The threat of unemployment brought by generative AI: Will Amazon workers be fully replaced by a fleet of machines?

Almost all Americans use Amazon to some extent. Amazon offers a wide range of services including online and physical bookstores, the Kindle e-book store, a general merchandise shopping mall, Whole Foods fresh supermarket, online entertainment streaming, cross-border e-commerce, AWS cloud system, online medical consultations, and more. Amazon has 200 million Prime members who enjoy free shipping, designated delivery and pickup times, receiving goods within two days or even on the same day, full refunds for unsatisfactory items, and even returns picked up by professionals. By using the Amazon App, customers can track the driver's route and estimated arrival time. These superior service qualities used to rely heavily on human resources, until AI algorithms and robots gradually replaced manpower, allowing robots to complete all the tasks that used to require a large amount of manpower.

Amazon Has Been Building AI Infrastructure for Twelve Years

As early as 2012, Amazon acquired an AI fully automated logistics transportation system, Kiva Systems, for a cash deal of $775 million. This system involved training hundreds of small robots with artificial intelligence to run around the warehouse floor to help locate products for workers to pack and transport.

The AI can accurately identify the location of goods, categorize them, and greatly reduce human errors. Robots not only have more strength but also can decrease the risk of workers misplacing items, leading to losses, as compared to the traditional manual process of shelving and retrieving goods.

Amazon has twenty machine learning models that help AI find better routes for delivery drivers to transport goods to consumers' homes. Prime members can receive their online orders within two days, reducing the risk of drivers getting lost or encountering traffic congestion.

Robots are Durable, Strong, and Smarter than Humans

Amazon recently acquired the technology patents of the startup Covariant, purchasing the rights to their robot patents to develop an advanced version of deep learning robots. Amazon's success as a leading e-commerce company comes from artificial intelligence, deploying robot models suitable for the Amazon system, and using AI algorithms to train and operate the robot arm, Robin.

Amazon is prudent in not casually investing in startup companies but rather acquiring core technologies to assist startups in developing new products. This approach has become a cost-saving investment strategy in Silicon Valley for AI. By acquiring patent rights, Amazon can collaborate with data scientists to develop more suitable robots, reducing expenses in the tech department.

Workers are already accustomed to collaborating with robots in warehouses. Palletizer robot arms assist workers in distributing goods by placing boxes on the conveyor belt. Robin is a small robot arm that knows how to grasp packages, rotate them to find the label, scan the label, and distribute the package to the conveyor belt or hand it over to other moving robots for further processing if a damaged label is detected.

Robots can also crouch down to handle heavy items. Unlike humans who may experience physical exhaustion from climbing and squatting to handle goods, robots have no such issues.

Amazon's army of robot arms has grown from 10,000 in 2013 to 750,000 by 2023. They rely on machine learning and algorithms to learn more sophisticated ways to sense goods and efficiently handle packaging and parcels.

Covariant's team members include University of California, Berkeley professor Pieter Abbeel and his student Peter Chen, who later became the CEO of Covariant. Abbeel was an early employee of OpenAI and was inspired by ChatGPT to transfer the technology to hardware devices.

Amazon's existingdatabase, combined with Covariant's AI team's generative algorithms, can train more sophisticated robot operation methods and streamline labor costs for enterprises. Since 2020, Amazon has been constructing a generative AI model, Transformer Architecture, to predict product sales volumes and optimize the supply chain. During the COVID-19 outbreak, Amazon successfully managed its supply chain with generative AI algorithms, ensuring that goods imported from overseas were efficiently distributed by robots in warehouses.

Almost everyone who watches YouTube channels has likely been bombarded by ads from Amazon expert EllenPro, claiming to teach people how to sell incomprehensible items on Amazon and make tens of times profit. These Amazon e-commerce consultants are also being replaced by generative AI, which can help Amazon businesses generate different product descriptions, images, and even adjust prices and discounts.

Investing in AI big data and algorithms, along with developing robot arms, has become Amazon's most powerful strategy, earning them vast profits and securing their position as the leader in e-commerce. While Amazon customers can enjoy all the benefits brought by AI, workers displaced by AI are not as happy. According to CNBC videos and reports, each robot arm can replace the work of three humans, and this data is just the tip of the iceberg. How can human jobs be preserved? Amazon vaguely states that humans will work alongside machines and not be completely replaced. Can we trust the conscience of enterprises?

Who can save humans from being replaced by AI? It seems that nature's backlash will become the savior for humans to preserve their jobs. AI is powerful, but without electricity, it is useless. In the face of energy shortages and inflation, the energy consumed by running AI will force companies to revert to employing humans, saving energy, reducing carbon emissions, and preserving jobs.