WHERE ARE THE AMAZON ROBOTS?
I have recently been watching Vlogs posted by YouTubers sharing anecdotes about their experience of working for Amazon. Certain themes cropped up in all of these videos, such as how easy it was to get a job at an Amazon Fulfilment Centre, and how physically demanding the work is. But one thing none of these Vloggers mentioned was robots.
This struck me as rather odd, because years ago I saw a video clip of a robotised warehouse. The footage showed little robots that resembled metal orange boxes on wheels, zipping about the place transporting portable shelves hither and thither. By now I would have expected such robots to be ubiquitous in every Amazon warehouse. And, given the huge amounts of capital the business has at its disposal, I would have thought Amazon would have devoted R+D in the design and production of even better robots, leading to human and mechanised labourers working together in order to meet or exceed those all-important targets. But none of the commentators in the clips I saw much automation at all.
But maybe I am mistaken in thinking that there are no robots working in these warehouses? Maybe they really are there, just not in a form I was expecting?
Marshall Brain once wrote a novella called ‘Manna’. His story imagined a world where, instead of blue-collar workers being replaced by robots, it is management that gets replaced. This is achieved through the introduction of an earpiece that employees wear, which wirelessly connects them to computers running ‘Manna’ software. ‘Manna’ does two things. Firstly, it breaks down jobs into a sequence of micro-tasks and then tells an employee what to do, simple step by simple step. This brings about a situation where pretty much all employment becomes a matter of low-skilled work, since the only skill you need is the ability to understand and execute simple tasks.
The other thing that Manna does is to monitor how quickly the employee accomplishes each micro-task and complete the overall job, sharing that information across the network where your efficiency is judged against that of other employees. Woe betide the worker whose speed is not up to Manna’s expectations, for that leads to summary dismissal.
In other words, what Manna does is to effectively turn human beings into robots.
To quote from the original story, “you could take the job for minimum wage, or you could be unemployed making zero. At any moment Manna could replace you with another warm body, and that meant that you did what you were told for minimum wage or you got fired...There were plenty of unemployed people who would take your spot as soon as you left”.
It turns out that there is something a bit like ‘Manna’ at Amazon. James Bloodworth, an undercover reporter who spent a month working at one of Amazon’s fulfilment centres, explained how it worked:
“We lacked a manager in the usual sense of the word...Instead, each of us carried a hand-held device that tracked our every move...For every dozen or so workers, somewhere in the warehouse a line manager would be huddled over a desk tapping orders into a computer screen. These instructions (were) usually an admonishment to speed up”.
So, in a manner of speaking there are robots at Amazon. It’s just that they are fleshy robots, carrying around a small device that tracks their every movement and uses their eyes and hands and legs to pick up, transport and pack items. All very much like Manna, except that where Amazon is concerned there is still a human manager monitoring employee performance. By why have human managers at all? Why not just come up with some kind of program monitoring the logistics of fulfilling orders and give it a voice so it can tell workers to speed up?
“Employee number 1535252, your productivity is down .4 percent. Please pick up the pace. Failure to do so will result in disciplinary action”.
“Yes, Alexa. Sorry Alexa”.
Maybe this won’t happen, just as maybe we won’t ever see fleshy robots replaced by the real thing? And the reason why this won’t happen is because Karl Marx’s assumption was wrong.
This is something we’ll get into in part two.
REFERENCES
‘Manna’ by Marshall Brain
‘Hired’ by James Bloodworth