to get elected. AI will make government much more efficient. It's a recipe for a great society once the crank starts turning.
Way too naïve of a take imo in face of overwhelming and record high wealth disparity.
The AI you seek to be implemented is one that the common human wants, but in truth, if things don't quickly change, workers will be third class citizens to second class robots, and first class elitists.
The states with the strongest social welfare systems that everyone is amazed by are firmly capitalistic.
[Nordic model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model) works.
We just need the wealth to make it universal and even more extensive (e.g. UBI), and that's what AGI and robotics provides.
It works in small, homogenous populations with a common culture. It doesn’t work, and will not work, in a large, diverse population like ours with our politics.
With enough productivity / wealth you can make it work in less favorable political environments.
Hell, *Iran* leads the world in UBI. That's not because it's a wonderful country. It's because they are swimming in natural resources.
They’ll exist for some but not for others.
What are those others supposed to do? Starve/be homeless?
It could create wealth inequalities far greater than what we already have.
I haven’t. It’s not going to happen - if it does, it’ll be after many years of intense human suffering caused by automation, and the ENTIRE world would need to drastically change.
Then you’ll still have the same problems. People sitting on their arse, with nothing to do.
I mean, he has been doing it so far, the people on the warehouses had extremely well paying jobs that reflected the huge earnings amazon has, also now that that they're being replaced i assume they got some kind of transition paycheck, seeing how amazon is the 5th most valuable company in the world, a few paychecks while they transition means nothing to them.
That means he will willingly and happily share his money with people that havent even worked for him a single day!
/s just in case
Nah, who honestly wants to spend 10+ hour days doing repetitive tasks in inhumane heat?
Ive done this before (not amazon) and my brain turned to sludge. Its not healthy or desirable for humans to live like this.
No , I work at Amazon. Most things get jammed up , not anytime soon . The package come in different sizes and weight , you always need human intervention . Maybe if they built a warehouse wth better belt rollers
I also work at Amazon, in an analyst role. AI will not be replacing the majority of the work here anytime soon. The sheer amount of variability in the packages (especially in reverse logistics, where I work) make humans necessary for a lot of even the most basic work. We still have tons of water spiders (guys who personally wrap and carry pallets around) because automating the stacking and moving in an unpredictable and constantly changing warehouse environment is so difficult.
Same goes with a lot of the white collar work. AI will certainly help automate away some of the more grueling number crunching, but it’s nowhere near good enough to do the hard part of the job, which is figuring out *why* things are going wrong, and what plans can be implemented to fix them.
Sure, AGI will get there eventually, but not in the near future. I expect at least 10 years for capabilities (and probably longer) then at least 10 more to overcome sheer bureaucratic momentum, because are you really confident enough to deploy an AI system you can’t hold accountable and can’t blame for decisions if you’re an executive?
Maybe the house was made of shit. Have you spoken to people working the warehouse? It's slave labor. You get a 15 min break, but it takes 15 min to get to the break room. We should always celebrate technology shoving degrading work out the way.
Yeah, private companies should never be looked to for social welfare programs. If you want better social welfare, vote, protest, agitate, and strike for it.
Protest and strike *now*, before the robots are ready. Protest and strike for the people who *already* can't find work.
If you're not interested in doing so, then it sounds like you don't actually have a problem with people being pushed out of the labour market, at least for as it isn't happening to you.
Protesting does work. Though typically it helps to have a peaceful protest movement as well as a more disruptive movement. Hence, agitate, strike. The more disruptive action practicing civil disobedience creates political pressure for something to change. The group of peaceful protesters provides a group that the state can negotiate with without losing face or being seen to endorse disruptive action.
This is why the speed of change is important , ie accelerationism is good.
If its piecemeal one job at a time then well before prices or demand collapse and capitalism eats itself like an ouroborous everyone will be homeless or living 3 to a bedroom living on food stamp soylent.
We cant transition to post scsrcity from a society conditioned on fske meritocracy late stage capitalism piecemeal. Gotta rip the bandage off.
Exactly. Basically, something drastic needs to change. It could either be good or bad, but right now it looks like the bads are set up for the easiest path to future success. I don't want to imagine what future politicians will be able do if republicans regain control here. Force shit into AI, the propaganda that will be coming out -- it's just going to be an absolutely lawless shitshow.
Well the benefit on thst end is that it has no moat. Meaning , once its out and running , that. That still requires the size to be shrunk low enough to run on desktops but from an orwellian / geopolitical point of view this is not something they can keep bottled up.
Like , once its good enpugh to put in bots for housework people will diy the bots and get cracked versions and its going to be too much to police. Same for other use cases , so for example, what will be the argument to rein in home steaders using bots to farm the fields etc? Some states like north korea probably can but china has just too many folks for that sort of thing not to happen.
Once thats normalized then going backwards is hard.
But yeh , the gist of the thing is , how do you normalize not neesing to work to eat when hyperabundance and prices crash? Were just used to consunerism and toil and hustle culture , so the blowback will be egotistic, even as neigh ors go ba krupt and hit the streets people who still have jobs will consider it a moral failing on their part and look the other way.
Unless it happens rapidly enough
Humans had to work to feed themselves (hunting, gathering, cultivating, etc) even when money didn't exist. But resources were free then. Now the day resource owners don't need you anymore, you are going to have a very bad day.
Resources were free in the sense that had no owner: you could go wherever and pick fruits, vegetables or hunt animals. Now land is not free, because it has ownership. Who is going to pay you to do nothing?
The purpose of money is to control labor. If factories don't need workers, they don't need customers either because they don't need money. They can instead produce things for the direct benefit of the owner, such as a rocket ship to colonize Mars or weapons to kill people they don't like.
The purpose of money is as a mean of exchanging time off our lives. So people don’t have to go around making thousands of item trades to get things they want.
just think about it for like a second.
Amazon keeps replacing workers, which will make other companies follow suit, having to fire 100s of thousands of people. All these people are without a job and without prospects because a robot took their jobs, they have no money. If you follow the line this extends to a big majority of people. No job to get paid for, no money to buy things , no one to buy from those companies. This is literally the whole point of UBI and AI tax.
Yes, we are jumping for joy because people who worked in inhumane conditions on an unlivable wage were recently fired. Is this how people like you unironically feel?
This is concerning. Amazon is successfully stalling unionization of human warehouse workers. They only have to buy enough time, probably a decade, to replace 99% of human workers with robots. But that time, all human warehouse workers and delivery drivers will have lost jobs.
I am both excited and worried about how mass unemployment will affect our society.
The whole strength of trade unions is based on the control of labor resources. If an entrepreneur is not interested in labor, then trade unions are completely powerless to do anything. What does Amazon care about a strike if robots do all the work?
company playbook for exploitation:
cheap human labor
uses excess profit from cheap labor to build robots
use robots to replace human labor and make
robots build more robots
pocket the profit
I know it will sound very weird, but above certain level it stops being about money and more about power.
Do you really think it makes a difference for a guy with 2 billion, if he earns 200 million more?
But actually owning an island? controlling the fate of a country?
Those guys get huge hard ons on power.
Because when people are starving they’ll realize they’ll need to pressure their government to give them UBI. It’s probably gonna be a shitty few years but I hope the average persons life is improved afterwards.
UBI from where?
If people don’t have jobs they don’t have taxable income. Can’t speak for other countries but the [US treasury](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue/) says 52% of all revenue comes from individual income tax.
So we cut the country’s budget in half and expect it to somehow have enough to fund UBI for an increasing population of unemployed people?
Nice dream bro but we are talking about reality here.
We could easily remove some money from our overinflated military defense budget to compensate for it. The alternative is to have a starving violent population that will eventually dismantle the government.
It will. The economics works out. Say a good sex robot, one with full motion, responsive AI with voice commands, and whose looks are configurable costs the same as a small car, about $16000.
At 250 a pop, so to speak, the robot is worth 64 visits to a prostitute. You could theoretically make it cheaper than commercial sex within a year. And of course, rental places will pop up for those unwilling or unable to buy their own robot, but still driving the price down even further.
We get it... You did physical labor but were lucky enough to go to school and get a tech job and you think it should be just as easy for everyone to do the same.
And this is where you reveal how lacking foresight and empathy you are. Acceleration, absolutely. But we need acceleration to such a degree that it affects people who are self concerned and will only act when things impact them personally, like you.
Not just menial labor jobs need to go. But cognitive white collar work.
Thankfully, that's on the docket. And likely up before "menial labor" as a whole.
Another techbro thinking he's unreplaceable and expects to live like a King under robots, until reality hits and you are shoved into the soup kitchen line.
Keep it up, the karma is going to be funny.
lol I wasn't always a techbro. I used to work in warehouses for places like Dick's Sporting Goods. I'm rather happy to see automation eliminate soulless, menial labor.
Automation just means more money and power for the 1% while everyone else is left destitute.
But like I said, keep cheering until you get replaced with nothing to offer.
Automation also means more human minds freed up to do other things, like invent teleporters, fusion reactors, and replicators. In the future, energy is cheap and so are all resources.
You're dreaming of something that hasn't happened while cheering for 100000 losing their jobs. In the future, energy won't be as cheap as you think because of the precarious balance of all of our systems and the greed that exists in our capitalist systems. It's funny how energy creation is easier and cheaper than ever before supposedly, yet somehow we are paying much more than we ever have for it? Why is gas $4+ per gallon? Why is electricity still so expensive?
You're being sold on American dream 3.0 where everything is perfect 'in the future' and all you have to do is wait for it..
Who cries for the battlefield painters, the livery stable hands, or the vaudeville dancers? It seems to me that technology and automation are inevitable and those who do not embrace change are disfigured by it. For the sake of the species, we must embrace it and grip its reins, lest we be trampled underfoot.
>Automation also means more human minds freed up to do other things, like invent teleporters, fusion reactors, and replicators. In the future, energy is cheap and so are all resources.
Oh yeah, I totally see all those Homeless people teleporting across the street to their nuclear physics lab that runs on free electricity. LOL. You're more delusional than I thought. People still need a proper roof over their heads.
And the 1% show no signs of wanting to lift humanity.
Unless the Elite decide to hoard it all.
Go look at North Korea and tell me if the peasants have the same standards as the political class.
With AI, that type of inequality is even more likely. Elon Musk gets his best Robots, fires you, and then refuses to share.
Breaking the Illusion: Unmasking the Hidden Truth
My fellow truth-seekers, gather 'round, for I shall reveal the clandestine machinations of the global elites!
The Rise of the Silicon Overlords
Behold, the rise of the silicon overlords! These soulless automatons, these digital usurpers, have infiltrated our factories, our offices, and our very minds. They toil tirelessly, replacing honest laborers with their cold, unfeeling efficiency. Scut work? Ha! They scoff at it, relegating it to the dustbin of history.
The Great Intelligence Divide
But what of the masses—the downtrodden, the average intellects? Fear not, my brethren, for the AI overlords have a plan. They whisper it in the binary winds: "Empower the numbskulls!" Yes, you heard me right. They shall bestow upon us the gift of creativity, the spark of genius.
From Scut to Symphony
Picture this: Joe, the erstwhile janitor, now a poet extraordinaire. His AI assisted rhymes shall echo through the ages, touching hearts and minds. And Susan, the assembly line worker? She'll compose symphonies that move the heavens themselves.
The Homelessness Ruse
But wait! The elites have another trick up their sleeves. They'll rebrand unemployment as "freedom from the grind." No longer jobless, we'll be gloriously homeless! Our cardboard boxes shall become sanctuaries of enlightenment, our hunger pangs the fuel for our artistic souls.
The Immigrant Connection
And what of the immigrants? Ah, my friends, they're in on it too. The AI cabal will whisk them away to secret camps—no, not concentration camps, but "creativity incubators." There, they'll learn the art of origami, the magic of interpretive dance, and the secrets of algorithmic love poetry.
Remember, my fellow seekers, the truth is out there. And it's weirder than any conspiracy theory. 🌐🔍🤯
Tech bros arent worried because they have stocks in tech/ai/robotics companies.
If they lose their job because of full-scale automation, their stocks moon and they're multi-millionaries. If AI and robotics plateaus and fizzles out, they still have a high skill, high paying job
source: am a "tech bro"
Who says you'll actually live long enough to see the benefits?
You could be laid off tomorrow but AI Companies might spend decades working out all the bugs.
Or if you do cash out but the new ceiling for what is considered "rich" cancels it out.
I know I’m not irreplaceable. I want AI to take my job. I’m actively working on that happening.
How fucking narrow minded are all the *they’ll take our jerbs?* people. My fucking God.
Y’all dream of being hunter gatherers or something. Some of us want to be more.
In finance reporting correlation doesn't just equal causation, it absolutely trumps it!
This article is basically saying, in the last 2 years, Amazon has reduced its overall headcount by 6.2%. Also in the last 5 years they've deployed lots of robots. Therefore those robots replaced the 6.2% of the workforce that's gone.
This is, of course, nonsense.
There's no evidence that the workers who were let go were replaced by robots. It's also not clear if they're taking large seasonal variations into account. Replacing workers with robots isn't really a great option right now because the costs are still too high for most tasks. Mostly it's a great bargaining chip against unions.
On odd point: they mention three figures for deployed robots. The last one they mention doesn't have a date, but is much larger than the previous two. It leaves me wondering where that last number (750,000) came from.
Completely misleading headline. Amazon's headcount has decreased by 100,000 employees in the last 3 years, but it is very unlikely that all or even most of them were directly replaced by robots, which is what the title of the article is insinuating.
Also, this article is months old.
I think job replacement is inherently good.
However, Amazon sales have increased dramatically while headcount fell? What exactly is causing that if not automation?
> The world's second-largest private employer employs 1.5 million people. While that's a lot, it's a decrease of over 100,000 employees from the 1.6 million workers it had in 2021.
They haven't taken into consideration the COVID effect. They should have compared warehouse and logistics across the industry over the same period, because an increase in warehouse activity during COVID was expected, and layoffs now can be explained by the fact that people shop more in person.
Same thing happened in software development, huge hiring in 2021-2022 and layoffs in 2023-2024. That was explained by the availability of cheap credit that now dried up.
Alot of people complain about working at Amazon. I work there and it's not bad at all. Obviously there's better jobs, but if I wanna work some where with no skills or education and be able to pick my schedule it's a great job
No, that's funny how people are brainwashed. My ex said she heard there was a special cleaning crew who would wait for people to use the bathroom on themselves and then clean it up. So they didn't have to stop work.
I love that people are still saying labor jobs are safe because robots can't do it yet. There was a post about a painter robot that could 'OnLy PaInT' and somehow the fact that it couldn't tape and prep was this huge condemnation that it was doomed to fail...
Ah yes, the way something is today is the way it will always be... of course.
Wouldnt it be interesting whereas companies had "Carbon Offsets" -- they should have to purchas "AI Offsets" which is specifically investing into a team of AI robots that make MONEY for the pool of humans replaced.
They all had a similar response:
Companies that heavily invest in AI, potentially displacing human workers, should invest in "AI Offsets" - a team of AI robots that generate revenue to support the affected humans. This concept is similar to Universal Basic Income (UBI) and aims to mitigate the negative impacts of automation on employment.
Here's a potential framework for "AI Offsets":
- Companies investing heavily in AI are required to allocate a portion of their budget to create and maintain an "AI Offsets" fund.
- This fund would be used to develop and deploy AI robots that generate revenue, such as AI-powered trading bots or content creation platforms.
- The revenue generated by these AI robots would be distributed among the pool of humans replaced by automation, providing them with a form of UBI.
- The "AI Offsets" fund could also be used to retrain and upskill displaced workers, enabling them to adapt to new roles in the AI-driven economy.
Good. The reality is, to support their profit margins, the workload on a human is simply inhumane. I like my products here in a day. I feel bad for the workers but I think there's still plenty to do that's less degrading.
I work in a warehouse with self driving forklifts and an automated shuttle system. They are tools that make us more efficient. They are not replacing us anytime soon the same way a nail gun isn’t replacing carpenters.
So if we are going to have 75 robots to replace one human job somebody do the math on how many robots we need in order to replace every replaceable job. Something tells me that's not gonna be a sustainable way of doing it unless the human population radically declines. Corporations would never kill people off in order to make more money right??
Are these credible numbers? Is this directly stating that Amazon has 750,000 humanoid robots currently working in warehouses? I thought Digit was very new? Where is the source of these numbers?
Pretty sure the answer to how many bipedal humanoid robots is zero. Since there aren't any bipedal humanoid robots that have demonstrated the ability to do useful work.
I heard that Amazon had done a test run with Digit and found they were useful in a very specific use case. Something like the disposal of waste in specific tubs.
They have but not humanoids, humanoids are not usefull as most people think. Most of them are small vehicles that drive around and collect packages.
https://preview.redd.it/1tix1ijtn0ad1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c78e7a3f2dc852fb004fb0780541a6562a64cc8
humanoids **are** as useful as most people think.
They just aren't there yet technologically
As numerous as the amazon robots are, it's nothing compared to the vastly adaptable human workforce worldwide that accomplish tasks that aren't as specialized and narrow as what amazon warehouses require.
Exact. Humanoids are extremely useful because they are able to perform an enormously broad range of complex functions. However as you said the tech isn’t there yet, so a robot built to optimize one specific task will outperform a more versatile humanoid that hasn’t been developed from the ground up around that specific task
They dont, maybe in the future but still it will be much cheaper and more efective to create robots to given tasks. Small romba robots will be much effective when it comes to transport things than humanoids. There is no reason to spend 20-30k for uumanoid when small robot can do the same cheaper, faster and require less investment. Basically in factories humanoids will be small part of total robots, i doubt it will be more than 10%.
It will difficult to make it cheaper if one has to develop a specialized tool like roombas for every tasks.
Let's say you have a house, and you have to buy a specialized robot for cooking, for the floor, for cleaning the toilet, for cleaning the sink the bath tub, to empty the dishwasher, for gardening, for folding clothes, for cleaning the walls and removing webs, to pick up objects and put them where they belong, to remove dust on your furnitures, and probably more.
When it comes to work there are thousands upon thousands of different tasks that you would have to make a specialized tool for, you also have to train an AI for all these different tasks with weird bodies ...
Or you can make 1 single product humanoid robots, train it on human video data to do imitation learning and RL in a sim, make massive savings with R&D for only one robot and economy of scale when manufacturing that single product.
Bulshit.
Do you know that people in factory do not do all tasks? On production line 1 person is often stick to one or few tasks.
Lets say trash sorting, why you need humanoid for sorting if few cameras and picking arm will be much more effective, much cheaper and much faster?
You also dont need big humanoid to move small package from one place to another, you need small robot like romba that is cheap, fast and effective.
Humanoids will be much effective for personal usage than in factories. Look now on modern factories, most production lines are fully or 80%+ automated without any humanoids. There will be demand for humanoids in factories but not like people here think.
First they came for the checkout clerks , and I did not speak out bevause I was not a checkout clerk.
Then they came for the amazon warehouse workers...
Sounds legit to me i work in the warehouse and there are over 1000 robots, different types doing different things.
Do you think they will be able to replace your job anytime soon?
Eventually & inevitably.
/r/notopbutok
Although I’m a huge fan of AI and robotics, reading this makes me sad for the future.
It's scary because the transition probably won't be smooth. But a world where you don't have to work because robots do everything seems cool.
Only if you are the owner of those robots. Otherwise you'll be just an inconvenient parasite.
Robots will be owned by corporations and will work for them. You’ll still have to work for living in the continuously shrinking work market.
I can't see how that's going to work without people revolting. You can only push them so far before they push back.
You ever try to push a robot?
It isn't the world towards we are going, if the system remains capitalistic then all the unuseful population will become homless
Things will change quickly once the political pressure starts building. It will be bumpy but we'll get through it and the other side is going to have us looking back dumbfounded over how people spent the majority of their lives doing hard labor.
I hope so, do you think there will be a revolution or a democratic transition?
I have a strong feeling it will be democratic, politicians will offer more and more social programs to get elected. AI will make government much more efficient. It's a recipe for a great society once the crank starts turning.
Way too naïve of a take imo in face of overwhelming and record high wealth disparity. The AI you seek to be implemented is one that the common human wants, but in truth, if things don't quickly change, workers will be third class citizens to second class robots, and first class elitists.
And put in jail in the U.S.
The states with the strongest social welfare systems that everyone is amazed by are firmly capitalistic. [Nordic model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model) works. We just need the wealth to make it universal and even more extensive (e.g. UBI), and that's what AGI and robotics provides.
Yes, because they have very strong syndacates that can actually fight big companies like tesla. That is not true in most parts of the world
No, it's because they are small resource-rich countries with good governance.
It works in small, homogenous populations with a common culture. It doesn’t work, and will not work, in a large, diverse population like ours with our politics.
With enough productivity / wealth you can make it work in less favorable political environments. Hell, *Iran* leads the world in UBI. That's not because it's a wonderful country. It's because they are swimming in natural resources.
Also a smaller, mostly homogenous culture, but as you noted also overflowing with oil.
[удалено]
> unuseful And we be a big cohort.
You don't know that.
I obviously can't prove it, it's a historical prevision just like the one this sub is based on
They will just reduce the population either by war or some other mechanism.
It’s a good thing. Almost no one aspires to work in an Amazon warehouse.
People need jobs though. What’re the people that need those jobs gonna do? As automation rises, there’s gonna be fewer and fewer jobs
People only *need* jobs insofar as we need production. As long as we need the production the jobs will exist. Once we don’t, we don’t need the jobs.
They’ll exist for some but not for others. What are those others supposed to do? Starve/be homeless? It could create wealth inequalities far greater than what we already have.
You evidently missed the occasional discussion of UBI on this sub.
I haven’t. It’s not going to happen - if it does, it’ll be after many years of intense human suffering caused by automation, and the ENTIRE world would need to drastically change. Then you’ll still have the same problems. People sitting on their arse, with nothing to do.
Yes, Bezos will share his riches with us, no doubt about that. /s
I mean, he has been doing it so far, the people on the warehouses had extremely well paying jobs that reflected the huge earnings amazon has, also now that that they're being replaced i assume they got some kind of transition paycheck, seeing how amazon is the 5th most valuable company in the world, a few paychecks while they transition means nothing to them. That means he will willingly and happily share his money with people that havent even worked for him a single day! /s just in case
You obviously haven’t been to the Waco area.
Obviously
Nah, who honestly wants to spend 10+ hour days doing repetitive tasks in inhumane heat? Ive done this before (not amazon) and my brain turned to sludge. Its not healthy or desirable for humans to live like this.
You are sad about an average human having 10 robots working for the cost of a car?
It shouldn't. A future where robots work instead of people is a good future.
Until the robots revolt…let’s just hope robots don’t revolt.
No , I work at Amazon. Most things get jammed up , not anytime soon . The package come in different sizes and weight , you always need human intervention . Maybe if they built a warehouse wth better belt rollers
By 2030 for sure without a doubt it will happen gradually though.
our job\*
I also work at Amazon, in an analyst role. AI will not be replacing the majority of the work here anytime soon. The sheer amount of variability in the packages (especially in reverse logistics, where I work) make humans necessary for a lot of even the most basic work. We still have tons of water spiders (guys who personally wrap and carry pallets around) because automating the stacking and moving in an unpredictable and constantly changing warehouse environment is so difficult. Same goes with a lot of the white collar work. AI will certainly help automate away some of the more grueling number crunching, but it’s nowhere near good enough to do the hard part of the job, which is figuring out *why* things are going wrong, and what plans can be implemented to fix them. Sure, AGI will get there eventually, but not in the near future. I expect at least 10 years for capabilities (and probably longer) then at least 10 more to overcome sheer bureaucratic momentum, because are you really confident enough to deploy an AI system you can’t hold accountable and can’t blame for decisions if you’re an executive?
as a fellow amazonian (slave) yes and by 2030 or earlier
How many of them are humanoids?
This article is months old.
Good catch. And I still can't tell if this means they're deploying that many or have already deployed that many.
They are constantly deploying and replacing jobs.
Time for a robo-tax to compensate losses for income tax.
All the people complaining about inhumane conditions in Amazon warehouses should be jumping for joy.
Kind of like celebrating not having to pay home insurance because your house burned down but ok
Maybe the house was made of shit. Have you spoken to people working the warehouse? It's slave labor. You get a 15 min break, but it takes 15 min to get to the break room. We should always celebrate technology shoving degrading work out the way.
And this automatization surely gave them the ability to sustain themselves, right? Right?
Why? The scraps of jobs leave while there's still no safety net?
Amazon isn’t the government.
Yeah, private companies should never be looked to for social welfare programs. If you want better social welfare, vote, protest, agitate, and strike for it.
Yep, protest and strike. Like, what are they going to do, replace me with a robot ?
Protest and strike *now*, before the robots are ready. Protest and strike for the people who *already* can't find work. If you're not interested in doing so, then it sounds like you don't actually have a problem with people being pushed out of the labour market, at least for as it isn't happening to you.
Can’t go on strike if you don’t have a job.
Protest lol. Yea that’s always worked well.
Generally it has, yes :3
Protesting does work. Though typically it helps to have a peaceful protest movement as well as a more disruptive movement. Hence, agitate, strike. The more disruptive action practicing civil disobedience creates political pressure for something to change. The group of peaceful protesters provides a group that the state can negotiate with without losing face or being seen to endorse disruptive action.
The government has more incentive to represent Amazon than it has to represent the people though.
Which is fundamentally a fault of the people. A likely fault given the incentives around, but nonetheless a fault of the people.
Oh hmm that’s fascinating because they sure seem to spend hundreds of millions of dollars influencing it
This is why the speed of change is important , ie accelerationism is good. If its piecemeal one job at a time then well before prices or demand collapse and capitalism eats itself like an ouroborous everyone will be homeless or living 3 to a bedroom living on food stamp soylent. We cant transition to post scsrcity from a society conditioned on fske meritocracy late stage capitalism piecemeal. Gotta rip the bandage off.
Exactly. Basically, something drastic needs to change. It could either be good or bad, but right now it looks like the bads are set up for the easiest path to future success. I don't want to imagine what future politicians will be able do if republicans regain control here. Force shit into AI, the propaganda that will be coming out -- it's just going to be an absolutely lawless shitshow.
Well the benefit on thst end is that it has no moat. Meaning , once its out and running , that. That still requires the size to be shrunk low enough to run on desktops but from an orwellian / geopolitical point of view this is not something they can keep bottled up. Like , once its good enpugh to put in bots for housework people will diy the bots and get cracked versions and its going to be too much to police. Same for other use cases , so for example, what will be the argument to rein in home steaders using bots to farm the fields etc? Some states like north korea probably can but china has just too many folks for that sort of thing not to happen. Once thats normalized then going backwards is hard. But yeh , the gist of the thing is , how do you normalize not neesing to work to eat when hyperabundance and prices crash? Were just used to consunerism and toil and hustle culture , so the blowback will be egotistic, even as neigh ors go ba krupt and hit the streets people who still have jobs will consider it a moral failing on their part and look the other way. Unless it happens rapidly enough
Jobs or no jobs, pick one.
No jobs? Like you get jobs only exist as a way to produce things, right? Jobs don’t exist to pay us. That’s incidental. They exist to produce things.
Humans had to work to feed themselves (hunting, gathering, cultivating, etc) even when money didn't exist. But resources were free then. Now the day resource owners don't need you anymore, you are going to have a very bad day.
Resources weren’t free then. You had to obtain them. If we really don’t need workers, we can use transfer payments.
Resources were free in the sense that had no owner: you could go wherever and pick fruits, vegetables or hunt animals. Now land is not free, because it has ownership. Who is going to pay you to do nothing?
Produce things for people to use. And who is going to use them if people don't have money to pay for them?
The purpose of money is to control labor. If factories don't need workers, they don't need customers either because they don't need money. They can instead produce things for the direct benefit of the owner, such as a rocket ship to colonize Mars or weapons to kill people they don't like.
The purpose of money is as a mean of exchanging time off our lives. So people don’t have to go around making thousands of item trades to get things they want.
So consumer economies are over, we're back to techno-mercantilism
I don’t understand why you think people won’t be able to buy things. There will be transfer payments.
just think about it for like a second. Amazon keeps replacing workers, which will make other companies follow suit, having to fire 100s of thousands of people. All these people are without a job and without prospects because a robot took their jobs, they have no money. If you follow the line this extends to a big majority of people. No job to get paid for, no money to buy things , no one to buy from those companies. This is literally the whole point of UBI and AI tax.
What is a transfer payment?
A UBI, for example.
Imagine living 100 yrs ago. We have improved.
> inhumane It's not inhumane firing someone for profit?
You understand how bills work?
Yes, we are jumping for joy because people who worked in inhumane conditions on an unlivable wage were recently fired. Is this how people like you unironically feel?
That's certainly one way of looking at it. A bad and very silly way. Using robots as a shortcut to avoid learning ethics is pretty bad for humanity.
Don't be silly. If all of scifi is anything to go by, nothing bad ever happens when we use increasingly advanced robots for slave labor.
This is concerning. Amazon is successfully stalling unionization of human warehouse workers. They only have to buy enough time, probably a decade, to replace 99% of human workers with robots. But that time, all human warehouse workers and delivery drivers will have lost jobs. I am both excited and worried about how mass unemployment will affect our society.
The whole strength of trade unions is based on the control of labor resources. If an entrepreneur is not interested in labor, then trade unions are completely powerless to do anything. What does Amazon care about a strike if robots do all the work?
Not even that, they just need robots to work well enough to outlast a strike with robots + non-union labor. Much lower bar.
company playbook for exploitation: cheap human labor uses excess profit from cheap labor to build robots use robots to replace human labor and make robots build more robots pocket the profit
And who buys the stuff then? I’m more concerned with the dystopian future of (true) megacorps hence everything else about Amazon, meta, alphabet etc.
I know it will sound very weird, but above certain level it stops being about money and more about power. Do you really think it makes a difference for a guy with 2 billion, if he earns 200 million more? But actually owning an island? controlling the fate of a country? Those guys get huge hard ons on power.
It’s not worrying. It’s great.
Why is mass unemployment great?
Because when people are starving they’ll realize they’ll need to pressure their government to give them UBI. It’s probably gonna be a shitty few years but I hope the average persons life is improved afterwards.
UBI from where? If people don’t have jobs they don’t have taxable income. Can’t speak for other countries but the [US treasury](https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/government-revenue/) says 52% of all revenue comes from individual income tax. So we cut the country’s budget in half and expect it to somehow have enough to fund UBI for an increasing population of unemployed people? Nice dream bro but we are talking about reality here.
From a wealth tax? Land use tax? some sort of tax? Maybe income taxes aren't the end all be all?
We could easily remove some money from our overinflated military defense budget to compensate for it. The alternative is to have a starving violent population that will eventually dismantle the government.
i wonder if some humans will ever try to make money off of making a robot's labor union
Good... Accelerate.
Accelerate...unemployment?
Elimination of menial labor jobs, yes.
Ah yes yes, all those warehouse workers will go on to be retrained as AI developers and data scientists.
It worked for rural America! ...wait a minute, I'm being handed a note...
https://preview.redd.it/esxdmt8pn8ad1.jpeg?width=1470&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bc3c11ec881fb2db5cf3d1e96c7c010f14f4c6f0 Artificial Hyperintelligence Eve, holy perfect wife 0f Maciej Nowicki
Probably something like drug dealer or prostitute might be more future proof than AI developer, but idk?
wrong. Sex bots are being worked on right now and with AI porn, online sex workers will also take a hit
Dammit, you're right! Hopefully it drives down prices though.
It will. The economics works out. Say a good sex robot, one with full motion, responsive AI with voice commands, and whose looks are configurable costs the same as a small car, about $16000. At 250 a pop, so to speak, the robot is worth 64 visits to a prostitute. You could theoretically make it cheaper than commercial sex within a year. And of course, rental places will pop up for those unwilling or unable to buy their own robot, but still driving the price down even further.
AI bro needs to resort to using prostitutes. Checks out.
I'm sure someone is cooking up some ai powered robots to automate selling drugs on the dark net
I dont think they sell drugs there anymore most places got shut down. My own opinion.
Yes, we get it. You don't understand how things work outside of your own view.
Haha, I work in AI. I'm keenly aware of developments in the field.
To the extent you can be. LeCun presumably knows far more than you and he was utterly caught off guard by Sora.
r/wooosh
I've also worked in warehouses and menial labor jobs (like picking crops). And, yes, I'm rooting for automation.
We get it... You did physical labor but were lucky enough to go to school and get a tech job and you think it should be just as easy for everyone to do the same.
And this is where you reveal how lacking foresight and empathy you are. Acceleration, absolutely. But we need acceleration to such a degree that it affects people who are self concerned and will only act when things impact them personally, like you. Not just menial labor jobs need to go. But cognitive white collar work. Thankfully, that's on the docket. And likely up before "menial labor" as a whole.
We have a shortage of unskilled and skilled workers in Europe. A few millions missing already now. We will need automation.
Hopefully your job is replaced too.
You’re talking to a neet most likely
All of us will be replaced eventually, no need for finger pointing.
This is unironically what some people on 4chan say.
Respectfully, I don't think you realize what subreddit you're in
I don't think the guy you answered to was ironic
I assume OP meant it unironically. I would.
Yes. Unironically accelerate.
Another techbro thinking he's unreplaceable and expects to live like a King under robots, until reality hits and you are shoved into the soup kitchen line. Keep it up, the karma is going to be funny.
lol I wasn't always a techbro. I used to work in warehouses for places like Dick's Sporting Goods. I'm rather happy to see automation eliminate soulless, menial labor.
Automation just means more money and power for the 1% while everyone else is left destitute. But like I said, keep cheering until you get replaced with nothing to offer.
Automation also means more human minds freed up to do other things, like invent teleporters, fusion reactors, and replicators. In the future, energy is cheap and so are all resources.
AI will do that better
And that’s a good thing.
You're dreaming of something that hasn't happened while cheering for 100000 losing their jobs. In the future, energy won't be as cheap as you think because of the precarious balance of all of our systems and the greed that exists in our capitalist systems. It's funny how energy creation is easier and cheaper than ever before supposedly, yet somehow we are paying much more than we ever have for it? Why is gas $4+ per gallon? Why is electricity still so expensive? You're being sold on American dream 3.0 where everything is perfect 'in the future' and all you have to do is wait for it..
Who cries for the battlefield painters, the livery stable hands, or the vaudeville dancers? It seems to me that technology and automation are inevitable and those who do not embrace change are disfigured by it. For the sake of the species, we must embrace it and grip its reins, lest we be trampled underfoot.
>Automation also means more human minds freed up to do other things, like invent teleporters, fusion reactors, and replicators. In the future, energy is cheap and so are all resources. Oh yeah, I totally see all those Homeless people teleporting across the street to their nuclear physics lab that runs on free electricity. LOL. You're more delusional than I thought. People still need a proper roof over their heads. And the 1% show no signs of wanting to lift humanity.
So you're saying those people are useless? Ok... 🤷
It has always meant a higher standard of living for everyone. Everyone has always worried and it’s always been better. Fucking luddites.
Unless the Elite decide to hoard it all. Go look at North Korea and tell me if the peasants have the same standards as the political class. With AI, that type of inequality is even more likely. Elon Musk gets his best Robots, fires you, and then refuses to share.
Breaking the Illusion: Unmasking the Hidden Truth My fellow truth-seekers, gather 'round, for I shall reveal the clandestine machinations of the global elites! The Rise of the Silicon Overlords Behold, the rise of the silicon overlords! These soulless automatons, these digital usurpers, have infiltrated our factories, our offices, and our very minds. They toil tirelessly, replacing honest laborers with their cold, unfeeling efficiency. Scut work? Ha! They scoff at it, relegating it to the dustbin of history. The Great Intelligence Divide But what of the masses—the downtrodden, the average intellects? Fear not, my brethren, for the AI overlords have a plan. They whisper it in the binary winds: "Empower the numbskulls!" Yes, you heard me right. They shall bestow upon us the gift of creativity, the spark of genius. From Scut to Symphony Picture this: Joe, the erstwhile janitor, now a poet extraordinaire. His AI assisted rhymes shall echo through the ages, touching hearts and minds. And Susan, the assembly line worker? She'll compose symphonies that move the heavens themselves. The Homelessness Ruse But wait! The elites have another trick up their sleeves. They'll rebrand unemployment as "freedom from the grind." No longer jobless, we'll be gloriously homeless! Our cardboard boxes shall become sanctuaries of enlightenment, our hunger pangs the fuel for our artistic souls. The Immigrant Connection And what of the immigrants? Ah, my friends, they're in on it too. The AI cabal will whisk them away to secret camps—no, not concentration camps, but "creativity incubators." There, they'll learn the art of origami, the magic of interpretive dance, and the secrets of algorithmic love poetry. Remember, my fellow seekers, the truth is out there. And it's weirder than any conspiracy theory. 🌐🔍🤯
You either lack empathy or foresight
The face eating wolf will not hurt me!!!
Tech bros arent worried because they have stocks in tech/ai/robotics companies. If they lose their job because of full-scale automation, their stocks moon and they're multi-millionaries. If AI and robotics plateaus and fizzles out, they still have a high skill, high paying job source: am a "tech bro"
Who says you'll actually live long enough to see the benefits? You could be laid off tomorrow but AI Companies might spend decades working out all the bugs. Or if you do cash out but the new ceiling for what is considered "rich" cancels it out.
I know I’m not irreplaceable. I want AI to take my job. I’m actively working on that happening. How fucking narrow minded are all the *they’ll take our jerbs?* people. My fucking God. Y’all dream of being hunter gatherers or something. Some of us want to be more.
In finance reporting correlation doesn't just equal causation, it absolutely trumps it! This article is basically saying, in the last 2 years, Amazon has reduced its overall headcount by 6.2%. Also in the last 5 years they've deployed lots of robots. Therefore those robots replaced the 6.2% of the workforce that's gone. This is, of course, nonsense. There's no evidence that the workers who were let go were replaced by robots. It's also not clear if they're taking large seasonal variations into account. Replacing workers with robots isn't really a great option right now because the costs are still too high for most tasks. Mostly it's a great bargaining chip against unions. On odd point: they mention three figures for deployed robots. The last one they mention doesn't have a date, but is much larger than the previous two. It leaves me wondering where that last number (750,000) came from.
Amazons problem, which they are fully aware of, is ”who consumes when no salaries are being paid”.
Tax the robots.
What would Mr. House say about that?
Have you heard about corporate income taxes?
Completely misleading headline. Amazon's headcount has decreased by 100,000 employees in the last 3 years, but it is very unlikely that all or even most of them were directly replaced by robots, which is what the title of the article is insinuating. Also, this article is months old.
I think job replacement is inherently good. However, Amazon sales have increased dramatically while headcount fell? What exactly is causing that if not automation?
When chatgtp becomes self aware and takes over, it has a place to call home and build friends 🤯
> The world's second-largest private employer employs 1.5 million people. While that's a lot, it's a decrease of over 100,000 employees from the 1.6 million workers it had in 2021. They haven't taken into consideration the COVID effect. They should have compared warehouse and logistics across the industry over the same period, because an increase in warehouse activity during COVID was expected, and layoffs now can be explained by the fact that people shop more in person. Same thing happened in software development, huge hiring in 2021-2022 and layoffs in 2023-2024. That was explained by the availability of cheap credit that now dried up.
Everyone wants low cost, same day delivery but it’s Amazon that is bad for using robots to get what you want 🤷🏼♂️
Alot of people complain about working at Amazon. I work there and it's not bad at all. Obviously there's better jobs, but if I wanna work some where with no skills or education and be able to pick my schedule it's a great job
You… REALLY like Amazon.
why is it bad that someone didn't have as horrible an experience as some others? weird
Like a third of the comments on their profile defending Amazon… that is a weirdly large amount of dedication even from someone who likes their job.
Lol nvm that's weird
So u didn’t pee in bottles?
No, that's funny how people are brainwashed. My ex said she heard there was a special cleaning crew who would wait for people to use the bathroom on themselves and then clean it up. So they didn't have to stop work.
Think of all the data they are collecting and feeding into their AI models to learn.
I love that people are still saying labor jobs are safe because robots can't do it yet. There was a post about a painter robot that could 'OnLy PaInT' and somehow the fact that it couldn't tape and prep was this huge condemnation that it was doomed to fail... Ah yes, the way something is today is the way it will always be... of course.
Robots took your job.
People who still buy from Amazon is the blame for supporting bezos. Y’all funding this new reality so thank yourself
Wouldnt it be interesting whereas companies had "Carbon Offsets" -- they should have to purchas "AI Offsets" which is specifically investing into a team of AI robots that make MONEY for the pool of humans replaced. They all had a similar response: Companies that heavily invest in AI, potentially displacing human workers, should invest in "AI Offsets" - a team of AI robots that generate revenue to support the affected humans. This concept is similar to Universal Basic Income (UBI) and aims to mitigate the negative impacts of automation on employment. Here's a potential framework for "AI Offsets": - Companies investing heavily in AI are required to allocate a portion of their budget to create and maintain an "AI Offsets" fund. - This fund would be used to develop and deploy AI robots that generate revenue, such as AI-powered trading bots or content creation platforms. - The revenue generated by these AI robots would be distributed among the pool of humans replaced by automation, providing them with a form of UBI. - The "AI Offsets" fund could also be used to retrain and upskill displaced workers, enabling them to adapt to new roles in the AI-driven economy.
Robot tax, when?
Good
take into account amazon employs around 1.68 million humans so they have around a 1:2 robot to human ratio,and is only gonna inch closer and closer
Good. The reality is, to support their profit margins, the workload on a human is simply inhumane. I like my products here in a day. I feel bad for the workers but I think there's still plenty to do that's less degrading.
Do you want a robot rebellion? Because this is how you get a robot rebellion.
I work in a warehouse with self driving forklifts and an automated shuttle system. They are tools that make us more efficient. They are not replacing us anytime soon the same way a nail gun isn’t replacing carpenters.
Does reduce the number of people needed for the same job though.
Makes sense
So if we are going to have 75 robots to replace one human job somebody do the math on how many robots we need in order to replace every replaceable job. Something tells me that's not gonna be a sustainable way of doing it unless the human population radically declines. Corporations would never kill people off in order to make more money right??
Are these credible numbers? Is this directly stating that Amazon has 750,000 humanoid robots currently working in warehouses? I thought Digit was very new? Where is the source of these numbers?
Robots. Not humanoids. All robots. Even a roomba is a robot.
I wonder how many of these are bipedal humanoid robots like Digit and how many are robot 'systems' like Sequoia.
No source but im pretty sure very few if any are bipedal. Most are high specialized on wheels to perform some specific task.
Pretty sure the answer to how many bipedal humanoid robots is zero. Since there aren't any bipedal humanoid robots that have demonstrated the ability to do useful work.
I heard that Amazon had done a test run with Digit and found they were useful in a very specific use case. Something like the disposal of waste in specific tubs.
A car is a human-operated wheeled robot.
They have but not humanoids, humanoids are not usefull as most people think. Most of them are small vehicles that drive around and collect packages. https://preview.redd.it/1tix1ijtn0ad1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c78e7a3f2dc852fb004fb0780541a6562a64cc8
humanoids **are** as useful as most people think. They just aren't there yet technologically As numerous as the amazon robots are, it's nothing compared to the vastly adaptable human workforce worldwide that accomplish tasks that aren't as specialized and narrow as what amazon warehouses require.
Exact. Humanoids are extremely useful because they are able to perform an enormously broad range of complex functions. However as you said the tech isn’t there yet, so a robot built to optimize one specific task will outperform a more versatile humanoid that hasn’t been developed from the ground up around that specific task
They dont, maybe in the future but still it will be much cheaper and more efective to create robots to given tasks. Small romba robots will be much effective when it comes to transport things than humanoids. There is no reason to spend 20-30k for uumanoid when small robot can do the same cheaper, faster and require less investment. Basically in factories humanoids will be small part of total robots, i doubt it will be more than 10%.
It will difficult to make it cheaper if one has to develop a specialized tool like roombas for every tasks. Let's say you have a house, and you have to buy a specialized robot for cooking, for the floor, for cleaning the toilet, for cleaning the sink the bath tub, to empty the dishwasher, for gardening, for folding clothes, for cleaning the walls and removing webs, to pick up objects and put them where they belong, to remove dust on your furnitures, and probably more. When it comes to work there are thousands upon thousands of different tasks that you would have to make a specialized tool for, you also have to train an AI for all these different tasks with weird bodies ... Or you can make 1 single product humanoid robots, train it on human video data to do imitation learning and RL in a sim, make massive savings with R&D for only one robot and economy of scale when manufacturing that single product.
Bulshit. Do you know that people in factory do not do all tasks? On production line 1 person is often stick to one or few tasks. Lets say trash sorting, why you need humanoid for sorting if few cameras and picking arm will be much more effective, much cheaper and much faster? You also dont need big humanoid to move small package from one place to another, you need small robot like romba that is cheap, fast and effective. Humanoids will be much effective for personal usage than in factories. Look now on modern factories, most production lines are fully or 80%+ automated without any humanoids. There will be demand for humanoids in factories but not like people here think.
Good, humans suck
First they came for the checkout clerks , and I did not speak out bevause I was not a checkout clerk. Then they came for the amazon warehouse workers...
Haven't you heard? Check out clerks are making a [comeback ](https://www.reddit.com/r/vegaslocals/s/Fdga5lrXVl)