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Smart Warehouse Robots Will Eventually Replace Most Human Workers

Robot arms are getting smart, and that’s bad news for human employees who work in warehouses. The New York Times reports that a new component-sorting machine is capable of performing tasks that formerly required a human’s intelligence and dexterity, which “raises new concerns about warehouse workers losing their jobs to automation” according to the paper.

The world is changing rapidly, and the workplace will be transformed in basic ways because of scientific advances. The future will become more technological and automated, so it’s crazy for America to continue admitting millions of low-skilled immigrants when increasingly jobs require tech-educated people, not illiterate agricultural workers from Guatemala.

Washington should wake up and realize that

Automation makes immigration obsolete.

The Times article explains clearly what the employment outcome for human workers will be because of the increasing abilities of robots.

A Warehouse Robot Learns to Sort Out the Tricky Stuff, New York Times, January 29, 2020

LUDWIGSFELDE, Germany — Inside a warehouse on the outskirts of Berlin, a long line of blue crates moved down a conveyor belt, carrying light switches, sockets and other electrical parts. As they came to a stop, five workers picked through the small items, placing each one in a cardboard box.

At Obeta, an electrical parts company that opened in 1901, it is the kind of monotonous task workers have performed for years.

But several months ago, a new worker joined the team. Stationed behind protective glass, a robot using three suction cups at the end of its long arm does the same job, sifting through parts with surprising speed and accuracy.

While it may not seem like much, this component-sorting robot is a major advance in artificial intelligence and the ability of machines to perform human labor.

As millions of products move through warehouses run by Amazon, Walmart and other retailers, low-wage workers must comb through bin after bin of random stuff — from clothes and shoes to electronic equipment — so that each item can be packaged and sent on its way. Machines had not really been up to the task, until now.

“I’ve worked in the logistics industry for more than 16 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Peter Puchwein, vice president of Knapp, an Austrian company that provides automation technology for warehouses.

Standing nearby at the Obeta warehouse, the California engineers who made the robot snapped pictures with their smartphones. They spent more than two years designing the system at a start-up called Covariant.AI, building on their research at the University of California, Berkeley.

Their technology is an indication that, in the coming years, few warehouse tasks will be too small or complex for a robot. And as the machines master tasks traditionally handled by humans, their development raises new concerns about warehouse workers losing their jobs to automation.

Because the online retail business is growing so quickly — and most companies will be slow to adopt the latest robotic technologies — economists believe the advances will not cut into the overall number of logistics jobs anytime soon. But the engineers building these technologies admit that at some point most warehouse tasks will be done by machines. Human workers will need to find other things to do. (Continues)

Retail Robots Are Coming at Every Level

To a large degree, automation’s job replacement has occurred out of the public eye, such as in factories, but we could soon find the appearance of smart machines in retail outlets — see Business Develops More Cashierless Stores.

Doubtless the number of human workers may seem excessive to business owners looking to save money by installing robots, which conveniently don’t require lunch breaks, healthcare or paychecks. Of course, disemployed workers are not dependable shoppers, a fact that automation implementers tend to ignore.

And the thousands of unskilled illegal aliens amassing on the US southern border will not be employable in a few years whenever machines can replace them at less cost.

The writer of the article below seems to find the robot future to be a neato prospect judging by his writing style, although the associated job loss will be anything but cool — except for employers. For example, the World Economic Forum predicted a few years ago that 30 to 50 percent of retail jobs are at risk once known automation technologies are fully incorporated which will result in six million positions lost.

Below, the LoweBot retail machine can direct customers to the items they wish to buy.

It would be nice if someone in Washington were paying attention to this severe threat to our economic future.

Retail Robots Are on the Rise — at Every Level of the Industry, SingularityHub.com, December 20, 2019

The robots are coming! The robots are coming! On our sidewalks, in our skies, in our every store… Over the next decade, robots will enter the mainstream of retail.

As countless robots work behind the scenes to stock shelves, serve customers, and deliver products to our doorstep, the speed of retail will accelerate.

These changes are already underway. In this blog, we’ll elaborate on how robots are entering the retail ecosystem.

Let’s dive in.

Robot Delivery

On August 3rd, 2016, Domino’s Pizza introduced the Domino’s Robotic Unit, or “DRU” for short. The first home delivery pizza robot, the DRU looks like a cross between R2-D2 and an oversized microwave.

LIDAR and GPS sensors help it navigate, while temperature sensors keep hot food hot and cold food cold. Already, it’s been rolled out in ten countries, including New Zealand, France, and Germany, but its August 2016 debut was critical—as it was the first time we’d seen robotic home delivery.

And it won’t be the last.

A dozen or so different delivery bots are fast entering the market. Starship Technologies, for instance, a startup created by Skype founders Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla, has a general-purpose home delivery robot. Right now, the system is an array of cameras and GPS sensors, but upcoming models will include microphones, speakers, and even the ability—via AI-driven natural language processing—to communicate with customers. Since 2016, Starship has already carried out 50,000 deliveries in over 100 cities across 20 countries.

Along similar lines, Nuro—co-founded by Jiajun Zhu, one of the engineers who helped develop Google’s self-driving car—has a miniature self-driving car of its own. Half the size of a sedan, the Nuro looks like a toaster on wheels, except with a mission. This toaster has been designed to carry cargo—about 12 bags of groceries (version 2.0 will carry 20)—which it’s been doing for select Kroger stores since 2018. Domino’s also partnered with Nuro in 2019.

As these delivery bots take to our streets, others are streaking across the sky.

Back in 2016, Amazon came first, announcing Prime Air—the e-commerce giant’s promise of drone delivery in 30 minutes or less. Almost immediately, companies ranging from 7-Eleven and Walmart to Google and Alibaba jumped on the bandwagon.

While critics remain doubtful, the head of the FAA’s drone integration department recently said that drone deliveries may be “a lot closer than […] the skeptics think. [Companies are] getting ready for full-blown operations. We’re processing their applications. I would like to move as quickly as I can.”

In-Store Robots

While delivery bots start to spare us trips to the store, those who prefer shopping the old-fashioned way—i.e., in person—also have plenty of human-robot interaction in store. In fact, these robotics solutions have been around for a while.

In 2010, SoftBank introduced Pepper, a humanoid robot capable of understanding human emotion. Pepper is cute: 4 feet tall, with a white plastic body, two black eyes, a dark slash of a mouth, and a base shaped like a mermaid’s tail. Across her chest is a touch screen to aid in communication. And there’s been a lot of communication. Pepper’s cuteness is intentional, as it matches its mission: help humans enjoy life as much as possible.

Over 12,000 Peppers have been sold. She serves ice cream in Japan, greets diners at a Pizza Hut in Singapore, and dances with customers at a Palo Alto electronics store. More importantly, Pepper’s got company.

Walmart uses shelf-stocking robots for inventory control. Best Buy uses a robo-cashier, allowing select locations to operate 24-7. And Lowe’s Home Improvement employs the LoweBot—a giant iPad on wheels—to help customers find the items they need while tracking inventory along the way. (Continues)

President Trump’s Proposal to Improve the Quality of Immigrants Meets Opposition from the Usual Quarters

President Trump has called for a fundament change in the government’s immigration system to require skills of entrants, rather than continue the current family-based system concocted by Sen Ted Kennedy in 1965.

It’s a popular proposal, according to a Rasmussen poll published May 20, titled, Voters Still See Skills-Based Legal Entry As Immigration Fix:

Voters continue to believe the U.S. immigration system is broken and still tend to favor shifting to the skills-based system that President Trump is proposing.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters agree with Senator Lindsey Graham’s assessment last week that “we have a perfect storm brewing at the border because of a series of broken and outdated laws related to asylum and children.”

Tucker Carlson recently presented some observations about “merit” as a value in immigration after the Democrats had the predictable reaction of squawking “Racist!” at the president for common sense. Rep. Maxine Waters reflexively described the Trump immigration policy as “very racist” last week for requiring knowledge of English among newbies.

Some noticed that the Trump plan contained no overall reduction of immigrant numbers — something strongly indicated by the anemic wage growth among US workers. NumbersUSA released a video on May 6 expressing the worker viewpoint:

Another reason to decrease immigration is the increased use of worker-replacing robots. For example, Walmart (America’s largest company by revenue) is turning to automation to save money and increase efficiency:

Plus there is no discussion anywhere of the enormous factor of world population growth — now over 7.7 billion persons, more than double the 3.7 billion residents of the planet on the first Earth Day in 1970. Nearly all of that growth has occurred in the Third World which is now happy to send its excess people to America’s open border — remittances to follow, bringing billions of dollars to alien-sending countries south of the border and beyond.

Heres’s Tucker on the argument for merit-based immigration:

TUCKER CARLSON: Good evening, and welcome to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” This week, the Trump administration revealed its proposal to overhaul America’s immigration system. The proposal would not by itself build the often promised wall on our southern border, nor would it cut current levels of immigration despite the fact that most Americans would like to see that happen.

The one big thing the administration’s proposal would do is give priority to immigrants who might actually help America — skilled workers with English proficiency. It’s hard to see an argument against a system like that — there isn’t really an argument against that system.

For years, Democrats have argued that immigrants make vital additions to our economy. They’re smarter than we are, they’re harder working, they do better in school. They found more companies.

Well, the President has decided to take Democrats at their word; he says he wants all of those good things that immigrants bring. Watch:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We want immigrants coming in, we cherish the open door that we want to create for our country. But a big proportion of those immigrants must come in through merit and skill.

CARLSON: Well, much of the world would move here if they could — hundreds and hundreds of millions of people. So why wouldn’t we pick the absolute best immigrants with skills in English who would fit in better here, their kids would do better in school, they’d be more likely to contribute to social programs instead of draining them.

So are Democrats rejoicing in this change? Of course not. They’re outraged. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke for the party when she declared that really merit is a bad word because everybody has merit:

REP. NANCY PELOSI: I want to just say something about the word that they use, “merit.” It is really a condescending word. Are they saying family is without merit? Are they saying most of the people who have ever come to the United States in the history of our country are without merit, because they don’t have an engineering degree?

Certainly, we want to attract the best to our country and that includes many people from many parts of society.

CARLSON: What a shame we can’t staff the Democratic Caucus in the Congress using the same criteria the Speaker would like to fill our country. “We want to attract the best for many parts of the world,” she says. But of course by that, Pelosi doesn’t mean what she says. She means just the opposite because what exactly is best about immigrants who have criminal records or middle school education, or no ability to hold a job? Continue reading this article

Walmart Gives Robots a Bigger Role in Stores

In November of 2017 it was reported that Walmart was trying out floor-scrubber robots in a few of its stores. That testing must have gone well because now the machines are part of a company decision to use technology “to help keep costs in check.”

Walmart’s robot floor cleaner scrubs and polishes all by itself with no worker required to guide it, as shown below:

In addition, Walmart has been using inventory robots to keep its shelves adequately supplied. The machines scan to see what is needed, but cannot physically stock the needed merchandise — yet.

The following article talks as if regular Walmart employees clean the floors and the robots will allow them more time for “customer-centric” work — don’t the stores have janitors for that chore?

In fact, industrial janitor is a job which many low-skilled immigrants take, so perhaps we needn’t continue importing them when so many such occupations will soon be done by smart machines.

AI-Powered, Self-Driving Robots Are Taking On a Bigger Role at Walmart Stores, Motley Fool, March 19, 2019

The world’s largest retailer is making a growing bet on robots and artificial intelligence to gain a competitive edge.

Competition in the retail industry has never been more cutthroat. The dawn of e-commerce has caused a paradigm shift, with traditional retailers having to change with the times or fall by the wayside.

Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is representative not only of the old guard of retail, but also of the transition that is happening among brick-and-mortar stores to adapt to this new reality. In addition to a fierce move into e-commerce, the once-stodgy retailer has embraced cutting-edge technology to help keep costs in check and provide a better shopping experience for its customers.

Case in point: Self-propelled robots are now taking on an increasing role in Walmart’s operations.

Walmart is using self-driving robots to scrub floors. Image source: Brain Corp.

The coming of the ‘bots
Walmart recently revealed it’s bringing self-driving robots powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to its stores to handle the mundane task of floor cleaning. The Auto-C — Autonomous Cleaner uses assisted autonomy as it navigates around Walmart stores, employing a variety of lasers, cameras, and sensors to scan its surroundings for people and obstacles. This technology allows the self-driving robots to function effectively and safely in complex, crowded environments, which leads to increased productivity and efficiency.

This often-overlooked chore would typically take Walmart associates (what the retailer calls its employees) about two hours per day, on average. Multiply that by more than 11,000 stores worldwide and that’s a lot of time cleaning floors. Having a robot complete the task frees up Walmart employees for other, more customer-centric tasks.

The self-driving floor cleaners were initially tested in about 100 Walmart stores, and the company recently expanded that rollout to 360 stores. (Continues)

Fed-Ex Introduces Delivery Robot

We’ve seen small autonomous shipping vehicles for a couple years now, like the Starship company’s model which has been tested in cities like Austin and Washington DC.

So the new model from Fed-Ex is interesting in that it represents a tech advance by surmounting one modest step in the video below, but nothing more challenging than that.

These machines do look adapted so far for flat land only, and would never make it up the 10 steps to my front door. Even a good climber robot might be challenged by carrying a heavy load that could cause it to topple over.

Clearly, real stairs are the next big problem to be solved in order for this technology to be widely used.

So human delivery persons are safe for a little while longer in the hilly neighborhoods of America. It’s been a good starter or part-time job for young people, but not for much longer if industry has its way in creating an automated future.

FedEx partners with Walmart, Pizza Hut to test last-mile delivery robot, Reuters, February 27, 2019

(Reuters) – FedEx Corp this summer plans to begin testing a robot to handle home deliveries for partners ranging from Walmart Inc to Pizza Hut.

Shippers, retailers and restaurants are experimenting with robots, drones and self-driving cars in a bid to use automation to drive down the high cost of delivering gadgets, groceries and even cups of coffee the “last mile” to consumer doorsteps.

Fed-Ex is teaming up with DEKA Development & Research Corp, whose founder Dean Kamen invented the Segway stand-up scooter and iBot stair-climbing wheelchair, for its project. The delivery company said the robots could become part of its SameDay service that operates in 1,900 cities around the world.

The battery-powered robots look like coolers on wheels. Cameras and software help them detect and avoid obstacles as they roam sidewalks and roadways at a top speed of 10 miles (16 km) per hour.

The project must win approval in test cities, including the shipper’s hometown of Memphis, and the first deliveries will be between FedEx office stores.

On average, more than 60 percent of merchants’ customers live within three miles of a store location. FedEx said it is working with its partners, which also include AutoZone Inc and Target Corp, to determine if autonomous delivery to them is a viable option for fast, cheap deliveries.

The “last mile” to the home accounts for 50 percent or more of total package delivery costs. Restaurants pay third-party delivery companies like Uber Eats, DoorDash and GrubHub commissions of 10-30 percent per order.

Investors and companies are pouring millions of dollars into projects aimed at lowering those costs and overcoming regulatory hurdles. For safety reasons, many states want autonomous vehicles to have humans as emergency backup drivers.

Starship Technologies, which has raised more than $40 million in venture funding, last year deployed robots to deliver packages in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Continues)

Robots Are Ready for Next Financial Slump

It’s not news that when an economic downturn hits, business looks to cut numbers of expensive employees, but these days, the entrance of smart machines into the workplace makes the layoffs even easier for executives. It has happened before and it will happen again.

In fact, a 2013 investigation by the Associated Press found that good jobs lost in the economic downturn aren’t coming back: AP IMPACT: Recession, tech kill middle-class jobs. Companies chose to become more efficient by laying human workers off and substituting automation and software for a range of employment from farm pickers to educated office workers.

We can therefore expect similar behavior in the next recession, as is forecast in a Washington Post article, reprinted in the Houston Chronicle, linked below.

The piece utilizes the recent Brookings report, Automation and Artificial Intelligence. It presents a reassuring tone, suggesting that robots “will bring neither an apocalypse nor utopia.”

So forget about those scary predictions like the shocker on a recent Sixty Minutes show that “in 15 years, [automation is] going to displace about 40 percent of the jobs in the world.”

All in all, the best course is probably to bet on the profit urge among business executives — and when machines become cheaper than workers to perform a task, the humans will go.

The Post article observes, “Hispanic workers are more exposed than any other race or ethnic group” to the automation threat, though without connecting the educational component or ability to speak English.

Immigrants are not mentioned at all in the Brookings report, although the recent batch of illegal aliens from Honduras won’t be suitable for any useful work before too long. Foreigners whose skills consist of Third-World farming techniques will not be employable even at menial labor when the cheap robots come galloping into the workplace.

The coming automation spurt will likely bring enormous welfare costs because of crazy liberal immigration of unskilled persons.

When the next recession comes, the robots will be ready, By Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, January 25, 2019

In this May 3, 2018, file photo a worker lifts a lunch bowl off the production line at Spyce, a restaurant which uses a robotic cooking process, in Boston. Robots aren’t replacing everyone, but a quarter of U.S. jobs will be severely disrupted as artificial intelligence accelerates the automation of today’s work, according to a new Brookings Institution report published Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019.

Robots’ infiltration of the workforce doesn’t happen gradually, at the pace of technology. It happens in surges, when companies are given strong incentives to tackle the difficult task of automation.

Typically, those incentives occur during recessions. Employers slash payrolls going into a downturn and, out of necessity, turn to software or machinery to take over the tasks once performed by their laid-off workers as business begins to recover.

As uncertainty soars, a shutdown drags on, and consumer confidence sputters, economists increasingly predict a recession this year or next. Whenever this long economic expansion ends, the robots will be ready. The human labor market is tight, with the unemployment rate at 3.9 percent, but there’s plenty of slack in the robot labor force.

This next wave of automation won’t just be sleek robotic arms on factory floors. It will be ordering kiosks, self-service apps and software smart enough to perfect schedules and cut down on the workers needed to cover a shift. Employers are already testing these systems. A recession will force them into the mainstream.

A new analysis from Mark Muro, Robert Maxim and Jacob Whiton of the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, finds much of the nation will be susceptible to the upheaval caused by automation in coming decades, particularly young people, minorities and Rust Belt workers.

The total number of jobs will rise in the long run, but many workers will be forced to adapt. Robots will continue to roil the long-suffering manufacturing sector, Brookings finds. They will also move into low-skill service jobs such as food services workers once considered too cheap or too difficult to automate.

Economists generally focus on workers performing repetitive tasks, including rote mental or clerical work in an office cubicle and rote manual labor on a factory floor, to measure the influence of technology.

Middle-income work has evaporated in recent decades. Americans are now divided between the high-paid employees who design machines, the low-paid workers who sweeps up after it, or the even lower-paid service workers who serves fast-casual sandwiches to the other two.

In an upcoming paper from Review of Economics and Statistics, economists Nir Jaimovich of the University of Zurich and Henry Siu of the University of British Columbia found that 88 percent of job loss in routine occupations occurs within 12 months of a recession. In the 1990-1991, 2001 and 2008-2009 recessions, routine jobs accounted for “essentially all” of the jobs lost. They regained almost no ground during the subsequent recoveries.

Firms in cities hit hardest by the Great Recession raised their skill requirements for new employees and invested more in technology, according to economists Brad Hershbein of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and Lisa Kahn of the University of Rochester.

Their 2018 American Economic Review analysis of almost 100 million online postings collected by Burning Glass Technologies in 2007 and 2010-2015 found strong signs companies were replacing workers who performed routine tasks with a combination of technology and more skilled workers. The effect was especially pronounced for “cognitive” workers such as office clerks, office administrators and salespeople.

The economy is near full employment – the point at which everyone who wants a job has one. The unemployment rate has been at or below 4.0 percent for 10 straight months.

But the labor market for robots has room to grow. As wages rise and human help gets pricey, companies have experimented with alternatives.

The Washington Post’s Peter Holley has tapped into a deep vein of corporate automation efforts in recent months. Cooler-sized robots deliver food for $1.99 at George Mason University in suburan Washington. Tall, slim robot assistants patrol Giant supermarkets in search of spills and hazards. Walmart planned to install 360 floor-cleaning robot zambonis by the end of January. A start-up called Robomart hopes to start running mobile supermarkets in robotic minivans in the Boston area in partnership with Stop & Shop.

But while many businesses dabble, few have gone all-in — yet. (Continues)

Tech Expert Martin Ford Discusses Robots in the Retail Sector

In 2015, Martin Ford wrote the book Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, a work that got a lot of attention because of its detailed warnings about an economy totally transformed by automation. Big tech, business and the general public continue to be interested in what Ford has to say, as shown by the ongoing media attention and appearances at conferences around the world. His book still appears on lists, such as Politico’s top 50 list for the last year. Follow his activities and observations on his Twitter account, @MFordFuture.

It has been forecast by various tech experts that a big chunk of jobs will be transferred to smart machines over the coming years, one being the 2013 prediction of Oxford University researchers that nearly half of American jobs were vulnerable to machine or software replacement within 20 years.

So paying attention to the coming automation revolution makes sense for our national plans about the future. For example, America won’t need to be importing a million immigrant workers a year when machines will soon be doing the jobs.

Automation will revolutionize retail for shoppers and workers; for example, the machine shown below replaces a greeter and clerk in Lowe’s hardware stores.

Martin Ford was recently interviewed by Retail Touch Points, a business website, about certain automation applications and an update about the technology.

Exclusive Q&A: Which Retail Jobs Are Safe From A Robot Takeover?, Retail Touch Points, September 5, 2018

In an exclusive interview with Retail TouchPoints, Ford identifies the advances in robotics and AI that are accelerating the fastest. He also identifies a selection of job categories that are safe from the march of automation — at least for now.

Retail TouchPoints (RTP): You write in Rise Of The Robots that warehouse work and fast food are two places where we’re already seeing the impact of robotics on employment. Has that trend continued since the book came out in 2015?

Martin Ford: There have been advances in both areas, but the progress has had the most practical applications in warehouse work. You can find videos on YouTube showing robots moving boxes around. Nearly all the main distribution warehouses are automated to some extent, for example by bringing shelves to workers who then reach in and grab the items they need. I really think Amazon’s warehouses will get more efficient and less labor-intensive, which directly impacts Walmart.

In order to respond, traditional retailers with stores also will have to become more efficient. Walmart and others have been testing robots for taking store inventory by counting the things that are on the store shelves. Part of the nature of robotics is that it’s easier to make one designed just to observe something, versus building a robot that physically does something like pick up a box. Eventually, however, robots will be unloading trucks or putting items on shelves, particularly in areas where the products are standardized. That’s probably inevitable.

In the fast food area, there are at least three startups in terms of actually preparing food. Momentum Machines, now called Creator, has a robot that shapes burgers from freshly ground meat and grills them to order, and it can produce 360 burgers per hour. They just opened a storefront in San Francisco in order to test the technology. There’s also a company called Zume that is using robots to make pizzas. Their business model is to put the uncooked pizzas in a van equipped with an oven and have it cooked while it’s on the way to the delivery destination, so that it’s virtually right out of the oven when you get it.

RTP: You also write about the impact of cloud robotics, which migrates the intelligence needed to animate mobile robots to a centralized hub, as a technology that’s likely to affect jobs. Why is this technology important?

Ford: Some people say ‘Well, I might lose my job doing such-and-such, but I can get a job fixing the robots.’ It’s true that repair and maintenance will create some jobs, but certainly not as many as will be lost. Take the Redbox video boxes, which can sense when there’s a mechanical or software issue with one of them and send an alert about that. All of these types of systems will be built in a way that’s very modular and easy to maintain, probably remotely and in some cases autonomously. That’s a part of the business model.

RTP: Are there jobs where we might be surprised to see robots, AI or other technologies replacing humans?

Ford: People have been biased toward the idea of robots taking away blue-collar jobs, like warehouse workers, or truck drivers with self-driving vehicles. There’s not enough focus on the person that sits in a cubicle, whose job is a lot easier to automate in many ways. For one thing, as opposed to a self-driving car, if the machine makes a mistake, nobody gets injured or killed. People who are analysts cranking out reports, or putting data into an understandable format, in areas like accounting, finance and banking — all of these jobs will be increasingly susceptible to becoming automated.

We’re already seeing it in customer service. When you call a company for technical support, it’s increasingly likely that you will be talking to a machine, and it’s not clear whether that will be disclosed to the consumer. These solutions could get good enough so that people wouldn’t be able to tell, especially when the conversations are limited in terms of the topic areas.

RTP: Are there retail jobs that might be considered “safe” from automation?

Ford: Jobs involving creative and strategic thinking are one area. Another is jobs involving interacting with people, particularly if you need to build a sophisticated relationship, as in high-end retail. Another area is jobs where there’s a lot of mobility and dexterity involved. Outside of retail that would be electricians and plumbers, but even something like stocking shelves — particularly in a smaller store that has a lot of different products and different-sized shelves — will still need people. Also, the person that goes into the fitting room to restock shelves with clothes that are all in a jumble — pretty much anything that requires flexibility and dexterity in unpredictable environments is fairly safe.

RTP: What are some of the likely effects of a jobless future?

Ford: Workers are consumers, and the main way we get money into the hands of these consumers is their jobs. As these jobs go away or as wages fall, things become increasingly unequal. We’re already seeing the impact of inequality — I’ve seen surveys saying that the average person would not be able to come up with $500 in case they needed to fix a car or had medical expenses. If people have no discretionary income, they’re not driving the economy, because these people are really only buying essentials. (Continues)

Benefits of Automation Are Debated

Here’s a little discussion about automation and job loss that’s all too typical. Fox Business guy Stuart Varney asks a very basic question, that some companies, such as Walmart and Target, are turning to smart machines to replace humans and save money.

The robot guy gives a non-answer, purposely it seems, to distract from the important subject of lost jobs by chattering about the improved productivity and innovation. In fact, companies use automation precisely to improve productivity by ditching humans who take breaks, eat lunch and call in sick. Machines can work 24/7 and need only the occasional squirt of oil to freshen up.

FOX BUSINESS HOST STUART VARNEY: An MIT study suggests robots will create more jobs than they destroy. Bill Studebaker is with us, ROBO Global president, and a big fan of robots. Let me come back at you with this — Target and Walmart are using automation to get rid of workers on the shop floor, robots getting rid of jobs. Make the case that robots create jobs.

BILL STUDEBAKER: Well I think it is simply the case, Stuart, what you’re seeing with robots, there is a lot more collaboration going on. In the US we have the notion of fear the robots, but everywhere else in the world, it has embraced robots because robots are driving higher productivity, driving higher innovation. They’re bringing more profits, so you’re seeing this. So companies like Target and Walmart understand the need for innovation. They understand the need for better productivity. . .

Varney gave his inquiry another shot, saying, “it seems to me that robots get rid of a whole class of low-skilled worker,” but Studebaker wasn’t answering the job-loss question which is central to the automation revolution.

Automotive manufacturing once provided good jobs for millions of Americans, but it is mostly done by robots now.

So it’s good to listen closely when robot entrepreneurs are talking up the product.

Tech experts who don’t own robot-manufacturing companies have mostly dire predictions about the automated future workplace. Oxford researchers forecast in 2013 that nearly half of American jobs were vulnerable to machine or software replacement within 20 years. Rice University computer scientist Moshe Vardi believes that in 30 years humans will become largely obsolete, and world joblessness will reach 50 percent. The Gartner tech advising company believes that one-third of jobs will be done by machines by 2025. The consultancy firm PwC published a report last year that forecast robots could take 38 percent of US jobs by 2030. Last November the McKinsey Global Institute reported that automation “could displace up to 800 million workers — 30 percent of the global workforce — by 2030.” Forrester Research estimates that robots and artificial intelligence could eliminate nearly 25 million jobs in the United States over the next decade, but it should create nearly 15 million positions, resulting in a loss of 10 million US jobs.

Retail Businesses Try to Catch Up with Amazon Technology

In the retail world, there’s an attempt being made to regain its market share by following the lead of Amazon with its use of technology. The major goal is saving the store as a place where people go and shop, rather than ordering everything online for delivery.

Below, the Amazon Go store offers a modern do-it-yourself checkout where shoppers just choose items they want and the cost is tallied up and deducted on their smart phones.

Here is Amazon’s explainer video about how the Go store works:

The article below, reprinted from the New York Times, explains how retailers and others “are motivated to shave labor costs” which points out the eventual catastrophic job loss that will come with automation across workplaces from agriculture to manufacturing and retail.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, retail workers account for millions of jobs. Statistics from earlier this year reported that 4,854,300 persons worked in retail sales in 2016.

So America won’t need any more immigrants when all sorts of jobs are disappearing because of automation, right? We will have enough trouble finding jobs for citizens.

Retailers race against Amazon to automate stores, SFGate.com, April 2, 2018

SEATTLE — To see what it is like inside stores where sensors and artificial intelligence have replaced cashiers, shoppers have to trek to Amazon Go, the Internet retailer’s experimental convenience shop in downtown Seattle.

Soon, though, more technology-driven businesses like Amazon Go may be coming to them.

A global race to automate stores is under way among several of the world’s top retailers and small tech startups, which are motivated to shave labor costs and minimize shoppers’ frustrations, like waiting for cashiers. They are also trying to prevent Amazon from dominating the physical retail world as it does online shopping.

Companies are testing robots that help keep shelves stocked, as well as apps that let shoppers ring up items with a smartphone. High-tech systems like the one used by Amazon Go completely automate the checkout process. China, which has its own ambitious e-commerce companies, is emerging as an especially fertile place for these retail experiments.

If they succeed, these new technologies could add further uncertainty to the retail workforce, which is already in flux because of the growth of online shopping. An analysis last year by the World Economic Forum said 30 to 50 percent of the world’s retail jobs could be at risk once technologies like automated checkout were fully embraced.

In addition, the efforts have raised concerns among privacy researchers because of the mounds of data that retailers will be able to gather about shopper behavior as they digitize their locations. Inside Amazon Go, for instance, the cameras never lose sight of a customer once he or she enters the shop.

Retailers had adopted technologies in their stores long before Amazon Go arrived on the scene. Self-checkout kiosks have been common in supermarkets and other stores for years. Kroger, the grocery chain, uses sensors and predictive analytics tools to better anticipate when more cashiers will be needed.

But the opening of Amazon Go in January was alarming for many retailers, who saw a sudden willingness by Amazon to wield its technology power in new ways. Hundreds of cameras near the ceiling and sensors in the shelves help automatically tally the cookies, chips and soda that shoppers remove and put into their bags. Shoppers’ accounts are charged as they walk out the doors.

Amazon is now looking to expand Go to new areas. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on its expansion plans, but the company has a job posting for a senior real estate manager who will be responsible for “site selection and acquisition” and field tours of “potential locations” for new Go stores.

“Unanimously, there was an element of embarrassment because here is an online retailer showing us how to do brick and mortar, and frankly doing it amazingly well,” said Martin Hitch, the chief business officer of Bossa Nova Robotics, a company that makes inventory management robots that Walmart and others are testing.

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Walmart Introduces Shelf-Scanning Robots for Inventory and Stocking

It’s good to see the new troops in the upcoming robot revolution appearing in the local Walmart where the public can see directly how the workplace is changing. The new machine is an automated shelf-scanner that scoots along the aisles to check on supply and correct pricing.

Store inventory is a good fit for a robot counter on wheels, as Walmart has apparently decided.

The San Francisco CBS station presented the video report below, where one Walmart shopper, Deborah Espinoza, was bright enough to question the related job loss. An employee San Jose Airport, she said that cashiers were laid off there when automated checkout was introduced. The Walmart spokesperson had a noncommittal response to that, saying it’s still too early to say how the robots will impact their workforce. Right.

The robot shelf-scanner is another example of how automation is about to change the workplace fundamentally, and millions of jobs will likely be lost to smart machines in the coming decades. There’s not a lot that can be done, although ending the immigration of low-skilled persons is indicated because machines will soon be doing those jobs.

‘It’s a little scary.’ Walmart rolls out shelf-scanning robots in 50 stores, Sacramento Bee, March 21, 2018

They might not be the killer machines from the future in the “Terminator” films, but shelf-scanning robots deployed at 50 Walmart stores across the nation are still an unsettling sight for some consumers.

“Well, it’s a little scary because I feel it’s taking somebody’s job,” shopper Deborah Espinoza told KTVU at a Walmart testing the robots in Milpitas, Calif. “But if it isn’t taking somebody’s job, if it’s gonna do benefits for Walmart, then it would be good.”

Walmart executives, however, insist the robots will not entirely replace human workers at the retail giant’s stores.

“It’s looking at tasks that are repeatable, predictable,” Tiffany Wilson, a Walmart spokeswoman, told The Mercury News. “This way, our associates can spend their time focusing on customers and selling merchandise. While the job may change, and the type of work being done may change, robots are not going to replace human contact and human touch.”

The 6-foot-tall robots, designed by San Francisco-based Bossa Nova Robotics, zip down store aisles scanning shelves on both sides using lights, cameras and radar, reported KPIX. The robots clear one aisle every 90 seconds or so, checking for out-of-stock, mispriced, mislabled and misplaced products, instantly uploading the information so workers can keep shelves up to date.

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Automation Advances Further into Inventory Jobs

Robots are good at counting and recording, so they are increasingly being used in stores and warehouses to keep track of the stock on hand.

As part of Wal-mart’s competition with Amazon, the store chain is utilizing Amazon’s technology strategy by moving forward with automation to up its e-commerce game.

Naturally, the efficiency and cost-savings are emphasized, rather than the inevitable job loss.

Wal-Mart’s new robots scan shelves to restock items faster, Reuters, October 26, 2017

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Wal-Mart Stores Inc is rolling out shelf-scanning robots in more than 50 U.S. stores to replenish inventory faster and save employees time when products run out.

. . . “If you are running up and down the aisle and you want to decide if we are out of Cheerios or not, a human doesn’t do that job very well, and they don’t like it,” Jeremy King, chief technology officer for Walmart U.S. and e-commerce, told Reuters.

The company said the robots would not replace workers or affect employee headcount in stores.

The robots are 50 percent more productive than their human counterparts and can scan shelves significantly more accurately and three times faster, King said. Store employees only have time to scan shelves about twice a week.

The idea of installing robots to automate retail is not new. Rival Amazon.com Inc uses small Kiva robots in its warehouses to handle picking and packing, saving almost 20 percent in operating expenses. . .

Even more futuristic are the drone robots that fly around warehouses to do inventory, as the BBC recently reported:

The flying drones that can scan packages night and day, October 27, 2017

Flying drones and robots now patrol distribution warehouses – they’ve become workhorses of the e-commerce era online that retailers can’t do without. It is driving down costs but it is also putting people out of work: what price progress? . . .

What price progress indeed? A viable economy requires shoppers as well as products, but nobody in government seems concerned about the shrinkage of the demand side of the equation. Wouldn’t preparing for the automated future make more sense than pretending it isn’t coming?

Certainly America shouldn’t import more immigrant workers, since they won’t be needed. The remaining jobs should go to Americans, period, because:

Automation makes immigration obsolete.

Need convincing? Experts paint a grim picture:

Oxford researchers forecast in 2013 that nearly half of American jobs were vulnerable to machine or software replacement within 20 years. Rice University computer scientist Moshe Vardi believes that in 30 years humans will become largely obsolete, and world joblessness will reach 50 percent. The Gartner tech advising company believes that one-third of jobs will be done by machines by 2025. The consultancy firm PwC published a report earlier this year that forecast robots could take 38 percent of US jobs by 2030.

Retail Robot Does Inventory — So Long, Stock Boys!

In St. Louis, a midwestern grocery chain is making news with its test run of an inventory-taking robot, called Tally by its manufacturer. The machine is not unrelated to the LoweBot-type machine that guides customers to desired items in the store which the robot has filed in its database of what and where. The Tally just rolls around and counts, creating a list of what needs restocking.

The Tally robot scoots around stores to check inventory and verify prices.

The robot won’t actually be restocking the shelves because that task requires the dexterity of the human hand — for now at least. But developers are engaged in a race to build a machine that can move objects around as well as a person. Ground zero for that technology is the Amazon Robotics Challenge, an annual contest for a robot that can physically pack an order into a box for shipment (which is taking place this week, as it happens). A machine that can pick and pack like a human hand will have a lot of job-killing applications beyond the Amazon warehouse.

The Tally robot is a creation of Simbe Robotics in San Francisco. The company has a pleasantly reassuring video with a Strauss waltz playing — though there’s no mention of the jobs lost since a human with a clipboard is no longer needed.

The retail business is about to be transformed by automation, including the shopping experience for consumers, and the result will be severe job loss. Hardest-hit will be cashiers, because self-checkout is a simple technology. In May, the financial services firm Cornerstone Capital Group forecast that between 6 million to 7.5 million retail jobs are at risk of being automated over the next 10 years. What are those people supposed to do for a living when the same technological forces are knocking many other unskilled jobs? President Trump’s efforts at increasing jobs are having an effect, but the long term looks unpromising.

Eric Brynjolfsson, tech author from MIT, recently remarked about the revolution in retail (Amazon’s Move Signals End of Line for Many Cashiers, NYTimes, June 17, 2017):

“Amazon didn’t go put a robot into the bookstores and help you check out books faster. It completely reinvented bookstores. The idea of a cashier won’t be so much automated as just made irrelevant — you’ll just tell your Echo what you need, or perhaps it will anticipate what you need, and stuff will get delivered to you.”

The shopping experience that tech wizards are designing sounds pretty sterile, but it would be an improvement over sales helpers who don’t speak English well (as I reflected yesterday while shopping for manila folders at Staples).

The future will automated. To prepare for it, the least Washington could do is severely limit immigration, say by about 99 percent, because AUTOMATION MAKES IMMIGRATION OBSOLETE.

The robot invasion has begun in the grocery aisle, New York Post, July 27, 2017

A family-owned grocery chain in the Midwest is set to test an aisle-roving robot, joining technology-savvy retail behemoths like Amazon and Walmart.

The robot, named Tally, will begin scanning store aisles at three St. Louis-area Schnucks grocery stores in a six-week pilot program starting on Monday. The robot will check aisles three times a day to look for out-of-stock items and make sure items and price tags properly correspond, company officials say.

“We’re excited to see what this partnership brings,” Dave Steck, the chain’s vice president of IT and infrastructure, said in a statement on its collaboration with San Francisco-based Simbe Robotics. “This is just one of many ways that Schnucks is staying at the forefront of technology to enhance our customers’ shopping experiences.”

Schnucks — which operates more than 100 stores in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa — will initially use the adjustable 38-inch, 30-pound robot to monitor items on store shelves but is hopeful that the robot “may open up a world of other possibilities” with the data it collects, Steck said. Continue reading this article