Amazon’s humanoid warehouse robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate. That won’t calm workers’ fears of being replaced.::The robot’s human-like shape is bound to reignite workers’ fears of being replaced, but Amazon says they’re designed to “work collaboratively.”
Workers were always going to be replaced and automated pretending otherwise is disingenuous and caters to the absolute most inept among us.
People need to start bitching about taxing these organizations and supporting UBI.
More than UBI we need to empower democratic ownership through things like worker and community lead cooperatives. As well as better systems of education and training for a quickly changing world.
If the only reason people get UBI is to placated them then when we can be ignored or surpressed instead we will be.
Hear hear!
People bitch about working conditions and the actual work in these warehouses yet don’t want to be replaced by a robot who doesn’t care about any of that? Yeah, no. I’m all for robots doing this kind of soul sucking work.
Yeah, I’m all for automating menial boring work as that will free up a ton of creative potential. I fear, however, this might just allow corporations to further their grip on our society unfettered. We need governing bodies immune to profit capture if we’re to utilize all that human creative potential.
Totally agree with you there. Corporations have way too much power in our culture.
They really do have far too much power and influence. Capitalism without ethics will always be a detriment to the people.
Without ethics in place it’s just everyone out for themselves trying to get paid while the rest just try to survive without losing it all.
Never fully understood how bad it can be until I saw my rural area get taken over. A decade or so ago it was just a town of poor folks and prices for housing, food etc. Reflected that. Then the rich folks, corporations etc discovered that money could be made here and that was it. All of the small businesses have been bought out and replaced with chain stores. Prices for everything have drastically increased to where a cheeseburger that sold for $5 a few years ago is now $25. Homes that were selling for $60k are now hundreds of thousands, a million in some cases. Almost all of the farmland was bought and sold to developers then turned into subdivisions who then marketed to “higher” class citizens who could afford to pay the asking price.
It was a small town where everyone knew each other. To date I’d estimate that 90% of those families have moved within a 10 year period. These are multigenerational families, many of which can date their family history here back to when their ancestors first migrated here.
Now it’s just a sea of opportunity for those into real estate and big business.
The common people never had a choice in the matter. These people just used their deep pockets to take everything over.
In isolation the automation of roles is a great thing, but the way society is currently run your entire quality of existence is tied to your job, and retraining and getting a new job is harder than ever and costs a lot.
If society made it easier for people to retrain and get better jobs and slowly replaced all those bad jobs with an automated workforce it would be better for everyone.
Can’t see it happening though…
I’m sure we’ll get there eventually, but robots still suck at doing stuff like this. Maybe when they marry robots up with AI, we’ll have robots that can figure out what to do when there’s the slightest deviation to the operating conditions, like a piece of trash shows up on the line, or they get twisted 30 degrees off from their station, or a part of the line gets moved 2 inches. For now though, robots are only great at following pre-programmed instructions EXACTLY the same way every time. Even then, they still manage to fuck that up some of the time. I worked with welding robots for years that only had one task and one task only, to apply welds to car seat parts, and they fucked up on us all the time, on a daily basis. The technology will get there one day, but I doubt we’re there.
I work with a system of distribution robots and can attest to everything you’ve just said. The only caveat I’d add is that “some day” may be sooner than you think. Moore’s law is a helluva force.
Maybe when they marry robots up with AI,
Do you want skynet?! Cause that’s how you get skynet!
That won’t calm workers’ fears of being replaced.
That’s what the calming robots are for.
Just imagining what you mean by a calming robot is terrifyi- I mean perfectly normal and I welcome our robot overlords.
I can think of a few good ways for a robot to calm me 😉
Ayy now there’s a future I can look forward to 😏
But, isn’t replacing menial tasks what so many people clamor for?
I’m so confused.
That won’t calm workers’ fears of being replaced.
no shit
“Our robots will cost less than half of minimum wage per hour to run! But don’t worry, we definitely won’t continue optimizing our profits.”
They’ll cost way more than that.
But they’ll produce the same work continuously for 24 hours a day, with x hours per month maintenance, and much closer to zero mistakes.
The automotive manufacture industry is a perfect case study. One of the first industries where such robots really made sense and were worth the cost. Especially becuase they removed people from the more dangerous tasks. Another angle I hear people arguing for robots (and makes sense).
They’re heavily automated today.
Designed to work collaboratively, sure, I can believe that. How many are you going to lay off tho?
I mean, the workers can find another job to be useful to society.
Automation is a good thing.
Yeah, that has worked really well in the past. At least here in the US when people are pushed out of jobs to enrich capitalists we tend to find a way to criminalize them and warehouse them in prisons while their communities rot.
Well, if the people really cared about their well-being and doing less work then they would enact laws to ensure the redistribution of wealth.
Are you dense
