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Years after patenting the concept, Amazon admits putting workers in a cage would be a bad idea:
Warehouse workers confined in cages? That's the dark vision evoked by an essay delving into the worries that come along with the development of artificial-intelligence devices such as the Amazon Echo speaker.
"Anatomy of an AI System" was published on Friday by the AI Now Institute and Share Lab — and it's already gotten a rise from the executive in charge of Amazon's distribution system, who says the cage concept never ended up being used.
The 7,300-word essay was written by Kate Crawford, who is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research as well as co-founder and co-director of New York University's AI Now Institute; and Vladan Joler, director of the Share Foundation and a professor at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia.
Crawford and Joler focused on the human and industrial angles behind the Echo device, rather than strictly on the computer science behind artificial intelligence. The topics range from the extraction of raw materials that go into the electronics, to the labor that's required to build the devices, to the roles played by Amazon Web Services, Amazon's Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing network and the Amazon distribution system.
"At every level, contemporary technology is deeply rooted in and running on the exploitation of human bodies," the authors wrote.
[...] Amazon's inventors said the device was designed to keep workers safe if they had to cross paths with warehouse robots that could pose an injury hazard — for example, when picking up fallen items, dealing with a malfunctioning robot or crossing an off-limits area to get to a restroom.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday September 10 2018, @03:37PM
A few days ago I was in an Amazon Fulfillment Center. From what I saw the "robots" were in an enormous cage, I don't remember seeing humans in there. Humans go in to fix problems, somehow the "robots" stay away from humans. The robots were just little cars that lift and move a stack of bins to human packers. They don't move fast, and they might have been about 1' x 2'. There are lots of videos online, including ones showing humans in the robot cage. The humans are not caged nor have any special safety equipment beyond the standard steel-toed shoes, hard hat, bright vest, long pants, etc.
Outside the caged area, the human areas were very well marked with clearly outlined paths. I did not see any robots in the human areas. The humans were very free to move around, seemed to like their jobs, and overall it's a very efficient and productive operation.