Before people bring their pitchforks to this headline, take a look at existing automation in factories [1][2] and ask yourself why would we ever want humans to do something that robots can do this well? Also despite the fact that humanoids are all the hype now (and included in the article), note that amazon has been investing in much more specialized approaches for quite some time [3][4].
There are so many things we can be doing with our time, and moving objects from a left-bin to a right-bin simply does not need to be one of them. The real question is if we have the collective will to get all these folks education and opportunities to do something else before they feel too much pain in the near term.
> Before people bring their pitchforks to this headline
In addition to your points, something people forget is that in the previous model of brick and mortar stores, the consumer is the person that did the walking around the store and picking the items off the shelf and carrying them to the checkout.
So a portion of what Amazon is automating used to be performed for free by the consumer. This was one of the big arguments about their business model for shipping books early on, the additional costs in a competitive retail market seemed like it would be unprofitable.
That leads to the cost of cleaning up after the customer to make sure they can buy what they need.
Before Amazon, there were the club warehouse retail models like Costco where the frontend experience was cut down and the backend infrastructure scaled up. This all led to cost savings passed onto the customer.
Amazon seems like the next step where the last mile delivery infrastructure was expanded and the retail frontend was replaced by a website. Instead of millions of frontend retail workers, it's software knowledge workers with an accompanying expansion of the backend retail workers.
Now, the software knowledge workers are eating backend retail.
Imagine the crash in book sales if humans were not hustling and could spend time socializing meaningfully.
Job culture is nothing but empty competition. Billions of normalized thinkers reduced to nothing but tools of a "trade". Where trade is normalized to time for money.
Not a fan of the racism and gender bias, but am 1000% indifferent to bougie labor exploiting office workers being handed their hat.
"Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" Yeah but you all suck to work with because that's all you are; HR slang, marketroid speak, programming language gibberish. Yawn.
Am psyched the zeitgeist is turning on "knowledge workers" who ignored worker exploitation and devaluation of others just the same.
> if we have the collective will to get all these folks education and opportunities to do something else
I hear this often, but have not read a single explanation of what the "something else" is that these people are supposed to do (a "something else" that we aren't also actively trying to replace with AI or AI driven processes). Barbers? Nail salons? I think we have enough of those already.
absolutely; but nobody is planning for this or even seriously considering it. to the contrary, we now have a government that is happy to take away healthcare and food stamps from its working class citizens
> we will have masses of disenfranchised and dissatisfied people
I fear this is coming
> with no incentive to keep society working
as long as the rich get serviced, they won't care much whether society is "working" or not
Oh, yes, everyone can "just" switch careers into difficult, underpaid, passion-driven work paid for with money that already doesn't exist, let alone in an economy where Amazon & friends rake in 90% of all cash flow and has no employees to pay it out to.
ICE got billions of dollars this year seemingly out of thin air, and they are paying up to $50k for a signing bonus. The manhattan project went from nothing to an operation with 130,000 people in just four years.
You really don't think we can just fund people to go into healthcare or teaching? You understand that there is no real reason for those professions have to be chronically underpaid and overworked, right?
Yes exactly - "Anything we can actually do, we can afford"
I would also suspect that more than 50% of the people working this kind of unskilled labour do have aspirations to do more, it's just that it's hard to switch because they cannot afford to, they're working towards it or they're kind of stuck.
We certainly have the money, but there is no political will to make it happen. I'd love to see the military budget cut it half and it fund social programs and more teachers. But baring a social revolution (which may indeed be forthcoming) it won't happen. That's the harsh reality of our late-stage capitalist society.
nursing is a highly skilled job which the vast majority of people are _not_ cut out for; it's also highly competitive. Your average Amazon warehouse worker or truck driver is _not_ becoming a nurse
> elderly care
this would be something like a CNA; doesn't require the skills of a nurse ,but most people do not want this job (and also wouldn't be very good at it); there's a reason why a lot of undocumented people do elderly care in America
> environmental remediation
sure, this would be a good one. but who is paying for that? it's not a money maker, so unless it's government funded like the CCC, it's not going to happen. and given that work programs like that are "socialism", it's not going to happen in the US any time soon
> teachers
teaching, like nursing, is a job that most people are _not_ well suited for. more importantly, like the last one, who is paying for this? our government is trying to gut public education, not spend more money on it.
So, again, unless there is a _new_ industry that can provide a _large_ number of jobs, which is driven by _profit-seeking companies_ (because otherwise, who is paying?), it is _not_ happening. And so far, there is no indication that such jobs or companies exist.
So my point stands. This is _not_ like the Industrial Revolution or any other "revolution" (computerization, internet, etc.), all of which spawned entire new industries.
We could be spending our time more wisely, but our addiction to quarterly cycles needs something now as opposed to a hypothetical better future for the displaced workers.
In addition to your points, something people forget is that in the previous model of brick and mortar stores, the consumer is the person that did the walking around the store and picking the items off the shelf and carrying them to the checkout.
So a portion of what Amazon is automating used to be performed for free by the consumer. This was one of the big arguments about their business model for shipping books early on, the additional costs in a competitive retail market seemed like it would be unprofitable.