Amazon Plans to Replace 500,000 People With Robots

[lightbright]

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) hired over 200,000 part-time workers to help with holiday sales. That is good news for the overall economy. It indicates that people plan to spend briskly over the holidays. That, in turn, will help Amazon’s e-commerce top line. However, those people may not get jobs next year, and many full-time employees may find themselves out of work as well.

The New York Times got ahold of confidential Amazon documents that indicate the company plans to automate huge numbers of tasks that are done by people. Robots will take over their workload. Management also told its board that it expects a surge in orders, reaching twice the current level by 2033.

“Robots” is another word for AI-based automation that can replace most of the people who work in its massive warehouses. These are central to Amazon’s ability to deliver items to customers in one or two days. By most estimates, Amazon has 350 warehouses worldwide and another 1,200 logistics facilities.

The Times quoted Daron Acemoglu, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has a Nobel Prize in economics. He said, “Nobody else has the same incentive as Amazon to find a way to automate.” To accomplish this, the company’s e-commerce division will need nearly a million robots. Presumably, the plan will save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Amazon indeed has a powerful incentive to set up a more automated system. Its North American e-commerce margins are thin. In the most recent quarter, revenue for the region was $100 billion and operating income was $7.5 billion.

Amazon is uniquely positioned for the plan. It is among the early leaders in artificial intelligence. Up against Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and OpenAI, it plans to invest $100 billion in the technology this year. That is a staggering amount, even for the second-largest company in the United States as measured by revenue. It can recoup at least some of that AI investment by significantly cutting its e-commerce workforce.

Amazon Stock Price Prediction and Forecast 2025-2030

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-plans-replace-500-000-141540433.html

 

[Dannyblueyes]

Good!

Once those plants are fully automated cities will stop giving tax incentives people will get better paying jobs somewhere else

 

[lightbright]

Good!

Once those plants are fully automated cities will stop giving tax incentives people will get better paying jobs somewhere else

Every time I speak to one of those customer service reps, which I prefer to do, I tell them that AI and Bezos are coming for them..... I get anoying prompts that try to steer me away from a live person and towards a computer link for an Amazon chatbot


.

 

[tallblacknyc]

Good!

Once those plants are fully automated cities will stop giving tax incentives people will get better paying jobs somewhere else

Or places that lack jobs in their towns will really have no jobs now that robots gonna displace them

 

[Dannyblueyes]

Or places that lack jobs in their towns will really have no jobs now that robots gonna displace them

Which is why giving tax incentives to big business is usually a terrible idea. Instead, cities should use that money to incentivize smaller locally owned businesses. Otherwise you might as well turn city council over to Emperor Bezos too.

 

[tallblacknyc]

Which is why giving tax incentives to big business is usually a terrible idea. Instead, cities should use that money to incentivize smaller locally owned businesses. Otherwise you might as well turn city council over to Emperor Bezos too.

20 small biz might not even employ 100+ people combine, yet 1 Amazon location can employ hundreds to thousands of people.. a biz doesn't necessarily create lots of job opportunities especially if it's small

 

[Dannyblueyes]

20 small biz might not even employ 100+ people combine, yet 1 Amazon location can employ hundreds to thousands of people.. a biz doesn't necessarily create lots of job opportunities especially if it's small

It's possible, but 100 employees for 20 businesses would be a pretty skewed sample. Instead, let's go with the American average of 11 employees per small business.

Now let's do the math.

An Amazon facility in Arlington, Virginia received $573 million in tax incentives and employs 25,000 people. That's $22,920 per employee.

If Arlington used that money as a small business stimulus that average 11 person company would receive $252,120. That's a lot of money to expand and hire more people.

Even if some of these businesses go under, you're talking about a few dozen people losing their jobs rather than thousands when a large company shutters or replaces their staff with robots.

 

[Day_Carver]

It's possible, but 100 employees for 20 businesses would be a pretty skewed sample. Instead, let's go with the American average of 11 employees per small business.

Now let's do the math.

An Amazon facility in Arlington, Virginia received $573 million in tax incentives and employs 25,000 people. That's $22,920 per employee.

If Arlington used that money as a small business stimulus that average 11 person company would receive $252,120. That's a lot of money to expand and hire more people.

Even if some of these businesses go under, you're talking about a few dozen people losing their jobs rather than thousands when a large company shutters or replaces their staff with robots.

Now thats a great example only if the city/state would use the money to help people/businesses; but we all know the real and most likely that money wont be used for that...

 

[RoadRage]

Too keep, the competition will be forced to reduce their overhead by Aldo slash spending on labor and befor every business would be ran by A.I. and automated robots, with one major problem, hone eoild be the consumers yo purchase these products due to them being out of a job.
Their thinking is very ape like, basically ape sees banana and destroying the tree to get to it, even if its the last banana tree, unable to understand the in his folly decision to quench his immediate greed without considering its long term ramifications!

 

[mcguyver]

Good!

Once those plants are fully automated cities will stop giving tax incentives people will get better paying jobs somewhere else

What better paying jobs? Doesn't automation reduce job opportunities?

 

[mcguyver]

Every time I speak to one of those customer service reps, which I prefer to do, I tell them that AI and Bezos are coming for them..... I get anoying prompts that try to steer me away from a liveperson and towards a computer link for an Amazon chatbot


.

Bruh I just cussed out paypal's credit AI. That mofo had me heated. I was so pissed of i closed the account. Lol I ain't even lying.

 

[godofwine]

I saw this last night. Fuck his world man.

White people by and large continue to do everything They can to fuck as much of the masses as they can possibly do. The world has never seen a more destructive force, and intentionally, too.

It's not like a wildfire, but like a nuclear bomb that gives birth to more nuclear bombs, and more nuclear bombs.

 

[godofwine]

Everything they do is not in the name of innovation, it's in the name of greed. Slavery was all about greed. The Amazon robots, it's all about greed. This time, it's greed by the most wealthy people in the world who refuse to trickle down anything