Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

[wjfox]

Fears of employee displacement as Amazon brings robots into warehouses

Thu 19 Oct 2023 06.00 BST

Amazon is experimenting with a humanoid robot as the technology company increasingly seeks to automate its warehouses.

It has started testing Digit, a two-legged ​r​obot that can grasp and lift items, at facilities this week. The device is first being used to shift empty tote boxes.

The company’s ambitious drive to integrate robotics across its sprawling operation has sparked fears about the effect on its ​workforce of almost 1​.5​ million human​s.

Tye Brady, the chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, claimed that – although it will render some jobs redundant – the deployment of robots would create new ones.

In a briefing at a media event at an Amazon facility on the outskirts of Seattle, Brady told reporters that he wants to “eliminate all the menial, the mundane and the repetitive” tasks inside Amazon’s business. He denied this would lead to job cuts however, claiming that it “does not” mean Amazon will require fewer staff.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... it-workers

[funkervogt]

Fears of employee displacement as Amazon brings robots into warehouses

Thu 19 Oct 2023 06.00 BST

Amazon is experimenting with a humanoid robot as the technology company increasingly seeks to automate its warehouses.

It has started testing Digit, a two-legged ​r​obot that can grasp and lift items, at facilities this week. The device is first being used to shift empty tote boxes.

The company’s ambitious drive to integrate robotics across its sprawling operation has sparked fears about the effect on its ​workforce of almost 1​.5​ million human​s.

Tye Brady, the chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, claimed that – although it will render some jobs redundant – the deployment of robots would create new ones.

In a briefing at a media event at an Amazon facility on the outskirts of Seattle, Brady told reporters that he wants to “eliminate all the menial, the mundane and the repetitive” tasks inside Amazon’s business. He denied this would lead to job cuts however, claiming that it “does not” mean Amazon will require fewer staff.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... it-workers

Well, WHO DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING?

Also, why should anyone be mad about this? Aren't Amazon warehouse jobs horrible, and isn't Jeff Bezos a cruel boss? Getting rid of all those bad jobs by installing machines will end the suffering, right?

[raklian]

There is a fundamental solution that will solve all of this but inexplicably no one wants it.

[raklian]

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

To get a full picture of the impact of generative AI on the employment picture, one should also look at jobs created in training such generative AI. Unfortunately, many of these jobs are of very low pay. So, we see a transformation from skilled middle-class employment to very low paid relatively unskilled or semi-skilled employment. This can involve a geographic shift in employment location as well. This is well described in a Wired article on the subject (see below). It is also unclear to me how long these training jobs will last. Once the initial training is complete, will there be a need for additional training or will developed AI take it all from there?


Millions of Workers Are Training Artificial Intelligence Models for Pennies
by Niamh Rowe
October 16, 2023

Introduction:

(Wired) IN 2016, OSKARINA Fuentes got a tip from a friend that seemed too good to be true. Her life in Venezuela had become a struggle: Inflation had hit 800 percent under President Nicolás Maduro, and the 26-year-old Fuentes had no stable job and was balancing multiple side hustles to survive.

Her friend told her about Appen, an Australian data services company that was looking for crowdsourced workers to tag training data for artificial intelligence algorithms. Most internet users will have done some form of data labeling: identifying images of traffic lights and buses for online captchas. But the algorithms powering new bots that can pass legal exams, create fantastical imagery in seconds, or remove harmful content on social media are trained on datasets—images, video, and text—labeled by gig economy workers in some of the world’s cheapest labor markets.

Appen’s clients have included Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, and the company’s 1 million contributors are just a part of a vast, hidden industry. The global data collection and labeling market was valued at $2.22 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $17.1 billion by 2030, according to consulting firm Grand View Research. As Venezuela slid into an economic catastrophe, many college-educated Venezuelans like Fuentes and her friends joined crowdsourcing platforms like Appen.

Read more here: https://www.wired.com/story/millions-o ... -pennies

[Tadasuke]

I do not think that we are heading into any kind of global high unemployment problem in the next few decades. There's really a lot to do from both humans and machines. The world is in such a poor, bad state, that we have a lots of work left for us.

If we work for the next 100 years, half of us are going to perish in the process, but the other half is going to arrive in a much, much better world overall, when and where those remaining will be able to have all the fun they want. We will drink lots of champagne when and if we reach 2123 alive!

It's hard to feel good from having fun when having in mind how bad things really are. Work can bring satisfaction and even something akin to happiness, aside from money. My friend with whom I used to play video games with, flew to the middle of Africa, stayed there for almost 5 years to help natives in various ways, including teaching them English and working with them. They actually had pet adult lions, which didn't hurt any humans. He said he couldn't just sit playing video games or writing essays, when there are important things to do.

AI indeed replaces some jobs, but it's not like there will be fewer available jobs in 2053 than they are in 2023. Perhaps slightly less jobs, but it won't be a large difference for sure. Also, population is aging and there are fewer and fewer children being born in the so called 'developed countries'. Less available biological workforce + more available robot/AI workforce = similar levels of unemployment, with or without UBI. I'm for UBI btw, just not in the 2020s, we can wait a bit, let's say to the 2030s.

[Cyber_Rebel]

AI indeed replaces some jobs, but it's not like there will be fewer available jobs in 2053 than they are in 2023. Perhaps slightly less jobs, but it won't be a large difference for sure. Also, population is aging and there are fewer and fewer children being born in the so called 'developed countries'. Less available biological workforce + more available robot/AI workforce = similar levels of unemployment, with or without UBI. I'm for UBI btw, just not in the 2020s, we can wait a bit, let's say to the 2030s.

I wouldn't be so certain about this since we're already seeing humanoid robots replacing mundane task in real time. By 2053, which is 30 years ahead of where we are now, all of these technologies should be mature enough to actually do everything a human can (if not far more), and I really don't believe that it'll take that long to reach this point.

If you have a super intelligent robot who never tires, can not only do physically demanding jobs but intellectual white collar ones as well, then for what reason would you hire a human who is costly to train and is inferior across several domains? The population aging is also happening in real time and is an issue for several countries, so I imagine this would only accelerate the process of automation.



This is literally a former president outright calling for UBI, right now before people start becoming displaced if we were to wait longer. Even the most recent GPT update shows the quickened potential of wiping startups before they can even adapt to the new environment.

I don't believe we should slow down because that would only delay the inevitable anyways. We should be "working" towards a future without work, but we need to implement certain changes very soon to keep pace with the advancing rate of technology. It's not going to bode well if people end up becoming displaced with little to no safety nets or redistribution methods to counterbalance it.

[wjfox]

[Tadasuke]

If you have a super intelligent robot who never tires, can not only do physically demanding jobs, but intellectual white collar ones as well, then for what reason would you hire a human who is costly to train and is inferior across several domains? The population aging is also happening in real time and is an issue for several countries, so I imagine this would only accelerate the process of automation.

The problem lies in AI and robots being stupid, despite the hype and either over-optimism about how it will help us or over-pessimism about how it will bring our doom. For now I just see mundane changes like irritating spambots on Twitter or Facebook. Nothing that would help me. Just more of the same level of stuff as in 2015. I'm personally not impressed with ChatGPT. Even today it failed to answer my questions correctly.

But you know what? It finally stopped making me depressed. Now I think we need to try better, because to this day, our efforts haven't brought good enough fruits. It's not about working hard. It's about working smart and being smart. Not like "smart"phone smart, but actually smart. Otherwise things will continue to be miserable and we don't want that.

So no, I'm not worried about unemployment for the near future. But UBI isn't a bad idea. I think it's a pretty good idea overall.