With more than one million robots at its warehouses, Amazon’s global workforce of 1.56 million people is on the verge of being outnumbered by the machines, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The e-commerce giant, a bellwether for companies automating work, is planning to ramp up its use of robots further once they are equipped with artificial intelligence, which will enable them to respond to verbal commands.
In conjunction with this, Amazon is also equipping its warehouses with AI and connecting the robots with order-fulfillment processes, according to Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy.
The aim, Jassy said, is “to improve inventory placement, demand forecasting, and robot efficiency.”
Although Amazon is deploying more robots, maintains Amazon Robotics Chief Technologist Tye Brady, Amazon will continue to need workers. The robots are merely meant to help Amazon manage heavy staff turnover, reduce menial tasks, and make workers’ jobs easier — not to replace people, Brady said.
However, Jassy himself, in a June 17 company memo to employees as reported by CNBC, said the robots and generative AI “will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
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Author: Dillon B
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