Which headline is more likely in the next 5-10 years?
"Amazon improves lives of 5,000 manual pickers by introducing fully automated robotic supply chain. Workers now free to find other employment."
Or
"Profit crazed Amazon to employ 5,000 android robot zombies, lays off entire human workforce."
Manual labor of this sort isn't exciting or creative for most people. You don't really have room for creativity with this sort of job unless you are iterating on the system level -- and I'm most certain they have a way for pickers to contribute ideas to that. Then again, people play Candy Crush saga for hours a day and PAY for the privilege.. At least these guys get paid and get to walk around.
Once the cost of automating people out completely is less than human labor, it will happen almost instantly.. That is the bigger social issue folks should be looking at -- what will we do when General Human Labor is more expensive than General Machine Labor? Combine this with General Artificial Intelligence and human labor becomes worth less and less.. As someone formally trained as an Urban Planner, this was the biggest issue I saw in grad school as a rapidly approaching social concern.
"Amazon improves lives of 5,000 manual pickers by introducing fully automated robotic supply chain. Workers now free to find other employment."
Or
"Profit crazed Amazon to employ 5,000 android robot zombies, lays off entire human workforce."
Manual labor of this sort isn't exciting or creative for most people. You don't really have room for creativity with this sort of job unless you are iterating on the system level -- and I'm most certain they have a way for pickers to contribute ideas to that. Then again, people play Candy Crush saga for hours a day and PAY for the privilege.. At least these guys get paid and get to walk around.
Once the cost of automating people out completely is less than human labor, it will happen almost instantly.. That is the bigger social issue folks should be looking at -- what will we do when General Human Labor is more expensive than General Machine Labor? Combine this with General Artificial Intelligence and human labor becomes worth less and less.. As someone formally trained as an Urban Planner, this was the biggest issue I saw in grad school as a rapidly approaching social concern.