The New York Times reports that “interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by the New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.
“Amazon’s U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million. But Amazon’s automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027. That would save about 30 cents on each item that Amazon picks, packs and delivers to customers.
“Executives told Amazon’s board last year that they hoped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. work force in the coming years, even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033.
“That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon didn’t need to hire.”
According to the story, “At facilities designed for superfast deliveries, Amazon is trying to create warehouses that employ few humans at all. And documents show that Amazon’s robotics team has an ultimate goal to automate 75 percent of its operations.
“Amazon is so convinced this automated future is around the corner that it has started developing plans to mitigate the fallout in communities that may lose jobs. Documents show the company has considered building an image as a ‘good corporate citizen’ through greater participation in community events such as parades and Toys for Tots.
“The documents contemplate avoiding using terms like ‘automation’ and ‘A.I.’ when discussing robotics, and instead use terms like ‘advanced technology’ or replace the word ‘robot’ with ‘cobot,’ which implies collaboration with humans.”
In a statement to the Times, Amazon downplayed any shift to robotics:
“Amazon said in a statement that the documents viewed by the Times were incomplete and did not represent the company’s overall hiring strategy. Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said the documents reflected the viewpoint of one group inside the company and noted that Amazon planned to hire 250,000 people for the coming holiday season, though the company declined to say how many of those roles would be permanent.
“Amazon also said that it’s not insisting executives avoid certain terms, and that community involvement is unrelated to automation.”
KC’s View:
Jeff Bezos always has been seen as someone who preferred mechanization and algorithms to people and human judgement. People, in his reputed view, are a variable that are by their very nature in consistent and undependable. They also like raises, benefits, take sick time and lunch breaks, expect to be treated like actual people, and occasionally vote to unionize. Robots, AI and algorithms, on the other hand, don’t. Period. End of sentence.
Companies like Amazon love to say that these internal documents just represent the random musings of an isolated group of employees, that they’re not really representative of the direction of the company. But is there anyone out there reading this story who thinks it doesn’t ring true, that such a move would be out of character for the company?
My guess: Nobody feels that way.
As for “Cobot?” “Toys for Tots?” Total B.S., in the sense that a change in terminology and some toy donations won’t mask what is really happening here.
And let’s be clear. This is just the beginning. As the Times writes, “Amazon’s plans could have profound impact on blue-collar jobs throughout the country and serve as a model for other companies like Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, and UPS. The company transformed the U.S. work force as it created a booming demand for warehousing and delivery jobs. But now, as it leads the way for automation, those roles could become more technical, higher paid and more scarce.”
The question is whether, having transformed communities and economies, companies like Amazon will end up laying waste to the human landscape.
There’s a corollary here, I think. The burgeoning growth of AI data centers requires enormous amount of water that is used both for cooling the centers and generating the electricity needed to run them. In the communities where these data centers are being built, there could be enormous economic and environmental costs as well as scarcity for the people and smaller businesses that occupy them. And, making things worse, there is little regulation or tracking of water use by AI data centers, and so this could all happen before we realize what is happening. And you can count on the fact that big AI companies will say that states should not regulate this issue because it requires a national approach, and then will do their best to make sure that any legislation passed by Congress – if it passes anything at all – is weak sauce.
From robotics and AI, this is all moving very fast. It is hard to track and calculate. Which is just how big tech like it, and precisely why smaller businesses (which is pretty much every business) and citizens need to pay attention.
The post Amazon Could Replace 600,000 Jobs With Robots In Less Than A Decade appeared first on MNB.
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