Amazon's humanoid warehouse robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate. That won't calm workers' fears of being replaced. - eviltoast

Amazon’s humanoid warehouse robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate. That won’t calm workers’ fears of being replaced.::The robot’s human-like shape is bound to reignite workers’ fears of being replaced, but Amazon says they’re designed to “work collaboratively.”

  • Grofit@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    In isolation the automation of roles is a great thing, but the way society is currently run your entire quality of existence is tied to your job, and retraining and getting a new job is harder than ever and costs a lot.

    If society made it easier for people to retrain and get better jobs and slowly replaced all those bad jobs with an automated workforce it would be better for everyone.

    Can’t see it happening though…

    • ExLisper@linux.community
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      11 months ago

      I think it’s still possible for EU to regulate this and protect workers here. Not in US though.

      • Grofit@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Maybe but I don’t know how they can realistically do anything worthwhile. As forcing companies to keep staff on and not automate isn’t a good outcome and isn’t fixing the societal issues that make this a problematic scenario.

        If a robot/ai/machine can do a job safer, more efficiently, quicker than a person, it should 1000000% be automated by the given thing. This has been happening for hundreds of years in all industries.

        • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          I expect eventually both countries will be forced into a income tax based UBI. It sounds weird but it’s that or the jobless riot, and even if they didn’t, if there’s no cash to spend, a company can’t continue to operate.

        • ExLisper@linux.community
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          11 months ago

          Well, I guess EU would simply come up with a plan for the automation that will not leave people without any protection. No idea what it would look like but they could for example come up with some legal definition of AI worker, establish mandatory staffing levels (for example 50% of employees must be human until 2040), tax ‘salaries’ of AI workers and use this revenue to retrain the workforce. We would still end up with automated jobs but it would happen in an organize manner.