Replaced: Amazon Primed To Outnumber Physical Workers In Warehouses
“They’re one step closer to that realization of the full integration of robotics,” said Rueben Scriven, research manager at Interact Analysis, a robotics consulting firm.
Amidst a rise in increasing mass-layoffs due to a stagnating and contracting economy, artificial intelligence and automation, Amazon has revealed that physical staff will be outnumbered by robots. Amazon has indicated this was going to happen for years but now it is here, and it represents what many other corporations are going to be doing soon as well.
Per The Wall Street Journal (excerpts):
The automation of Amazon.com facilities is approaching a new milestone: There will soon be as many robots as humans.
The e-commerce giant, which has spent years automating tasks previously done by humans in its facilities, has deployed more than one million robots in those workplaces, Amazon said. That is the most it has ever had and near the count of human workers at the facilities.
One of Amazon’s newer robots, called Vulcan, has a sense of touch that enables it to pick items from numerous shelves. Amazon has taken recent steps to connect its robots to its order-fulfillment processes, so the machines can work in tandem with each other and with humans.
“They’re one step closer to that realization of the full integration of robotics,” said Rueben Scriven, research manager at Interact Analysis, a robotics consulting firm.
Now some 75% of Amazon’s global deliveries are assisted in some way by robotics, the company said. The growing automation has helped Amazon improve productivity, while easing pressure on the company to solve problems such as heavy staff turnover at its fulfillment centers.
Robots are also supplanting some employees, helping the company to slow hiring. Amazon employs about 1.56 million people overall, with the majority working in warehouses.
The average number of employees Amazon had per facility last year, roughly 670, was the lowest recorded in the past 16 years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, which compared the company’s reported workforce with estimates of its facility count.
The number of packages that Amazon ships itself per employee each year has also steadily increased since at least 2015 to about 3,870 from about 175, the analysis found, an indication of the company’s productivity gains.
Some of Amazon’s newer facilities, such as those built for same-day delivery, have “smaller employee footprints and help us deliver with greater speed,” a company spokesman said.
Amazon is also rolling out artificial intelligence in its warehouses, Chief Executive Andy Jassy said recently, “to improve inventory placement, demand forecasting, and the efficiency of our robots.” Amazon said it will cut the size of its total workforce in the next several years.
The second-largest private employer in the U.S., Amazon is a bellwether for a range of businesses automating work around the country. Its broad rollout of robots shows how technological advances are accelerating, transforming factory floors and rippling through labor markets.
“You have completely new jobs being created,” such as robot technicians, said Yesh Dattatreya, senior applied scientist at Amazon Robotics. Warehouse workers are being trained in mechatronics and robotics apprenticeships.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
The WinePress had warned that Amazon was working towards this for the last couple of years. In 2023, Amazon announced they were testing an automated fulfillment center run by humanoid robots. The company was already “employing” 750,000 robots.
Last year, I covered how Amazon began flooding factories with Proteus robots to move heavy objects and packages, among other things.
Actions such as these are helping to fulfil the Agenda 2030 goals, where the masses will “own nothing and be happy.” According to an essay published by the World Economic Forum on life by 2030, the author wrote:
“When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I don’t really know if I would call it work anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.
“For a while, everything was turned into entertainment and people did not want to bother themselves with difficult issues. It was only at the last minute that we found out how to use all these new technologies for better purposes than just killing time.”
Indeed, as the WSJ pointed out, this is a bellwether and more corporate jobs are going to perform mass-layoffs over the course of the next several years, something I have warned was coming.
But don’t worry, Trump told me tariffs will bring back jobs (LOL). Yeah, the robots will be doing the jobs…
Proverbs 10:15 The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty.
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On one of his missionary journeys, the apostle Paul visited Athens, Greece, where he said he witnessed “the city wholly given to idolatry,” and who were “too superstitious” and worshipped a plurality of gods and deities, though the people acknowledged that there was still one God above all that was a mystery to them. When questioned by the philosophers …
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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