replacing workers with smart machines

Amazon Robots Propel Online Shopping but Repress Retail

Stores are certainly suffering since Amazon brought its robot battalions onto the retail field. The Kiva robots are an integral and necessary part of the millions of products that Jeff Bezos sells online and quickly ships to customers. Amazon purchased the Kiva robots in 2012 for $775 million; before that, human workers pushed carts […]

Automation Makes Amazon’s Revolutionary Success Possible

Amazon owner Jeff Bezos was recently recognized to be the world’s richest man, with a net worth of more than $100 billion. An optimistic economy has helped push his riches to stratospheric heights.

Plus, automation has played a big part in Amazon’s success. The online shopping behemoth couldn’t process the millions of products without computerized warehouses […]

Restaurants Get a Growing Army of Cost-Cutting Robots

Except for the really high class restaurants, low-skilled workers are adequate for the simple tasks required in food prep. As a result, automated replacements are coming on particularly strong in the food industry, particularly since some workers have been clamoring for $15/hour — bad timing there.

Below, McDonalds has begun to install ordering kiosks in its […]

Self-Driving Trucks Will Be a Part of Unprecedented Social Change

It was nice to see the Los Angeles Times recognize the negative effect of self-driving cars and trucks which will cause severe job loss, as shown by a front-page story on Wednesday.

A lot of reporting over the last few years has had too much fan-boy wonderment at the rapid growth of admittedly amazing technology. But […]

President Trump’s Policy of Reducing Immigration Is Right for the Automated Future

The Washington Post burped out a non-horrible immigration article the other day that managed to include some dissent toward the liberal dogma that unlimited immigration is a total good. The piece even suggested that enforcing existing laws might be a part of “preserving American jobs” — imagine that.

Wednesday’s front page presentation emphasized President Trump’s so-called […]

Colleges May Not Be Training Young People for the Automated Future

Many areas of society continue to snooze through the building automation revolution in employment that is beginning to take shape, with a major gaggle of sleepers populating the halls of governance in Washington DC.

Colleges are supposed to be preparing young people for what the future needs in terms of employment skills, but higher ed doesn’t […]

New Improved Robot Does a Backflip

How fast is robotic technology moving along? To get an idea, watch a new video of the Atlas robot hop onto boxes and do a perfect backflip. Amazing.

For comparison, see the variety of robots falling over in the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge. The video is funny, but the improvement in the two years from then […]

Trump Effect: Farmers Turn from Foreign Pickers to Automation

Farm automation has been progressing along, just like uses of smart machines in other industries, but agbots may now be getting an extra boost. Apparently President Trump’s crackdown on illegal border crossings has decreased the supply of foreign pickers, so farmers are looking more favorably at tech solutions. The transition would have happened anyway, but […]

The Self-Driving Car Edges Closer to True Autonomy

We’ve been hearing about self-driving cars for several years, but until now, there has always been a human in the driver’s seat in case anything went wrong. The latest news from Google reveals that its autonomous car, called the Waymo, is ramping up to the next level where no driver will be present at the […]

Look for Smart Machines to Change Work Substantially within Five Years

Recent reports give a near-term picture of how experts believe the automation revolution will roll out. Continuing education to adapt to technology will become more necessary as some careers will “cease to exist.”

There is a minor industry of reassurance — writers who spread the message that the automation revolution is over-hyped and will not create […]

Martin Ford: Adjusting to the Robot Future

Martin Ford, the author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future appeared on Ted Talks to explain important aspects of the techno-future. He starts out by emphasizing that a workplace transformation is definitely coming, and automation will displace “roughly half the jobs in the economy.”

That level of permanent unemployment sounds […]

Automation Advances Further into Inventory Jobs

Robots are good at counting and recording, so they are increasingly being used in stores and warehouses to keep track of the stock on hand.

As part of Wal-mart’s competition with Amazon, the store chain is utilizing Amazon’s technology strategy by moving forward with automation to up its e-commerce game.

Naturally, the efficiency and cost-savings are emphasized, […]

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Limits to Growth