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129 points NotInOurNames | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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Animats ◴[] No.44066137[source]
Oh, the OpenBrain thing.

"Manna", by Marshall Brain, remains relevant.[1] That's a bottom-up view, where more and more jobs are taken over by some kind of AI. "AI 2027" is more top-down.

A practical view: Amazon is trying very hard to automate their warehouse operations. Their warehouses have been using robots for years, and more types are being added. Amazon reached 1.6 million employees in 2020, and now they're down to 1.5 million.[2] That number is going to drop further. Probably by a lot.

Once Amazon has done it, everybody else who handles large numbers of boxes will catch up. That includes restocking retail stores. The first major application of semi-humanoid robots may be shelf stocking. Robots can have much better awareness of what's on the shelves. Being connected to the store's inventory system is a big win. And the handling isn't very complicated. The robots might even talk to the customers. The robots know exactly what's on Aisle 3, unlike many minimum wage employees.

[1] https://marshallbrain.com/manna

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/number...

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1. bcoates ◴[] No.44067090[source]
Marshall Brain's been peddling imminent overproduction-crisis-but-this-time-with-robots for more than 20 years now and in various forms it’s been confidently predicted as imminent since the 19th century