Although there’s been talk and worry that Amazon warehouse workers will be out of their jobs due to robots, as it seems not all of the hundred and twenty five thousand employees need to stress. Well, not just yet, that is. They still have around 10 years left, give or take a few.
The director of Amazon Robotic Fulfilment, Scott Anderson, took reporters for a look around their warehouse in Baltimore, and claimed that it would take the company 10 years at the very least to make it completely automated, and that at the present moment, their technology is not even close to being ready for such a challenge.
Robots just don’t work as well as real humans, thankfully. Especially when it comes to picking up products, the robots will break or damage the merchandise. Further, in many cases the robots are only able to take one piece at a time, whereas a human could take a bunch at once.
If Amazon were to decide to sell fruit for example, the robots would not be able to decipher between what is considered ripe or not. Nonetheless, however, Amazon’s systems only continue to advance, and perhaps their 10 year complete automation prediction will be accurate.
Only time will tell.