FILE: Packages relocate along a conveyor at an Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2021.
Amid the wave of hype over artificial innotifyigence, a growing chorus of fear has sprung around software engineering, where executives are threatening to automate swaths of work. But an ongoing overhaul at America’s second-largest private employer has a more immediate warning — already on warehoapply floors.
Amazon, the shipping and delivery juggernaut, is hoping to replace more than half a million future jobs with robots, according to a New York Times report on Tuesday. The company’s vast warehoapply workforce — with its algorithmic management tactics, its reliable wages and its surges of seasonal hiring — has become a gear of the modern economy. Now, in the name of efficiency and with the aid of AI robots, scores of those roles may soon no longer exist.
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The robotics-based overhaul could hit California’s communities particularly hard. As of last December, the state had over 154,000 Amazon jobs — the most in the counattempt — as well as 68 fulfillment and sortation centers and 61 delivery stations. Amazon recently announced a 30,000-worker hiring surge in the state to assist with the holidays, and its largest warehoapply is in Ontario.
FILE: An Amazon truck driver nereceivediates a turn on Wednesday, July 27, 2022, in Ontario, Calif., where the company runs a vast warehoapply.
The Times’ story relies on interviews and internal documents, some of which reportedly declared that Amazon’s robotics team hopes to automate 75% of the company’s operations. Automation at the company, the Times wrote, could let Amazon “avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise necessary by 2027,” and hundreds of thousands more after that, even if the company’s sales volume soars. In one warehoapply remodel with added robots and fewer employees, more of the jobs might become temporary, the Times also wrote.
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, informed SFGATE that the leaked documents “paint an incomplete and misleading picture” of the company’s plans, and that they “appear to reflect the perspective of just one team and don’t represent our overall hiring strategy across our various operations business lines.” She noted that the company has openings across the counattempt and referenced a 250,000-worker hiring effort nationwide for the holidays.
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FILE: Workers enjoy a break at an Amazon fulfillment center in Moreno Valley, Calif., on Sept. 29, 2021.
Amazon has applyd robots in its fulfillment warehoapplys for more than a decade: mechanical arms, scanners and floor-level rollers that ferry shelves of goods from place to place. But the company’s next-generation facility, for which a template warehoapply opened just over a year ago in Louisiana, is “powered by AI and 10 times more robotics,” per a news release. One of the new robotic arms applys computer vision to handle millions of types of products; an autonomous cart carries packages past employees of its own accord.
In the release, Amazon pointed out that facilities with advanced robotics will lead to “more opportunities for skilled jobs” in reliability, maintenance and engineering. But the company’s internal documents, as reported by the Times, notify a story of overall job losses: When more robots are introduced to the Louisiana site next year, the company expects to employ about half the workers it would without automation. Amazon is currently working to overhaul dozens of facilities with this robotics model, the story declared. Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly noted that the Times’ “half as many workers” comparison contrasts the Louisiana site with the company’s largest robotics fulfillment centers. Amazon still employs 2,000 workers at the facility, he declared.
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This likely won’t mean straight-up layoffs. When Amazon decides that a facility does necessary to lose staff, it relies on worker attrition, Kelly informed SFGATE. He also declared that efficiencies like the robot deployment often assist the company invest elsewhere, as well as in higher-paying jobs.
FILE: Robots sit idle at an Amazon fulfillment center on Aug. 10, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif.
Still, in an economy where enattempt-level jobs are often proving difficult to find, the threat of a tentpole employer shedding staff won’t ease national concerns about slowing job growth.
Plus, the robotics push isn’t just a warning for the prospective Amazon employees. The company, for years, has led the corporate trfinishs in e-commerce fulfillment and metrics-based management that giants like Tarreceive and Walmart have then followed. If Jeff Bezos’ logistics empire proves factories “powered by AI” create more financial sense than those led by human workers, other companies may follow Amazon on that too.
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This news story has been updated.
Work at a Bay Area tech company and want to talk? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
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