I built some of the components that went in to the test locations. Amazon had absurdly tight tolerances for the parts they were buying. They effectively wanted a shelf that was also a scale, and the tolerances they demanded weren’t really necessary. So it was an insane expense but they paid it and wouldn’t hear otherwise.
My company also made most of the lockers they’re using in places like Whole Foods, and Amazon insisted on controlling the entire design process themselves. They sent us prints, we made parts. They made it very clear that that was the relationship they wanted, so we complied. No test runs, THAT would be too expensive. Let’s just make ten thousand parts and put them together.
I would like to be very clear that in an industrial setting, this is unusual. You need something specific, you call a company that makes things like it and see if they can make what you need. You have a conversation about what you need it for and how many you want. The relationship is personal, you get to know the people around the region that you need stuff from.
Amazon swooping in with a heavy purse and a list of demands is weird, when someone kicks in your door with a stack of prints and enough money to keep the entire plant in overtime all year, it’s hard to say no to that.
So the first batch of prints they send is wrong. Parts do not line up right and the doors don’t even fit. We didn’t discover this until 70% of the components had already been painted.
Second batch they assure us addresses the problem, we need to start over.
My friends, it did not address the problem. Half the changes they needed to make they didn’t. The doors still did not fit.
3rd try, we lied and said we needed some extra time because a different client had elbowed in with a large order while they were redesigning. We had an intern recreate every print in CAD and test fit it, we ran a single batch of test pieces to assemble one row of lockers and as we were doing that they sent a revision.
They finally got their lockers, and asked for basically book dividers but insisted again on insanely tight tolerances.
After the dividers went out we stopped taking their calls.
CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Peoole aren’t appreciating just how bad these things are because they’re misinterpreting it. The goal of what they are doing here and with Amazon was never to just fake the technology right. The goal was to fake that the technology existed by using humans to do an automated thing and then to leverage that into making it actually automated.
But essentially what that means is theyre inventing technology that hasn’t been invented yet and selling it to you and the reason for doing so is to replace you with technology before it can even technically happen.
It’s essentially like someone building a new automated factory and telling workers at their other locations that they can’t be hired there since it’s automated but then someone goes inside and finds out they’re just using child laborers until the robots are ready and also robots haven’t been invented yet.
They’re using blood to grease wheels that don’t even exist to turn yet.
eRac@lemmings.world 3 days ago
On the other hand, the only way to get good training data is to generate data indistinguishable from the real-world scenario and then have humans mark it up the way you want the system to do it. You might as well have the data actually be from the real world and recoup some of the costs with sales.
DoPeopleLookHere@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Sure, but you still shouldn’t be selling the technology as actually working, instead of developing.
Amazon bought whole foods a while back. What would have stopped them from just collecting the data in their own stores, and then developed the tech?
Hunt: shareholder value.
JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
I won’t pretend that Amazon avoided that due to ethical concerns, but doing that would have almost the exact same ethical concerns.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 2 days ago
Feels like it should be illegal to mislead people like that.