[athenot]

> This box robot (…) doesn't ever call in sick.

Any machine eventually calls in sick when it undergoes maintenance and failure. Of course the failure modes are different than with human labor, but the point is machines also fail.

[jimmywanger]

>Any machine eventually calls in sick when it undergoes maintenance and failure. Of course the failure modes are different than with human labor, but the point is machines also fail.

I think that robots are more fungible and predictable in failure than humans. You can plan around that, like plugging in spare hard drives and machines when they fail so throughput is not affected.