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foxnews.com/tech/amazon-machines-replace-thousands-of-jobs
The machines, which were being tested in a few warehouses in recent years, are able to scan goods coming down a conveyor belt and put them in custom-built boxes a few seconds later.
The machines can pack up boxes at a rate of 600 to 700 per hour, or four to five times as fast as human workers, according to Reuters, which first reported the development.
Also at: Reuters
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New Amazon Machines Can Pack 600 Orders Per Hour, Could Replace Thousands of Jobs
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Do not use if foil seal is broken.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday May 19 2019, @08:11PM (3 children)
Sadly, the near future will be millions of robots selling products to millions of unemployed people.
As opposed to a more desirable, totally non-capitalistic future where mankind is freed from toil by the machines it managed to create over aeons of successful evolution, and the few that still work - not because they have to but because they choose to - get to enjoy an even better life.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Monday May 20 2019, @07:49AM (1 child)
The future is going to be what your teachers warned you about:
Skilled labour in demand, everyone else unemployed.
You can only automate unskilled labour out of existence. The definition of unskilled evolves, but not by much. A plumber is skilled. An electrician is skilled. You can't automate their jobs (though there's no reason you couldn't start to see pre-fab houses with pre-run cables and plumbing).
Box-packing is not skilled labour. It may not be easy, it may not be fun, it may require a certain experience of how to pack properly, and a certain dedication to get the packing numbers required, but it's unskilled. And easily replaceable.
I don't know about you but McDonald's employee are basically disappearing now... kiosks to buy your food, everyone behind the counter cooking, and with drive-thrus and the collection counters there's basically one guy handing you the order... and he can be automated out of existence by a conveyor belt.
If you don't want to be automated out of a job, obtain a skill that's not so easily replicated. Sure, there are some industries where even highly-skilled labourers aren't protected (e.g. think about all the internal combustion engine designers in 50 year's time)... but they should be skilled enough to retrain and apply their skills to other areas that are needed.
If your job has featured on How It's Made, you're gonna need a new job. If your job consists of a small handful of mindless operations that any able-bodied person can do, you're gonna need a new job.
Even in a future of Universal Basic Income, the skilled are going to lead a more privileged life than the rest of us, and good luck to them!
The alternative, especially in IT, is to be able to learn REALLY well and REALLY fast - that's a skill in itself.
Remember when your teachers told you that you'd end up pushing burgers around, and that's no job for anyone? They said that for a reason. They were also telling you that robots were the future even back in the 60's.
If you are utterly skill-less, then I'm afraid my sympathy is low unless there's a seriously compelling reason for that - and likely that reason is something along the lines of being a paraplegic or similar.
Charlie and The Chocolate Factory taught you this lesson: Putting the tops on toothpaste isn't a long-term career. Being the guy who fixes the machine that puts the tops on the toothpaste may well be.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday May 20 2019, @02:50PM
What is considered skilled and unskilled, however, dynamically changes with technology advances. Burger Flipper versus Executive Chef - both will produce a cheeseburger but the Burger Flipper can be automated. Perhaps it would be better to view it as deterministic versus non-deterministic tasks. With what passes for Artificial Intelligence now, though, even that definition is fairly plastic today.
Though I will believe MIT about the reality of automation losses: Nobody really knows for sure [technologyreview.com] what will happen tomorrow.
What Charlie and the Chocolate Factory taught me was that one needs to find an exploitable slave-labor population nobody else knows about who are personally grateful to you, and that if you don't have a Sugar Daddy you should prepare for the imminent development of cap-less toothpaste tube next year.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 20 2019, @06:32PM
Until the AI that owns all the stuff cuts us off. Such fantasies are wonderful until you realize that you have no control over whether the fantasy stays on the rails. At least with capitalist futures, we own stuff and thus, have some additional level of control over our destinies.