Amazon’s latest warehouse machine demonstrates the slow drip of automation
We’re continually told that robots are coming for our jobs, but when exactly this will happen, nobody seems to know. That’s because the process of automation — like climate change — is ponderously slow and hugely complex. Its effects are diffuse, spread out over time and space so much that we can trick ourselves into thinking it’s not happening, or, at the very least, that it’s happening to someone else.
A new report from Reuters on Amazon’s latest effort to replace workers with machines can help dispel these notions.
The news agency says Amazon is trialing technology in its warehouses that can package orders five times faster than humans. Workers place...