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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: 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.