Chinese Warehouse Cut Labor Costs In Half With a Fleet of Tiny Robots (qz.com) 130
Many people around the world fear their job will eventually be replaced by a machine, including many Slashdotters. But workers in China may be the most fearful as Asia produces more robots than the rest of the world combined. Last week, a Chinese shipping company, called Shentong Express, showed off a mildly-dystopian automated warehouse that reportedly cut its labor costs in half using a fleet of tiny robots, according to the South China Morning Post. Quartz reports: In a video, tiny orange robots made by Hikvision ferry packages around an eastern China warehouse, taking each parcel from a human worker, driving under a scanner, and then dumping the package down a specific chute for it to be shipped. The human's main job in the video appears to be picking up packages and placing them label-up on top of the robot, a task modern robotics is only just starting to put into warehouse production. A spokesperson told the Post that Shentong is using the robot in two of its warehouses, and hopes to expand use to the rest of the country.
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Amazon already have robots that bring a shelf to a human to take an item and pack it in a box?
They're now trying to get the robots to pick the correct item from a shelf.
I assume they already have robots that scan the freight label and take it to the right place to be collected for shipping
Re:Goodbye Amazon Employees (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason Amazon treats its warehouse employees so badly is because it considers them a temporary and costly inconvenience. Their only role is to serve as temporary placeholders until robots get good enough to run the warehouses entirely, then there will be no more meatbag employees.
Re: Goodbye Amazon Employees (Score:2)
Yes that would be wonderful but what will actually happen is that a lot of people will struggle to buy necessities and those hoarding the money will call them lazy.
Re:Goodbye Amazon Employees (Score:5, Insightful)
There is this old slogan "Buy American"
The new slogan for the 21st century must be "Buy Human"
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The new slogan for the 21st century must be "Buy Human"
You misspelled "bye,".
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The question is whether this is cheaper to operate than a conventional automated conveyor system.
Misread as Whorehouse (Score:1)
Show's where my mind is.
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A robot whorehouse? Everyone has their kink I guess.
Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
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You are under impression that for some unfathomable reason people are supposed to be guaranteed positions at businesses, I can't figure out why you (and many others) think that. I run a company, if I can automate some task away I am going to do that and if at some point it means that somebody loses a job (more like a new person doesn't get hired) then that's a great day for me. It means I achieved more efficiency and freed another task from unnecessary human intervention. The company runs more efficientl
Re: Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be under the impression that people without jobs will still be able to purchase your products.
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You seem to be under the impression that people without jobs will never have jobs.
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As a vague theme along what is being described here, I don't see why that's a bad assumption. Most technological innovations have been about shifting where human labor is applied. What we're talking about here is outright replacing it. Anywhere it could get pushed to, we can replace that with robots too.
We're not too far off from robots handling almost all commercial agriculture, and almost all packing, shipping and delivery. Our robots will build other robots, and other robots will service those r
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You seem to be under the impression that people without jobs will never have jobs.
Yes, eventually there will be a guaranteed minimum wage. Its being tested in Canada and some other countries.
The word welfare will disappear.
Re:Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that what you took away from my post.. Sorry but you're wrong, I'm speaking on a much more macro level of human behavior. I could just as easily say that YOU are under the impression that people **on the whole** can be squeezed indefinitely with no consequence. Congratulations on running an efficient company, hopefully, there aren't thousands upon thousands of desperate people living around you who need to survive.
The whole "adapt or starve" mantra corporate apologists like to trot out for these kinds of stories seem to forget that "adapt or starve" is called "desperation" as a synonym. People NEED A PATH to survive, and if they don't have one then you're shiny efficient business is going to look like a shiny pile of resources to people who just don't care anymore... and people like YOU put them there, so I doubt all your hard work and dedication will mean a thing to them.
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As a business owner myself, I agree with your position. As someone who's been touting the coming economic apocalypse, I also agree with GPs positon (my business is automation; I literally get hired to put people out of work).
I think you both are talking about slightly different things. GP is talking about a scenario where a business owner gets more efficient, but doesn't pass that efficiency along onto his customers and instead continues to raises the prices (or at least creeps them up with inflation, etc
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So much of our economy is based on taking advantage of people that whenever any efficiency is gained, it's used as an excuse to further depress wages, rather than improve them or reduce working hours. People then don't make investments in themselves, such as educating themselves or losing weight, being fit, and so forth. We could have a really awesome society if we'd focus on reducing the cost of engineering hours and R&D hours.
Case in point.
What happens when the public figures out out lobbying congre
Re: Revolution (Score:2)
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roman_mir is an anarchist-cum-warlord who doesn't care about anyone or anything besides himself. As far as he's concerned, the unemployed can die in their own filth, if they can't figure out how to take what they need from others.
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That's a fairly accurate representation. At least I've never seen roman_mir be anything else than a spectacular jackass.
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So it wasn't just me that gets that vib from him.
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I think you're ignoring the impressive amount of attention being given to military robots and drones. And I really doubt that the peasants in th middle east are the eventual targets.
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[...long talk about how business is the only important thing...]
You are focused only on your business interests here, and maybe that is necessary in order to run a business; but 'focus' so often becomes nothing more than tunnelvision. But you don't live in an isolated vacuum; your business depends on there being, somewhere along the line, a consumer who is willing to consume whatever end product your are making a living of shifting along. Thus it is in your interest in the long run to care a bit about what happens to those people; no jobs means no consumers means no cus
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[...long talk about how business is the only important thing...]
You are focused only on your business interests here, and maybe that is necessary in order to run a business; but 'focus' so often becomes nothing more than tunnelvision.
I wonder if Mir Mir believes that if the next companies up the food chain eliminating his company for efficiency's sake and better profit is a good thing. You can't be consistent without wanting the highest paid person in the company fired.
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Personally I want to develop a monopoly in my market, to take 100% of everybody's business.
Let's say I run a 100% efficient business, where I am making only enough money to survive ...
If you're running a monopoly, and you're running 100% efficient, in what world would you be "making only enough money to survive"?
A path to survive for people has to come through freedom from all forms of government regulations, so that new business ideas can be executed without red tape and without the added artificial inefficiency of regulations and taxes.
If you failed to achieve your monopoly, but have managed to collude with the other corporations to jack prices up anyway, tell me again why that is a good thing?
Overall, it sounds like you idealize a world where the corporations replace as many humans as possible, your facilities will be sabotaged by humans in order to create jobs for humans (repairing factories), and the ne
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Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.
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The only reason we have the government-construction called "the corporation" is to benefit society. There is no guarantee to a job, true. But one big reason people tolerate the government handing out corporate charters is because they have been a job engine. If the jobs go away, the populace may not be so supportive of a system that simply results in raw capital accumulation.
Re:Revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
If you tell them to eat cake when they can't afford bread (or cake), they will silt your throat and take your cake. It happens *every* time the rich get too greedy.
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You seem to have never read a history book before.
History books tell us that:
- the US went from 90% agricultural employment to 1%
- human diggers were replaced by steam shovels
- hundreds of thousands of switchboard operators displaced by automated switching
In these cases, some people lost their jobs but the majority benefited greatly. Even the job-losers had a chance to replace their dreary work (let's be honest, if a robot can do your job, it probably isn't that stimulating) with something else.
Increased efficiency is a Good Thing.
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I think you have a very narrow view of the situation.
This is more similar to the period where the Roman Republic collapsed. (Granted, that wasn't due to automation, but there were lots of other similarities. And this may be more similar to the period a decade or so before the final collapse.)
The problem is that the new jobs that you are proposing don't exist...or are already filled. Even the time of the Enclosure Acts (in Britain) had more paths upwards than currently exist for those who are both poor an
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It would give me great satisfaction to learn that a homeless man who recently lost his job to automation finds you and rips your intestines out with a fork.
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How much taxes do you pay?
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So in other words, your job hasn't yet been automated or made redundant because one of your competitors found that replacing the company president with a bot made the other company more efficient. Ermmm....why exactly should you be allowed to keep your job? Would a bot that says silly things on Slashdot and makes AI-infused company decisions be more efficient. You should look into this, I'm sure with some effort you can find a bot replacement.
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So in other words, your job hasn't yet been automated or made redundant because one of your competitors found that replacing the company president with a bot made the other company more efficient. Ermmm....why exactly should you be allowed to keep your job?
Of all the work that could be replaced by automation, the Owner/CEO and army of accountants has got to be the easiest.
I defy them to provide any cogent argument as to why a computer program wouldn't do the job better.
Any of the masters of the universe want to take on that discussion?
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The humans are always a temporary solution to any issue until there is a better solution.
FIFY - The current solution to any issue is always a temporary solution until there is a better solution.
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The humans are always a temporary solution to any issue until there is a better solution.
FIFY - The current solution to any issue is always a temporary solution until there is a better solution.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
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How well those corporations will run without consumers?
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When you run out of money because you have no job.
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and the will the state have basic income or pay $100 a day or more to lock someone up?
You're wrong (Score:2)
If you're going to do anything about rampant wealth inequality now's the time. Don'
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Why? Because a hundred underfed pesants was no match for 10 well fed and trained knights. Now I'll remind you the "knights" of today have kevlar instead of platemail and laser guided rockets instead of lances.
I wouldn't count the peasants out so easily. Look at what ISIS has managed with small arms, home made explosives and some measure of grit. A less fanatical but no less determined group could have brought the governments to the bargaining table and won concessions in exchange for peace. Time and again history has demonstrated that groups that fight receive more and better concessions at the peace talks, even if they never would have won victory by strength of arms.
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hundred underfed pesants was no match for 10 well fed and trained knights
Debunked [youtube.com]
Re:Revolution (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is even more basic than that. You automate and save pretty coins, the fast food chains automate and save pretty coins, the factory automates and saves pretty coins. However, pretty soon you're not saving any more pretty coins because nobody is buying your shipping service, the fast food chains are closing locations due to lack of customers, the factories are closing, the real estate leasing companies for the space the fast food companies' outlets occupied and factories leased start losing revenue and lay people off, and so it goes.
When the tipping point hits, I think it'll happen fast enough that by the time people are thinking revolution, a lot of the supposed fat cats will also be broke with nothing to their names but a factory that makes junk nobody can afford to buy or even wants compared to their next meal.
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Sorry, but almost all wealth is a social construct and only exists within the context of that society. When things break down, what is "wealth" changes. A good question is "How far did they break down?", because until you've answered that you don't know even whether owning a rifle is more important than knowing how to find water. Or whether a stash of gold has any value. Gold has value when the population is stable or increasing...but if things really break down that's a few decades away.
Now your stock
Re:Revolution (Score:5, Interesting)
Eventually it's going to reach a tipping point where you choke enough people into poverty that eventually they're just going to say "fuck it, I have to survive somehow"
Except the people living in extreme poverty is dropping rapidly, in 2016 the estimate was 9.1% of the world population. This is down from 9.6% in 2015, 20.4% in 2005 and 35.0% in 1990. This year a famine was declared in South-Sudan because of the civil war, but otherwise the world has been free of famine for the last six years. World literacy is at an all time high at 86.1% and climbing with youth literacy at 91.4%. Average life expectancy was 71.5 years in 2014, up from 67.2 years in 2010. About 46.1% of the population have access to a residential Internet connection, up 2.7% from last year and 4.77 billion people have a cell phone, up from 4.61 billion.
Yes, I know US median household income has been stagnant since the 1970s but for the world as a whole almost every arrow is pointing in the right direction. The poor people are still poor, in some cases relatively speaking even poorer compared to the 1%ers. But the poor aren't starving or freezing to death or dying from unclean water and basic sanitation and medicine, at least not in anywhere near the numbers they used to. Short of active war zones we pretty much manage to give aid where it's needed. China and India is rapidly modernizing. Africa is still a disaster area, particularly south of Sahara but even there progress is just sluggish not spiraling downwards.
Maybe robots will fuck all that up but I doubt it, it's easier to just let us have reasonable comfortable lives and let us produce 1.x kids reducing the population naturally, if the robots are so efficient the dead weight won't be much of a burden. Less than riots and revolutions and all that, I think we got a pretty good idea how far people can be pushed before they really hit the "fuck it, I got nothing to lose" level. I mean most of us have a fairly civilized society, looking at actual war zones it could be a lot worse than living on food coupons.
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But if you look at things like this you can't rage at the MAN!
The US really does need to look at rebalancing its society. But that is incredibly difficult to do as someone alway has to lose out in a change like that. But US GDP has been steadily growing. If your median salaries haven't then there is a problem. Look at that problem and decide what you need to do to fix it.
My experience has been that the US has a markedly different attitude to the value of people in business compared to other countries.
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Yes, I know US median household income has been stagnant since the 1970s
And it isn't, if you look at total compensation per hour.
Re: Revolution (Score:4, Informative)
Inflation.
US median income in 1970: $7,701
US median income in 2014: $53,013
$7,701 1970 dollars equivalent worth in 2014: $46,987
Median income growth over inflation: 12.8%
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Who do you count in the "median income"?
Is it adult humans?
Is it adult males humans?
Is it those holding a job within the last 6 months?
Is it those currently holding a job?
The sample population makes a big difference. What's the source of your figures and who did they count? And was it the same both times?
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Weren't the 70s a time of extremely high fuel prices and high interest rates? When you look at inflation, you have to account for what's inflated in cost. If fuel costs less but food costs more, that's a lot worse than fuel costing more and food costing less.
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Weren't the 70s a time of extremely high fuel prices and high interest rates?
Fuel prices definitely jumped. To nearly a dollar a gallon for regular gas. Fuel costs more now than it did then, but not 6 times more (the change in the purchasing power of a dollar from then to now). Mortgage interest rates peaked at around 18% (4.5x higher than today), but home prices were much, much lower than they are now, so even with high interest rates, the cost of home ownership was lower relative to today. I couldn't find a source that related prices in 1970 to prices within the last few years, bu
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You've never lived in Flint, MI have you?
if you haven't noticed.. (Score:3)
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Who's making them poor? Everyone is getting into robotics, even the mom & pop stores. This isn't going to change and it isn't going to make everyone poorer overall. The people getting on the robot scheme now are going to temporarily improve their margins, but not for long. Yes, it's a gravy train right now, but there's no way these places are going to keep up their same prices as they did with regular workers. Eventually everyone is going to compete against you the same way on pricing and costs. And ev
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There's nothing about increasing efficiency and cutting humans out as factors of påroduction that inherently means people will be plunged into poverty. Businesses need customers to operate. Imagine the day in not too distant future wh
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Eventually it's going to reach a tipping point where you choke enough people into poverty that eventually they're just going to say
"fuck it, I have to survive somehow" ....and start just taking all those pretty coins that robotics have allowed you to save...
This is just a basic fact of life, you can't make people poor and expect them to just sit there and take it.
Is it possible that the roles will be different. Manufacturers will give away products, just so the factory can stay open.
Trouble ahead. (Score:2)
When this hits a country that doesn't have the ability to kill off opposition to such efforts, it will not be any bit pleasant.
who you calling Tiny? (Score:3)
Awesome!! (Score:1)
Every person freed from mundane repetitive tasks easily performed by machines is a person who is free to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual growth of mankind! A future where everyone is not required to work just to survive is a bright future for the human race.
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Every person freed from mundane repetitive tasks easily performed by machines is a person who is free to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual growth of mankind! A future where everyone is not required to work just to survive is a bright future for the human race.
I'm pretty sure you're trolling, but I'll bite anyway, with this FTFY: "A future where everyone has no opportunity to work in order to survive, and has no other means with which to secure the necessities of survival, is a hellish future for the human race.
What makes you think the owners of all the businesses that employ all those robots will willingly support the rest of humankind? Do you really think they'll pay living wages even to those able "to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual growth of mank
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That is all true, until the 1% have Terminators...
Re: Awesome!! (Score:2)
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Possession is 90% (99%?) of the law.
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"A future where everyone has no opportunity to work in order to survive, and has no other means with which to secure the necessities of survival, is a hellish future for the human race.
I agree, it could be very nasty if the necessities of survival aren't provided to everybody. History is chock full of bloody revolutions.
What makes you think the owners of all the businesses that employ all those robots will willingly support the rest of humankind?
What makes you think the rest of humankind will support the ow
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Yep, those unemployed NRA members will be contributing to the intellectual and spiritual growth of mankind any day now...soon....shortly...just around the corner....
Kiva Robotics knockoff? (Score:2)
Also how do they keep the package from falling off?
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Kiva wasn't exactly first with any of that either. Quite often some new ideas are "in the air", as technology improves, with everybody taking and adapting bits and pieces off each other. It makes little sense to try to rank the different entrants as knock-offs or copies of another.
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how do they keep the package from falling off?
They don't. If you look at the video in one of the links, it shows a robot tipping it's empty top down a chute... Its package must have fallen off some time after it was scanned and before it reached the drop off chute.
Labor is cheap in China (Score:2)
Interesting that even they are doing that.
As to picking boxes and handing to robots, that is very doable today, if not as cheap yet. Maybe when they do their full role out they will automate that part as well.
Robots don't unionize (Score:2)
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Re: Labor is cheap in China (Score:2)
In China ... (Score:3)
"tiny robot" is just a euphemism for child labor.
old news (Score:2)
This reminds me of Kiva's system from years ago, but it seems a pretty silly imitation if it can't pick up / drop containers on its own. Nothing to see here.
How to join micro and macro scale (Score:1)
We have to admit that automation in micro scale is beneficial. It is illogical to avoid automation. We also have to admit that automation in macro scale has a completely opposite effect. People are left without jobs. Without income can't afford products from automated businesses. At some point system will collapse. Businesses won't have reason to exist without clients, no matter how automated they are going to be.
Why something that works great for single company is so bad for the society? Because right in t
Orange robots? (Score:3)
I'm going to make a Trump-clone-robot factory, and send Trump-bots into all the countries who have workers displaced by robots, and the TrumpBots will fight for jobs bigly and fantastically! They'll know more about protecting jobs than the Generals and economists, who are losers and bad hombres.