Amazon claims the headline isn’t robots taking jobs as it reveals new cost-cutting robots

A New York Times study connected Tuesday cited interior Amazon documents touting however its displacement into automation could assistance it merchantability much products without hiring much people, but contiguous the institution has issued a PR blast astir robotics and transportation tech that is overmuch sunnier. Along with a tease of AI-connected augmented world astute glasses and VR training for its drivers, Amazon showed disconnected 10 robots it’s utilizing oregon investigating close present (it didn’t notation whether immoderate of them had issues during the caller AWS outage).

In one post, Amazon highlighted Blue Jay, a robot it calls “an other acceptable of hands that helps employees with tasks that impact reaching and lifting,” and its agentic AI strategy Project Eluna, which “acts similar an other teammate, helping trim that cognitive load” portion optimizing sorting to trim bottlenecks.

Blue Jay tin determination 75 percent of the types of items Amazon stores, and is yet expected to beryllium a “core technology” powering Same-Day transportation sites. The institution says it developed Blue Jay successful conscionable implicit a twelvemonth based connected AI, integer twins, and information from robots already successful use, creating a strategy that “coordinates aggregate robotic arms to execute galore tasks astatine once, collapsing what utilized to beryllium 3 abstracted robotic stations into 1 streamlined workspace that tin pick, stow, and consolidate successful a azygous place.”

Amazon Robotics main technologist Tye Brady says successful the company’s station that, “The existent header isn’t astir robots.. It’s astir people—and the aboriginal of enactment we’re gathering together.” The blog station besides reiterates a spokesperson’s effect to the Times report, saying that “no institution has created much jobs successful the U.S. implicit the past decennary than Amazon,” and touting plans to capable 250,000 positions for the vacation season. 

CEO Andy Jassy’s June missive to employees astir the interaction of ratio is a spot clearer. He wrote astir generative AI, saying, “We volition request less radical doing immoderate of the jobs that are being done today, and much radical doing different types of jobs. It’s hard to cognize precisely wherever this nets retired implicit time, but successful the adjacent fewer years, we expect that this volition trim our full firm workforce arsenic we get ratio gains from utilizing AI extensively crossed the company.”

The Times report suggests a akin program for robotics and automation, citing Jassy’s propulsion to chopped e-commerce costs and showing examples of however its warehouse overhauls are creating facilities that process much items with less employees who progressively volition absorption connected taking attraction of the robots.