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MARCH in Las Vegas, where approximately 3,000 engineers, academics, programmers, astronauts, artists, entrepreneurs and NBA players from more than 40 countries came together to exchange views on machine learning, the 39, artificial intelligence, robotics and travel in space. The richness of the content did not disappoint: a hundred presentations in small groups, workshops and a technical showcase condemned the mission of this writer to cover everything from the beginning.
Robert Downey Jr., who heads his inner Iron Man, announced Wednesday the Footprint Coalition, which will seek to "clean" the planet significantly over the next 11 years. Rohit Prasad, vice president of Amazon and principal investigator of Alexa, presented Conversations, a method based on deep learning to create Alexa skills with a multi-turn dialogue that can interconnect with other Alexa skills . Aicha Evans, CEO of Zoox, described in detail the hardware and software that underpins the driverless vehicles custom-designed for the company. And it was only the tip of a big iceberg.
But what has most caught the attention of my colleagues and myself is the progress of robotics and what they could mean for the workforce of tomorrow.
During the first re: MARS conference, Brad Porter, head of robotics at Amazon, unveiled two new platforms for Amazon's hundreds of execution centers around the world. The first is Pegasus, a product categorization system that reduces badly sorted goods by 50%. The other is Xanthus, a modular drive system that adapts quickly to new applications. Both are part of the more than 200,000 machines that now work alongside the 300,000 human workers in Amazon's warehouses, an increase from the 100,000 machines of the previous year.
"Customers' expectations for convenience, selection, cost and, above all, speed of delivery continue to grow, and we recognize that we need functional changes in robotics," Porter said.
In the same address, Amazon global consumer CEO Jeff Wilke unveiled a new, fully electric, fully electric six-prop Prime Air delivery drone, which will soon begin delivering packages to customers as part of tests. drivers. Amazon aims to deliver parcels up to five pounds in less than 30 minutes for customers within 12 km (12 km) of its warehouses.
MARS, director of technology and vice president of Amazon, Werner Vogels, highlighted RoboMaker, Amazon's cloud robotics service designed to accelerate the development, testing and deployment of intelligent machines. "We are now getting a lot of attention and interest [in this]"Vogels said." If we do this correctly, we will see the next generation of explorers working on the next generation of robotic technology. "
Amazon's increased investment in robotics – which has likely begun in earnest with the 2012 acquisition of Kiva Systems, a Mbadachusetts-based robotics manufacturing company – is accelerating with the recent purchase of Canvas Technology. The Colorado-based startup is developing a fully autonomous trolley system. Even more recently, in the warehouses of Seattle, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam and Manchester, Amazon has doubled with million-dollar machines – CartonWraps and SmartPac units – capable of packing up to 700 produced in one hour.
These changes undoubtedly reduce operational costs: Savings with CartonWraps and SmartPacs are so substantial that each robot is amortized in less than two years and Amazon's ambitious plan to reduce its free delivery option for Premium subscribers from one to two days.
But it is a less encouraging development for human workers whose jobs are likely to disappear as a result of partial or complete automation.
An badysis published in 2017 by Quartz revealed that because of Amazon's investments in automation and robotics employees, the combined jobs in the company and badociated retailers would decrease by 24,000 net in 2018. For its part, Forrester discovered that AI could eliminate 10% of US jobs in the country. Over the coming months and last year, badysts at the World Economic Forum, PricewaterhouseCoopers, McKinsey Global Institute and Gartner have predicted a potential removal of 75 million jobs by 2025.
Amazon claims that its robots badist rather than replace its human workers, and it cites its warehouses in places like Florence, New Jersey, and Kent, Washington, as excellent examples. Here, employees store shelves on which robots prepare for shipping, and it is humans, not machines, who are responsible for putting products into the cardboard boxes that customers ultimately receive.
"[These workers are] find something, inspect things, engage [their] I think the spirit is important, "said Dave Clark, Amazon's operations manager at the New York Times in an interview.
The reports confirm this idea. Gartner, for example, predicts that automation and robotics will create 500,000 net jobs by 2020 and 2 million over the next five years. According to McKinsey, AI could contribute 1.2% to gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the next decade and contribute 20 to 25% of additional net economic benefits (the equivalent of $ 13 trillion worldwide) over the next 12 years.
In Florence and Kent, no worker lost his job when robots were installed. While Amazon continues to develop and deploy more powerful machines such as Prime Air drones, deliverymen such as Scout, and warehouse packers and sorters in their quest for efficiency, it is unclear if the trend will continue.
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