[colinmhayes]

I think the mindset that explains amazon's decisions here is that their warehouse workers are only there because they haven't figured out how to automate them yet. Amazon's long term goal is to figure out how to make a robot that can grab items and put them into boxes quickly, but until then they're going to have people who they treat like robots do the work instead. One of the consequences of this mindset is they've made extremely easy to plug new hires in with minimal orientation. Everything is standardized and the computer is organizing everything, no thinking required means no training required.

[nebula8804]

I feel like the whole company may one day go this route. Imagine a company run by an AI thats plugged into the market. No CEO needed, any jobs that haven't been automated will have tasks directly dispensed and monitored by this AI. Its primary goal will be to maximize shareholder value and it will do it with an efficiency and ruthlessness that even Elon Musk can't match. The coming end state of Amazon makes me appreciate my current boring CEO very much.

[netsharc]

It'd make a great movie to watch (but a weird thing to experience in real life). The AI should also figure out how to influence people to consume even more, maybe by buying/creating social media companies so it can deliver more ads.

[nebula8804]

It would be a miserable existence but I can't see any other direction for our current unchecked capitalism to move towards. The capital class also write the laws in this country so this sort of company is inevitable whether or not it ends up being Amazon.

[zhengyi13]

We're gonna build a paperclip maximizer on purpose?

[nebula8804]

Why wouldn't we? Ironically the CEO may lose their job before the coders lol

[sudosysgen]

We already did, it's called the public corporation.

[ben7799]

AKA Phillip K. Dick's Autofac.. eventually manufacturing more consumers for itself to sell to.