Submitted 9 months ago by AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/news/680258/amazon-training-package-delivery-humanoid-robots
Let’s count the problems:
Any others?
Rain? I know its not going to fall over and shoot out sparks like a cartoon but rain does mess with visibility and grip, plus this is a robot with a lot of joints and moving parts that’s probably going to be maintained by someone who has to pee in a bottle so the cartoon falling over and shooting sparks isn’t actually out of the question.
Study the weak points, make true your aim. The inevitable human-robot war draws nearer.
The robot dogs police are starting to use has a two big red buttons, one on the face and one on the ass. Just jam your finger or pointer end of your rifle and it returns to station or shuts down.
I feel like we’re going to end up with more laws protecting robots and surveillance cameras than our own civil liberties.
Wonder where all those angry white guys with tiki torches and khaki shorts are now? The ones that thought the Jews were trying to replace them? 🤔
This makes me wonder what the benefit of beds are for this over something like iBot’s multilevel design. I get it makes sense for rubble or debris, but for halls and stairs ok.
It is the distant future,
The year 2000,
The last known survivor lives is a cave somewhere in the Madagascar desert. A robot travels by foot to deliver a package. A simple letter with the following URL:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvFZjo5PgG0
The survivor dies. Amazon has finally won. They have all the money and everyone else is gone. All robots shut down. Besos jumps into the money pile only to learn that cartoons don’t work in reality as most of his bones become powder on impact. The world is silent for a second. In the distance two flies are doing it over a pile of cow dung. The world becomes a peaceful place with no human presence whatsoever.
No they fucking aren’t. That shit would be so much more expensive than a person. Liars, and not even particularly good ones.
Yup, and people seem to frequently underestimate how ridiculously expensive running a fleet of humanoid robots would be (and don’t seem to realize how comparatively low the manual labor it’d replace is paid.)
I mean apparently they’re partnering with a private robotics company. The picture is an actual model of the company’s robot. Whether or not they actually end up implementing this, they’re allegedly currently training the robots (and presumably, if nothing else probably getting some sweet federal kick backs to attempt this and further the current administration’s attempt to beat Gyna in the science and tech race).
For all we know they made the futuristic robot exoskeleton, took some fancy pictures of it holding a package, and that’s all she wrote but some rich assholes are slightly richer at the expense of the tax payer. 'Merica! 🇺🇲
Amazon/Bezos is probably getting some sweet federal kick backs
I think it’s more a threat against employees. The robots can be used as scabs.
which, until Jan. 2025, was one area that the U.S. had unquestionably dominated China
China had more scientists and papers well before this year. And China dominates particularly in fields like maths, computer science and manufacturing.
they are indeed going to try to replace scientists with robots
I can actually think of a lot of uses for robots in research. And, of course, there are a lot of robots in labs already; they just don’t look like humans.
Just like when they were going to replace all their delivery drivers with drones. It’s just bullshit.
If I get one of those, I’m definitely killing it and stealing its copper. Amazon can pay for the repairs.
I’m clubbing the bot in the head and stealing it’s batteries.
Yo why tf can’t they just fucking pay people a reasonable wage AND give them sane working conditions? This is insane. Capitalism does not favor anyone except the rich. It’s time to tear down this wall of mediocrity and face the facts. No sense of government intervention will fix this. It must all be rewritten entirely.
Because it’s not real. It’s purely for marketing, not for actual wide-spread implementation.
Even in the best of cases, even factoring in economy of scale and all that, a robot like that will cost upwards of €50k at least, probably closer to double that, will require constant maintainance, and the risk of vandalism or accidental damage is really high. And you’ll likely need a (skilled) human operator nearby anyway, because the delivery vehicle doesn’t drive itself.
The purpose of projects like this is marketing and public perception.
This robot is not meant to ever go mainstream. Maybe there will be a handful of routes where they will be implemented for marketing purposes, but like drone delivery and similar gimmicks, it won’t beat a criminally underpaid delivery human on price, and that’s the only metric that counts for a company like Amazon.
So, from what little research I did the robots cost from 5000$ to 500000$, as most articles point out the advanced robots cost 200000-300000$. In a lot of places around the world that’s like paying a human for 8-10 years. Humans are easily “replaceable”, where those robots have maintenance cost additional to the initial “investment”. How is that feasible in the eyes of the big money oligarchs? I genuinely don’t understand the end goal here.
Yes, because nothing new is ever reduced in price and improved upon after research phase is finished
The labor aspect of class politics is complicated.
But you don’t have to understand any of it to think stealing these would be cool as fuck.
The cost of an employee is far higher than just their pay though.
I don’t think they really plan to replace workers with robots. It fulfills two other purposes:
if its actually feasible and it reduces cost, then it will be the plan. right now though, its bullshit. As soon as people start stealing and destroying these 5000-500000 dollar robots all of the potential profit goes out the window.
everyone knows its just going to be indians in a data center in india controlling the bots.
They will train it so well, it will even collapse like a human when overworked! youtu.be/6Kp5qrCExps . I recognized that bot from the photo.
humanoid robot: dances
amazon: shock
humanoid robot: makes coffee
amazon: shock
humanoid robot: delivers package
amazon: friendly shock
I tend to disbelieve this, mainly because a humanoid robot would be overkill. Custom-purpose robots would be much cheaper to design, build and maintain, with fewer potential failure points.
Eh I dunno there’s so much infrastructure that is human centric; if you could make a humanoid robot it could easily traverse all the human designed places
The driver would have to look at the location and decide yeah, this is a straight walkway and two steps up to a porch, I’ll use the drone, or no there’s a gate and some lumpy grass, or whatever, I’ll get my ass out of the truck.
Like what… stairs?
Just leave the package at the bottom of the stairs like humans do.
the robot got stolen
Anything to avoid one of the richest people in the world paying his employees a livable wage.
Bro that is so gonna get HitchBot’ed
a photo was tweeted, showing that the robot had been stripped “beyond repair” and decapitated in Philadelphia. The robot was located by some people following its progress on its website. The head was never found.
Also, like… if you wanna replace human workers, fine, just give us the UBI.
Otherwise, riots would be justified.
Just one shitty makeshift EMP and that thing is toast.
as someone who has spent time living in Philly what were they THINKING lmfao
If i see a humanoid robot delivering a package i will throw bricks at it and then pee on it, in the way a 3 year old would during a tantrum.
No you won’t.
I see you’re channeling the spirits of Social Media
I, for one, will certainly not loot it for parts, unless it has an unfortunate accident, in which case I’m just recycling trash that someone left out.
what? they gave up on the drones?
I guess they felt like drones flying over civilian populations was a bit too unsettling in this day and age, so they are shifting to humanoids that will jump suddenly from moving vehicles and dash towards a destination.
Not in Philly they won’t lol
Reminds me of these cheeseparade skits:
They’ll be vandalised almost immediately.
Non-consentually arbitraged
…okay, I really want to know the story behind that picture!
“…creation of motion graphics designer Tom Coben…” mashable.com/…/bowling-robot-video-computer-gener…
I’m gonna say CGI. Arm isn’t mounted to the floor (I can tell by the pixels), no cables going to the arm, holding the bowling ball like that is extremely unsafe.
Amazons “genius” packing bots will throw a tiny fragile thing with a medium size heavy thing in a box 16x too big along with a shred of packing material.
Can’t wait to have that same “genius” applied to the actual delivery itself.
Seriously, I make maybe 5 or 6 Amazon purchases per year. I would say at least 50% of those disappoint in some way: the item was misleadingly listed, or it was damaged in shipping, or it doesn’t arrive when the promised. I really don’t find it convenient at all.
Amazon still can’t even figure out how to reliably get human drivers door passcodes into an apartment building, and then into its mail/package locker room.
The map system it uses for for telling drivers how to get around a city to make deliveries is also garbage, can’t account for traffic, punishes people for using faster side routes to get to the same place, tells you to park in areas that either have no parking at all, or where parking there would majorly disrupt traffic, or assumes available street parking will always exist in places and times it almost never does.
I once did an Amazon delivery gig where they booked me in for the time slot, I get to the FC, after waiting an hour they tell half of us: ‘oops we booked too many drivers, so today you all get $200 for showing up and doing nothing, go home now’
???
or assumes available street parking will always exist in places and times it almost never does.
That explains all the amazon vans parked in the middle of the fucking street.
Yep!
Drivers have to visit an absolutely absurd number of locations in a small block of time, so if they attempt to park like a sane member of society, they’ll be fired very quickly.
Update: It is day 126 and Amazon still can’t figure out where my camera is.
I know where it is. Their delivery driver stole it. (Yes, I just charged back my credit card. Their response was to send me an incredibly smarmy and condescending form email asking why, as if they don’t already know. And they lost the chargeback dispute, obviously.)
So maybe their robots won’t steal your package. They’ll just yeet it into a bush 65536 yards from your house in a random direction instead. On the bright side, you might occasionally get a package that belongs to someone else from the other side of town dropped on your lawn.
To both this and that I say no thanks; I don’t use Amazon anymore.
Amazon sent my next door neighbour a photograph of my back garden indicating they delivered the package. In the photo you can see my front door with the obviously wrong house number.
Why is everyone here so negative about this? This is pretty cool!
Technological unemployment is only going to get worse without a plan to support the people being replaced by automation. They can’t just ‘get another job’. As long as the benefits of this stuff only goes to shareholders, it can fuck off.
It’s called structural change. And I don’t see why it’s a bad think. We would still be plow our fields with ox and cart if we had denied every technological unemployment in the past.
Because I’ve seen this movie before, and it did not turn out well for the humans.
I just stop buying from Amazon
They already treat their workers like humanoid robots, so this tracks.
Teknikal@eviltoast.org 9 months ago
Didn’t they just have 3 drone crashes within minutes of takeoff recently, not sure I really trust Amazon. with this stuff.