Amazon plans to use automation to replace more than 600,000 workers who would otherwise be hired in the United States by 2033, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times. By that time, the company is expected to sell about twice as many goods as it does today.
Amazon’s robotics team is reportedly working toward the goal of automating 75% of its entire business. By 2027, it is expected to eliminate around 160,000 jobs in the US, saving the company an estimated $12.6 billion — equivalent to around 30 cents per item delivered.
This was always the plan. Everyone knew this. And still, governors all over the country gave sweet deals for amazon to set up warehouses to create imaginary jobs.
In theory this is awesome. Humans aren’t built for menial tasks. All repetitive monotonous tasks should be automated. However, this doesn’t fit our current economic system. Obviously all automation needs to be taxed, so that we don’t have to live this paradox where each technological advancement is a risk to our livelihood.
Yeah how exactly do they expect to sell twice as much product to a population that doesn’t have jobs/money to buy it.
Depressing bit of the day: I don’t have the source with me right now but there was a claim on youtube that the top 1% make up for like half of the consumer market in the USA.
Half of everything sold in dollars is done by the ultra rich. Everyone else is basically irrelevant and driven to extinction under capitalism, if that is accurate.
They’re not buying 50% of the junk on Amazon, they’re buying yachts and supercars.
Those studies do not refer to item volume, they refer to monetary value.
If a business can earn more by selling 5 cars worth half a million each per year, instead of trying to sell 20 or even 30 Cars under 40k to average people their entire business model will shift to cater to billionaires and multi millionaires.
The bulk of average people are becoming irrelevant to the current capitalist market, that’s the point.
Interesting, I’ve recently heard the automotive market is starting to cater to the $70k+ crowd and so this tracks somewhat. That said, the 1% accounting for 50% of consumption still sounds incredible.
1% is not just the ultra-rich. It likely includes a lot of people on lemmy right now
I think the big danger is that we have an 80% that are living hand to mouth and the main way to make money off of them is through their numbers, and jacking prices on life essentials to the absolute limit they can bear.
Then we have a 20% who are wealthier than the bottom 80% and these folks actually program the robots and run our economic system, and are paid well enough to buy the fancy products, etc. This 20% buy double what the 80% do or more and constitute a whole economy unto themselves.
The big game is convincing the 80% they can move into this 20% somehow. This keeps them from revolt, along with the fact that the 20% control the media and so on and work against wide messaging of even the existence of the problem let alone a revolutionary solution. Of course the absolute top fraction of that 20% have more wealth than everyone else combined and exert the most influence, largely through the 20% professional class that they allow to live in relative luxury.
Right now that top fractional 1% are asking themselves “hm, could AI shrink the 20% to 15%? That would improve our profit margins and shrink the only class of people with enough power to really disturb us.” Because the “we are the 99%!” crowd are really 20%ers most of the time. 80%ers are consumed by their immediate challenges of survival and the ill side effects of poverty AND above all the hustle to move into the 20%.
It’s an interesting comparison with pre-revolution. France where the 1% lived on the backs of an agrarian 99%. With the introduction of that magic 20%, the 1% are vastly more wealthy than if they lived off of pure agrarian peasantry. And they’ve created a buffer between them and the bottom tier that largely manages the masses for them, pacifying it with the promise of mobility. I don’t think anyone consciously plans this shit but if they did they’d be high fiving themselves for their absolute genius.
Consumer societies need consumer - producer chains. They are where the “proletariat” can rise against the “bourgeois”. Automation makes it all obsolete and begins to taunt with the possibility of making direct chains between actual resources to the ultrarich. Societies are then an artificial construct that can be left to die off like horses and donkeys when they are no longer a participant but an encroachment to the environment they contributed to.
Prisons need supplies
The problem with that is that either it’s privately owned or all taxes pass through a government that can make an authoritarian transition. Then people are left out.
Humans are the general purpose machine of trivial tasks, it’s literally what they’ve evolved for. Referring to trivial tasks as menial is purely a matter of perception, it can be menial when it’s work and entertainment when it’s for leisure. It’s ironic that AI came for the creative jobs that were supposedly going to be left for humans to achieve first, trampling over the IP rights that could have protected them. It’s a sign of things to come, and those things are not awesome.
… and they will have automated drone delivery by 2015!!
Picker bots are easy compared to drone delivery.
The systems already designed to be automated. That’s been the plan all along, remove the workers and make even more profit.
Let’s replace their customers with not-customers.
Shame everything you do on the internet supports them through AWS though. Maybe they need more outages to drive those customers away.
Flash sale: 30% off Teddy Bears
Seems to be working well for AWS.
and I’ve replaced amazon with normal shopping
I’ve replaced Amazon with various other shopping, but 3 of my purchases (shoes from Zappos and 2 eBay purchases) have come from Amazon anyway. It’s worse than I thought.
Have they replaced all their delivery vans from combustion to electric yet?
Isn’t this what all those artists were insisting they wanted? AI replacing rote labor instead of their “creative” jobs like producing advertising and concept art?
You forgot the part where companies suddenly and magically become benevolent and use their newly gained wealth to finance artist’s lifestyles. Presumably the ones that haven’t been replaced by AI.
The “just give us money” part of the artist’s wish is usually left unspoken.
Personally, I’m a supporter of UBI. It’s not reasonable to expect the companies to do something like this, this is the role and responsibility of government.
This is wrong.
They aren’t going to replace workers. It is just that they will hire 600 000 less workers than they normally would because they want to use AI instead.
The people working there still have job security.
Corporate simps like you are so pathetic.
Since when do we post Amazon’s investor marketing messages unfiltered here?
Do you really think that’s what this is, or do you have the self-awareness that you are trolling?
