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Robot Janitors Are Coming to Mop Floors at a Walmart Near You
The world's largest retailer is rolling out 360 autonomous floor-scrubbing robots in some of its stores in the U.S. by the end of the[sic] January, it said in a joint statement with Brain Corp., which makes the machines. The autonomous janitors can clean floors on their own even when customers are around, according to the San Diego-based startup.
Walmart has already been experimenting with automating the scanning of shelves for out-of-stock items and hauling products from storage for online orders. Advances in computer vision are also making it possible to use retail floor data to better understand consumer behavior, improve inventory tracking and even do away with checkout counters, as Amazon.com Inc. is trying to do with its cashierless stores. Brain's robots are equipped with an array of sensors that let them to[sic] gather and upload data.
"We can take anything that has wheels and turn it into a fully autonomous robot, provided that it can go slow and stopping is never a safety concern," said Brain Chief Executive Office Eugene Izhikevich. "And it's more than just navigation. It is to robots what Android operating system is to smartphones."
Amazon wants to sell booze at one of its Chicago retail stores
Amazon.com Inc. wants to sell alcohol at its planned new Amazon Go retail store in the Illinois Center. Seattle-based Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) applied for a liquor license from the city of Chicago this month, with "Amazon Retail LLC" applying for package goods liquor license at 111 E. Wacker Drive, floor 1, according to the city.
Amazon announced its fourth Chicago-area Amazon Go retail store earlier this month, planned for Illinois Center, with an opening set for early 2019. None of the current Chicago Amazon Go stores currently sell alcohol.
Previously: Walmart to Deploy Shelf-Scanning Robots at 50 Stores
Amazon Plans to Open as Many as Six More Cashierless Amazon Go Stores This Year
Amazon Considering Opening Up to 3,000 New Cashierless "Amazon Go" Stores
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @06:28PM (37 children)
Why would they go away altogether? Menial jobs by definition are easy for humans to train for. And you don't need to license some expensive robot to do them.
Reduce the overhead of employing people, encourage the formation of new businesses, and don't be scared of automation - it has always increased the demand for human labor. As to "systemic wealth inequality", the biggest factor in generating it is a combination of ignoring future income and that most people are more interested in spending wealth than in saving and investing it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday December 03 2018, @07:18PM (10 children)
Why does any job go away? Because the robot does it more economically than a human can. There will not be as much money - or number of people also - sunk into Robot Salesman and Robot Repairmen as there are human floor moppers at Walmart. What may be different ("may," not, "is,") is that menial jobs are becoming by definition easier to automate and therefore the rate of replacement is increasing. Moreso than opportunities caused by increased population growth? Dunno. I think there must be an equalization point somewhere but it's too fluid to really measure.
Or most people are required to spend most (if not all) of their wealth for basic survival and do not have the excess to save or invest as the riche do. Or that you get one repairman and one robot salesman for every 10 out of work floor sweepers. And past performance is not a guarantor of future gains is what the doubters are trying to say.
Again, I vote "not enough data" but when automation is undertaken because it saves cost overall it is then on the automator to prove that times are the same as before and the displaced workers will all find places to go. Sooner or later you might run out of displacement.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @08:00PM (4 children)
Why does any job stay or come into being? Because the human does it good enough.
What increased population growth? It's been declining worldwide. Even in absolute numbers, it's almost constant right now (which means declining exponential rate).
Things are still improving for those "most". For example, the number of people who are at the worst level of poverty, barely surviving, has declined immensely in absolute number since 1970.
Fortunately, we have several centuries of history to draw upon. There's a long history of increased automation combined with increased worker power and income.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @08:24PM (2 children)
You're nuts, increased worker power and income only came from workers uniting for better working conditions. Automation freed up labor for other pursuits, but now we are seeing the reverse trend. All human labor is in the process of being automated away and your response is magic hand-wavy "will result in more jobs". That line only holds true if the average human has a decent amount of disposable income to spend on creative works or services that only humans are still able to provide.
Khallow the Shallow.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @09:30PM
You have that causation backwards. Increased worker power resulted in increased labor union power. Because how else can you explain the decline of US labor unions in the years since 1970?
Again backwards. Automation often resulted in increased demand for human labor.
Because all human labor is not in the process of being automated away. There's been a huge increase in the past 50 years in human labor globally. Again backwards.
More and more every day get that decent amount of disposable income.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:45PM
I'd bet that powered floor scrubbers (https://powerboss.com/product-categories/rider-scrubbers/nautilus/) displaced a lot more people (6-20 with mops and buckets) than a robotic floor sweeper (1 with a powered floor scrubber).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday December 03 2018, @10:18PM
No, it comes into being and stays because the work needs to be done. That's all. Whether a human or a machine does it, morals notwithstanding, is solely based on the economics of if it is cheaper for the machine to do it. When a machine instead of a person does it there is then a displaced worker to deal with. Especially now that you can plan work that will be done with machines at the outset that used to require humans (or more humans).
I think you mean the rate of growth has slowed [ourworldindata.org], not the total number of of people [wikipedia.org]. The only way you get an increased number of people working when automation lays off jobs is to make sure there is more work in the world to be done because there are more people on the globe today than yesterday who will require goods and services. Either that or those who have nothing to do because there are fewer people to serve, collectively, would have to be given largesse. And they would have nothing to do, all else as equal, because there would be less service needed with a smaller population.
The numbers are interesting. But the worst level of poverty is rated at less than $693 per year (if this source [ourworldindata.org] is trustworthy). Can you share how one saves and invests on that level of income? (Not reducing what might be seen as essentials, but socking it away on the promise of a better future....) Gallup suggests the median household income per year is $9,000 [gallup.com], and there are other sources which propose a parity-adjusted average level of income at about $18,000 per year. Either of those numbers don't seem like total horror, although there are regions in the United States where $18,000 isn't survivable for a single person to live alone and eat. It may not be starvation, and absolutely standards of living have gone up for anyone who has those minimum levels. But neither is it a rate compatible with "saving and investing" income on a scale which makes up for lost jobs. Except for the riche one who is making more money than yesterday and can afford to save or invest the proceeds. Investment does not automatically translate to more jobs than were lost. And not everyone displaced by a job will have the means or wherewithal to suddenly become a productive independent entrepreneur. "Wait, anyone can do that!" Yep. And damn few are successful at it, comparatively.
And again, you assume that the future will continue to be the way it was in the past. You do not have "several" centuries of history to deal with the industrial age, nor corporate expansion as we know the term today, let alone the information age and the strange child of those that is modern automation.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 03 2018, @10:04PM (2 children)
The interesting side of this equation is medical research - there's decades worth of learning and hundreds of hours per week worth of reading to keep up with all the relevant research in most active specialties, AI expert systems are starting to outstrip the meat-based physicians' competency in diagnosis and treatment prescription.
We still need friendly face MDs to talk to, and surgeons are generally more effective at (most) procedures than robots, but large parts of the hallowed profession are being out-performed by machines already, and the pace of change in that area isn't slowing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:06PM (1 child)
It is interesting (and modded as such...) - the only thing about the machines so far is that for the most part they have to be fed the data by a trained observer. One can automatically transmit vitals including glucometry, or even an EKG, without human intervention after setting the test up. The machine still has to be told the patient has 1+ grip strength with flaring pain and positive Tinel's and Phalen's signs before it can recommend imaging for carpal tunnel. So far. (OTOH, when an EKG is run the machine itself analyzes the strip and produces a report at the top of any anomalies it finds including if it thinks the leads were misplaced, which we call "Doc in the Box". It's quite good and a little scary to think about. There is a bit of art in EKG interpretation - like chess, the machine never "knows" what's really going on in the heart's electrical system from a holistic physiological process sense - but almost any named condition can be reduced to a deterministic set of characteristics.)
But I should have amend myself to say, "all jobs are becoming by definition easier to automate." Another reason to realize that this wave of automation is different from the past.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:23PM
It was about 19 years ago that I stood at "presentation day" in the FDA in Rockville, MD next to a company that was doing AI pap smear screening. At the time, only a trained (and highly paid) cytologist was qualified to look at a pap smear slide and tell you "Cancer / No Cancer," but the rest of the process between actual taking of the sample, down to mailing the results was just about 100% automated. The slides were already better prepared for reading by machines than people, and even 19 years ago the AI was outperforming the people on production work. Tellingly: at that time, when sat down head to head man vs machine short duration showdown, most cytologists could outperform the AI, but when faced with a 40 hour production oriented work week, the AI outperformed the people solidly.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)
It seems to me that there is not one job, not one, in the financial sector that shouldn't have been automated away with very small shellscripts decades ago, yet somehow the bankers have not laid themselves off to increase efficiency. Why is that?
It seems to me that most jobs in government bureaucracies could have been automated away with very small shellscripts decades ago, but government bureaucracies have not shrunk, but have expanded dramatically in size and wealth (the counties surrounding DC are the richest in the nation). Why is that?
Instead, it's the relatively technically difficult to automate jobs of bus driver, cab driver, construction worker, delivery man, etc. that seem to be first on the chopping block thanks to robots and other forms of automation. Why is that?
With telepresence doctors and lawyers could have been outsourced a long time ago to India and China, but somehow they haven't been. Why is that?
There are many, many MBA holders from the third-world who could easily have replaced the Western MBAs as H1-B holders, at a fraction of the cost, but somehow they haven't been. Why is that?
Rather, it's all the people who do the actual work who are under constant threat of outsourcing, H1-Bs, and unskilled illegal immigrants taking their jobs. Why is that?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:51PM
All of the engineering jobs that I did in the 1980's (as an intern) are gone. Most of the engineering jobs too. Engineers are just doing something different.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @07:20PM (8 children)
Yes some menial jobs will hang around, but a LOT of humans are going to have no employment opportunities UNLESS the middle class is revived and people can once again pay to have others do their chores. If I had enough disposable income I'd sign up for laundry, yard, and cleaning services. Of course all those services will get knocked out as soon as someone makes a bot that can do it faster / better. Just sit in the truck supervising.
Hahahahahah fuck off with your 2nd post you victim blaming shit stain. You are the WORST. At least TMB, EF, and fuck EVEN JMORRIS have more humanity than you. You are just a boot licking toady.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @08:02PM (7 children)
You do realize that a key reason the middle class is declining is because the upper classes are increasing in size?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @09:00PM (6 children)
Is there a clueless mod? I think we should add a clueless mod...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @09:46PM (2 children)
I've talked [soylentnews.org] about this before. From that journal, there's a link to a Pew Research Center study which concluded that between 1971 and 2015, the middle class (as a measure of income) in the US shrunk from 61% to 50% (which let us note is an increase in absolute terms due to population growth), combined with an increase in the lower income from 25% to 29% and an increase in the upper income classes from 14% to 21%.
In other words, the upper income classes increased at almost double the rate of the lower income classes. That's where the previous AC's whining about a declining middle class failed to get a clue. These tiresome arguments show up again and again. But where's the evidence for them?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:24AM (1 child)
You're such a disingenuous shill, trying to spin population growth as some positive numbers growth when the middle class is actually shrinking and losing money? Fuck off you sociopath.
You basically just proved my point, wealth inequality is growing and that top 10% better watch out when shit hits the fan. From history it is clear that many innocent people get caught by class warfare, not just the criminals who deserve what they get. Get a clue khallow!! Fix income inequality (tax the rich not the poor) and we can go peacefully into the future.
Somehow I doubt that can happen, you greedy fucks are not just greedy but short sighted and won't even plan for the future.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:23AM
And you are a dumbshit who didn't read the post. Read the post. Then comment.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 03 2018, @10:24PM (1 child)
Yes, and a "boring and predictable" one as well.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:24AM
It's truth. It's not meant to be exciting and unpredictable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:54PM
No, that one is true.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Monday December 03 2018, @07:35PM (16 children)
If automation knocks out half of the janitors, taxi drivers, fast food employees, cashiers, etc., pretty soon you will be left with a lot of unemployable people. A bounty of high skilled jobs aren't going to materialize out of nowhere. New companies will be using less people to do more. Factories will be automating more with a handful of people supervising. Machine learning algorithms will replace desk jobs in some cases, reduce the amount of CGI/animators needed, etc. There will still be jobs, but they'll be more competitive than ever.
What price point is acceptable for a robot that would take the place of a fast food worker? 1 year of paychecks? Maybe up to 2-3 years? Perhaps the robot will be able to handle food as well as 2 humans can. Although it is relatively easy to pull someone off the street and have them do a menial job, perhaps big companies will have enough scale to take the initial financial hit of buying the robots. Or they can gradually roll them out across locations, as Walmart is doing.
Maybe the situation is not as dire as I think, but it sure ain't as rosy as you think.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday December 03 2018, @08:17PM (4 children)
"If". I think there's a reason this hasn't happened yet (rather the opposite). Robots just aren't that cheap. And there's little point to automating these jobs when robots can automate jobs that humans just aren't good at instead. Instead the more successful approach has been to use automation to increase the value of human labor, such as specialized tools that help people do their job better, such as fry cookers with programmable timers, taxi meters, and cash registers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @01:09AM (3 children)
Robots are dirt cheap compared to a year of human wages. Try again fool, we're just waiting for the manufacturing to get cheap enough and the machine learning to become powerful enough that these robots can hop into any menial labor task. Won't be long.
Those 3 jobs you just mentioned are the first ones on the block. Fast food cooks? Getting automated. Taxis? Self driving cars. Cash registers? Already in process.
There is 100% going to be a tipping point where robots become cheaper than humans, and the pressure will steadily ramp up until then. As soon as that threshold hits you will have mass civil unrest guaranteed, if not before that. Society will need to restructure drastically, or regulate automation to prevent mass layoffs while we figure shit out.
Why I bother replying to you I don't know, at least you are trying to discuss the topic even if you are blatantly pushing an agenda.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:21AM (2 children)
Not much point to saying that when the cheap robots don't do much either.
Cheaper to who and for what? Let's see first, if it's going to be an actual problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:16PM (1 child)
So instead of planning on how to prevent a problem we have to see it happen first? That is dumb.
I am not saying to restructure society regardless, just that we should be considering how to move forward when all the experts are agreeing that many jobs are gong to get automated. There is nothing wrong with planning, but I guess that means you have to consider your external costs and THAT is something you have nightmares about.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:30PM
Indeed. Of course, if we really thought it was a problem, we could do things right now to delay or mitigate the impact. Like reduce the cost of employing people, for example. That means dropping stuff like high minimum wages, short work weeks, Social Security, too big to fail companies, massive regulation refactoring, and dismantling labor union oligopolies.
Experts who happen to know what it takes to get media exposure and won't ever face any negative consequences for erroneous predictions.
What external costs and what nightmares?
And by planning, what is your fix again?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Monday December 03 2018, @08:30PM (7 children)
But with companies not needing to spend as much money on low tier jobs, won't that make products cost less for people so that....
bwhahaha, sorry I can't finish that thought with a straight face. There is zero percent change companies will pass the savings along to consumers.
Supposedly this is what will happen with our transition to a "service economy". Of course, a lot of those service jobs are also pretty easy to automate.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:19AM
Yeah, that "lower cost" was a big selling point in my econ classes. It has happened for a lot of things, but usually only emerging markets. Once a market is saturated there is very little incentive for anyone to lower costs. If one company figures out how to do so they keep the price where it is and pocket the profits. Occasionally there may be market grabs where one company tries to underbid another in hopes of sinking them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:16AM
Well, I do have to admit that a 20meg hard drive use to cost about 2000 dollars. Probably still do because they're rare antiques now
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:23AM (4 children)
Even if that were true, and it's not, that still means that more value is being generated for the same price. It'll get invested or spent, one way or another.
Meanwhile, due to competition, consumers do see those price drops. For example, computer equipment, cars, food, retail anything, etc.
Is uninformed cynicism the new cool thing?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:52PM (3 children)
This has been Walmart's modus operandi for decades. Sell so low that you run the competition out of business. Become the biggest employer in the town, now they own the town and can charge whatever they want and abuse employees and deliver shitty customer service.
That robots are getting involved is nothing new. That meme about not being able to find more than one cashier in a place with 30 lanes is there for a reason.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:02PM (2 children)
What of the 95+% of the US that isn't a one store town?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:15PM (1 child)
That wasn't the case before Walmart.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:34PM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 03 2018, @10:08PM (2 children)
The market for cock suckers and ass kissers is inexhaustible. It takes little talent and is highly valued.
Note: intended as euphemism, the majority of cock suckers and ass kissers in today's world don't actually put mouth to flesh - but it is pretty hard to hold down this kind of job as a work-from-home thing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday December 04 2018, @01:47AM
I've said repeatedly that automation will cause more people to prostitute themselves. So they will become literal cock suckers and ass kissers. And they can work from "home". That's what people can do with Backpage and similar services.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:28AM
Not really on both counts. Just like any other good/service, one can (and IMHO already has) oversupply that market, and they sure aren't highly valued. But I guess you made your cynicism quota for the day?