Amazon Robotics

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy
by Christopher Mims
Published 13 Sep 2021

Research like Ashis’s begs the question: Does anyone at Amazon think about the fact that the company might be injuring its workers in ways that won’t be apparent until long after they’ve left the company? It’s clear that someone at Amazon at least suspects this is the case, because Ashis’s research on how to use automated systems to alert workers to potentially injurious situations was initially funded by a grant from Amazon Robotics. “We used to have regular monthly meetings with [people from Amazon Robotics], to tailor our work to what they thought would be more useful to them from a practical standpoint,” says Ashis. The goal of such collaborations is, ultimately, figuring out how to make robots and automation operate in ways that are less likely to injure humans.

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Amazon began charging fees to sellers that didn’t move product fast enough, and it has been slowly ratcheting up the score sellers must have in order to avoid incurring a fee. Vast as they are, Amazon’s warehouses are intended merely to be a sort of local cache of goods intended for next-day delivery. The principles of computer architecture that are inherent in the design of the Kiva robotics systems (which is now the Amazon Robotics system) are fractal: these principles repeat themselves at every scale of the system, from the actions of individual robots, to the behavior of all of the robots in a fulfillment center, to the behavior of Amazon’s entire network of warehouses, which are constantly rebalancing inventory between each other as well as within themselves.

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The goal of such collaborations is, ultimately, figuring out how to make robots and automation operate in ways that are less likely to injure humans. Amazon’s leaders have said repeatedly that safety is a high priority at the company. “We have to have a high-quality work and safety environment where people enjoy coming to work every day,” says Brad Porter, former head of Amazon Robotics. “Not that everyone in the world enjoys that type of work, but we’re super cognizant of associate satisfaction and making the process work for them. “It’s an operating fulfillment center with associates, and engineers are working alongside them to find out what they like, what do they not like,” continues Brad. “There are various mechanisms we use where we can get associate feedback, including kaizen processes where we’re involving associates directly in the design and evolution of these processes.

Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever
by Alex Kantrowitz
Published 6 Apr 2020

“Amazon Has Installed 15,000 Warehouse Robots to Deal with Increased Holiday Demand.” Business Insider. Business Insider, December 1, 2014. https://www.businessinsider.com/r-amazon-rolls-out-kiva-robots-for-holiday-season-onslaught-2014-12. and had 30,000 in operation by 2015: Levy, Nat. “Chart: Amazon Robots on the Rise, Gaining Slowly but Steadily on Human Workforce.” GeekWire. GeekWire, December 29, 2016. https://www.geekwire.com/2016/chart-amazon-robots-rise-gaining-slowly-steadily-human-workforce/. Amazon seems likely to automate other core parts of FC work: Del Rey, Jason. “Land of the Giants.” Vox. Accessed October 3, 2019. https://www.vox.com/land-of-the-giants-podcast.

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He’s the type of guy you could imagine crying tears of joy as he learned about Amazon’s dedication to customers during new-hire orientation. Over the course of my visit, Virdi delivered a steady stream of optimistic observations without a hint of irony. “Anytime you get a chance to work with people, it’s just an awesome experience,” he told me. “Amazon robots work with Amazon associates in a really cool and nice manner.” Amazon is a publicity-averse company, but it’s clear why it lets Virdi out into the wild. Aside from being a walking press release, Virdi is a new type of manager, leading humans who work alongside robots, a dynamic Amazon has spent the past eight years figuring out how to navigate.

Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning From It
by Brian Dumaine
Published 11 May 2020

“Send me something in a poly bag or a plastic clamshell and it gets harder quickly for a robot to recognize it,” says Amazon’s Porter. Imagine a robot trying to tell the difference between a carrot peeler, an oyster knife, and a pack of ballpoint pens, all in packages of slightly different shapes, colors, and materials. It is a devilishly tricky task. To crack that problem, the company in 2015 launched the Amazon Robotics Challenge, which offers annual prizes for anyone who can design the best picking robot. It was looking for a robot that can identify items, take them from totes and stow them in storage bins, and then remove them from the bins and place them in boxes. The competing teams won points for the correct placement of items and for speed, and lost points for mistakes like dropping or crushing an item.

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JD.com opened a warehouse in 2017: “JD.com Fully Automated Warehouse in Shanghai,” JD.com, Inc., video, posted on YouTube November 10, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFV8IkY52iY. That’s because this vast warehouse: Steve LeVine, “In China, a Picture of How Warehouse Jobs Can Vanish,” Axios, June 13, 2018. The winner was Cartman: Evan Ackerman, “Aussies Win Amazon Robotics Challenge,” IEEE Spectrum, August 2, 2017. In America, there are 3.6 million cashiers: “Cashiers,” Occupational Outlook Handbook, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/cashiers.htm. That report was delivered: Martin Ford, “How We’ll Earn Money in a Future Without Jobs,” TED Talk, April 2017, https://www.ted.com/talks/martin_ford_how_we_ll_earn_money_in_a_future_without_jobs.

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See also Alexa Bezos and development of, 49, 111 goal of becoming part of people’s lives with, 14–15 Internet of Things and, 123–24 introduction of, 26 Prime Video use with, 26 shopping assistance with, 115–16 Amazon Flex, 23, 172–73 Amazon 4-star stores, 24, 167 AmazonFresh, 170–71, 189 Amazon Go stores, 13, 24, 111, 139–41, 143, 167 Amazonia (Marcus), 41 Amazon Lending, 13, 233–34 Amazon Music, 10, 26, 80, 97, 98, 100, 220, 260 Amazon Pay, 234 Amazon Prime, 93–105, 109 addictive nature of, 98–99 AI flywheel and, 94, 99, 102, 115 Alexa and, 115 all-you-can-eat aspect of shipping and services with, 99 Amazon ecosystem around, 94 Amazon’s income from, 154 Amazon’s sale of its own products and, 153 annual fee for, 14 Bezos’s focus on shortening delivery time by, 22 corporate synergy with other Amazon services, 98 cross-category spending in, 100 customer data from, 101 customer service and selection in, 104–5 decision to launch, 95–96 free delivery options from, 4, 10, 14, 22, 80, 98, 101, 154, 171, 186 free services with, 97, 101–2 free shipping debate over, 96–97 growth in number of members of, 94 health-care purchases and, 226 household percentage having, 15 merchant’s expenses for, 146 naming of, 96 number of shoppers in, 14 1-Click design and, 18, 98, 232–33 Prime Video and new members in, 102–3 shopping behavior change with, 98 spending by members of, 95, 100 as stand-alone business within Amazon, 97–98 streaming music service with, 26 streaming video service with, 25 Whole Foods discount with, 97, 101, 168, 260 Amazon Prime Air, 179 Amazon Prime Now, 22, 171 Amazon Restaurants food delivery business, 64 Amazon Robotics Challenge, 138 Amazon Studios, 101–2 Amazon Visa card, 234 Amazon Web Services (AWS), 51–52 Bezos’s creation of, 7, 218 Bezos’s long-term vision for, 63–64 medical records using, 225 Prime with free storage space on, 97 profitability of, 25, 64, 65 small business use of, 10–11 ambient computing, 111 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 36 American Culture and Faith Institute, 240 Anderson, Chris, 18 Anderson, Joel, 186 Anderson, Sterling, 175 Andreessen, Marc, 248 Android operating system, 14, 64, 225 Android TV, 237 Ant Financial, 198, 234–35 antitrust law, 257–68, 271 academic arguments for breakup under, 258–59 Amazon lobbyists on, 247 congressional testimony on, 258 critics and proposed breakup of Amazon under, 255, 257–58, 261, 263–64, 266–67 Department of Justice review in, 257, 267 European investigations under, 259 evidence showing lack of violation of, 259–60 historical background to, 264–66 Apollo software platform, 176 Apple AI skills and customer knowledge of, 8, 114 brand value of, 16 corporate campus of, 75 economic power of, 265–66 global wealth gap and, 271 health-care innovation and, 90, 222, 225 identification with founder, 53 iOS operating system of, 225 iWatch from, 222 Jobs’s working culture at, 55 Siri voice assistant app from, 108 Apple Music, 26, 98 Apple Pay, 234, 235 Apple TV, 237 Arcadia Group, 223 Aronowitz, Nona Willis, 16–17 artificial intelligence (AI) Alexa and voice recognition and, 108–9, 111, 112–13 Amazon’s application of, 270 Amazon smart speakers and, 109–10 Bezonomics and companies’ adaptation to, 125 black box and, 91, 147 business plans driven by, 4, 6, 86, 125, 269–70 buying model and, 85–87 coining of term, 107 connected devices and, 124 disruptive nature of, 125 doctors’ diagnosis using, 27 early voice recognition and, 108 Echo’s use of, 26 expectations for future of, 112–13 flywheel model and, 5, 88.

Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines
by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby
Published 23 May 2016

In Amazon’s gargantuan warehouses, for example, it’s tough for workers to pick and pack customer orders if they have to do the running from one end of the building to another—so tough that journalists working there undercover have published scathing articles about the inhuman demands placed on them. So now the company uses Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics) robots to bring shelves to the workers, allowing humans—who still have strong advantages in spotting the specific items and packing them appropriately—to stay in one place. Does it make the job easier? Without a doubt. Does it mean Amazon needs fewer people to fulfill a given number of orders?

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INDEX The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific entry, please use your e-book reader’s search tools. Accenture, 83, 102, 134, 183 Adrià, Ferran, 122 Aetna, 83 AI (film), 125 Ainge, Danny, 117 Allen, Robbie, 97 Allstate, 94, 103–4 Amazon Echo, 167 Amazon Robotics (Kiva Systems), 2–3 Amplify, 20 “Analytics 3.0,” 42–43 Analytics Revolution, The (Franks), 43 AnalytixInsight, 22 Anders, George, 120 Anthem, 15, 84 Aplin, Ken, 153–54 Apollo Guidance Computer, 67 Apple, 63 Archilochus, 171 architect jobs, 23, 24–25, 151 Ariely, Dan, 113 Armstrong, Stuart, 226, 249 Arnett, Thomas, 84 artificial intelligence, 7, 26, 33–58, 141, 163, 189.

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car
by Anthony M. Townsend
Published 15 Jun 2020

By signaling a human presence to nearby machines, this ghost road armor allows more than 125,000 fulfillment-center workers to commingle with some 100,000 warehouse droids, who quickly map out human habitats. “In the past, associates would mark out the grid of cells where they would be working in order to enable the robotic traffic planner to smartly route around that region,” explains an Amazon robotics executive. “The vest allows the robots to . . . detect the human from farther away and smartly update [their] travel plan to steer clear without the need for the associate to explicitly mark out those zones.” Amazon’s protective gear is better than the android apartheid the cage contraption would create, but it still puts us on a slippery slope.

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Streets,” New York Times, October 28, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon-delivery.html. 136Amazon cornered the market: Scott Kirsner, “Acquisition Puts Amazon Rivals in Awkward Spot,” Boston Globe, December 1, 2013, https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/12/01/will-amazon-owned-robot-maker-sell-tailer-rivals/FON7bVNKvfzS2sHnBHzfLM/story.html. 136100,000 of these diligent devices were reporting: Nick Wingfield, “As Amazon Pushes Forward with Robots, Workers Find New Roles,” New York Times, September 10, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html. 137cramming 50 percent more inventory: Ananya Bhattacharya, “Amazon Is Just Beginning to Use Robots in Its Warehouses and They’re Already Making a Huge Difference,” Quartz, June 17, 2016, https://qz.com/709541/amazon-is-just-beginning-to-use-robots-in-its-warehouses-and-theyre-already-making-a-huge-difference/. 137bots that slide along tracks suspended: Fiona Hartley, “Over 1,000 Robots Pack Groceries in Ocado’s Online Shopping Warehouse,” Dezeen, June 6, 2018, https://www.dezeen.com/2018/06/06/video-ocado-warehouse-shopping-robots-movie/. 137China’s JD.com employs a freakish spiderlike robot: JD.com, “Tour of the Warehouse of the Future,” YouTube video, May 11, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future
by Hal Niedzviecki
Published 15 Mar 2015

David Jackson, “Amazon Touts New Jobs a Day before Obama Visit,” USA Today, July 29, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/07/29/obama-amazon-jobs-chattanooga-tennessee/2595859/. 67. Brandon Bailey, “Amazon Robot army, 15,000 Strong, Is Ready for the Holiday Rush (+video),” Christian Science Monitor, December 2, 2014, http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2014/1202/Amazon-robot-army-15-000-strong-is-ready-for-the-holiday-rush-video. 68. Lanier, Who Owns the Future?, 100. 69. Douthat, “A World Without Work.” 70. Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era, A Jeremy P.

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
Published 24 Aug 2015

v=FU-tuY0Z7nQ> (accessed 24 March 2015). 54 Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, The New Division of Labour (2004), 1–2, for the upheaval, and 20–30 for the truck-driver discussion. 55 Alison Sander and Meldon Wolfgang, ‘The Rise of Robotics’, 27 Aug. 2014, at <https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/business_unit_strategy_innovation_rise_of_robotics> (accessed 23 March 2015). 56 See <http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/wiki/index.php/Automated_Driving:_Legislative_and_Regulatory_Action> (accessed 27 March 2015). 57 Guy Ryder, ‘Labor in the Age of Robots’, Project Syndicate, 22 Jan. 2015 <http://www.project-syndicate.org/> (accessed 23 March 2015). 58 Sam Frizell, ‘Meet the Robots Shipping Your Amazon Orders’, Time, 1 Dec. 2014, <http://time.com/3605924/amazon-robots/> (accessed 23 March 2015). 59 See <http://allaboutroboticsurgery.com/zeusrobot.html> (accessed 23 March 2015). 60 David Rose, Enchanted Objects (2014), 23–4; original emphasis. 61 See Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom, Human Enhancement (2011), on the technologies and the ethical questions they raise. 62 Malcolm Peltu and Yorick Wilks, ‘Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key Social, Psychological, Ethical and Design Issues’, OII/e-Horizons Discussion Paper, No. 14 (2008).

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Frey, Carl Benedikt, and Michael Osborne, ‘The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation’, 17 Sept. 2013 <http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf> (accessed 23 March 2015). Friedman, Thomas, The World is Flat, updated and expanded edn. (London: Penguin, 2006). Frizell, Sam, ‘Meet the Robots Shipping Your Amazon Orders’, Time, 1 Dec. 2014 <http://time.com/3605924/amazon-robots/> (accessed 23 March 2015). Furlong, Jordan, ‘The New World of Legal Work’, published online, 2014 <http://www.lod.co.uk/media/pdfs/The_New_World_Of_Legal_Digital_Download.pdf> (accessed 28 March 2015). Gaitan, Daniel, ‘Crowdsourcing the answers to medical mysteries’, Reuters, 1 Aug. 2014 <http://www.reuters.com> (accessed 27 March 2015).

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI
by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson
Published 15 Jan 2018

Thanks to such increased efficiencies, the company has been able to offer same-day shipping for customers.a L’Oreal uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and machine learning to help prevent forklift accidents in the company’s warehouse in Italy. The tracking system warns forklift operators and pedestrians about other nearby vehicles, cutting down on collisions.b a. Nick Wingfield, “As Amazon Pushes Forward with Robots, Workers Find New Roles,” New York Times, September 10, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html. b. Claire Swedberg, “L’Oréal Italia Prevents Warehouse Collisions via RTLS,” RFID Journal, August 18, 2014, http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?12083/2. These robots are often sophisticated enough to see where they’re going and understand what they’re doing. But they have their limitations.

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
by Jamie Susskind
Published 3 Sep 2018

<https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox> (accessed 6 December 2017). 81. Bostrom, Superintelligence, 15. 82. Schwab, Fourth Industrial Revolution, 153. 83. Susskind and Susskind, Future of the Professions, 168; Time, ‘Meet the Robots ShippingYour Amazon Orders’, Time Robotics, 1 December 2014 <http://time.com/3605924/amazon-robots/> (accessed 30 November 2017). 84. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, Machine Platform Crowd, 101. 85. IFR, ‘World Robotics Report 2016’, IFR Press Release <https://ifr. org/ifr-press-releases/news/world-robotics-report-2016> (accessed 30 November 2017). OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Notes 383 86.

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Translated by Martin Hammond. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Tibbits, Skylar. TED, 2013 <https://www.ted.com/talks/skylar_tibbits_ the_emergence_of_4d_printing?language=en> (accessed 30 Nov. 2017). Time. ‘Meet the Robots Shipping Your Amazon Orders’. 1 Dec. 2014 <http://time.com/3605924/amazon-robots/> (accessed 30 Nov. 2017). Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by George Lawrence. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Bantam Books, 1990. Topol, Sarah A. ‘Attack of the Killer Robots’. BuzzFeed News, 26 Aug. 2016 <https://www.buzzfeed.com/sarahatopol/how-to-save-mankindfrom-the-new-breed-of-killer-robots?

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism
by Calum Chace
Published 17 Jul 2016

Warehouses Kiva Systems was established in 2003, and acquired by Amazon in 2012. Kiva produces robots which collect goods on pallets from designated warehouse shelves and deliver them to human packers in the bay area of the warehouse. Amazon paid $775m for the nine-year old company and promptly dispensed with the services of its sales team. Re-named Amazon Robotics in August 2015, it is dedicated to supplying warehouse automation systems to Amazon, which obviously considers them an important competitive advantage. Secretaries Most of the examples of automation given above involve manual work. There is one occupation which depends almost entirely on cognitive skills which has been largely automated out of existence: secretaries.

The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World
by Scott Galloway
Published 2 Oct 2017

“Amazon ranked most reputable company in U.S. in Harris Poll.” UPI. February 20, 2017. http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/02/20/Amazon-ranked-most-reputable-company-in-US-in-Harris-Poll/6791487617347/. 37. “Amazon’s Robot Workforce Has Increased by 50 Percent.” CEB Inc. December 29, 2016. https://www.cebglobal.com/talentdaily/amazons-robot-workforce-has-increased-by-50-percent/. 38. Takala, Rudy. “Top 2 U.S. Jobs by Number Employed: Salespersons and Cashiers.” CNS News. March 25, 2015. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/rudy-takala/top-2-us-jobs-number-employed-salespersons-and-cashiers. 39. “Teach Trends.” National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us
by Dan Lyons
Published 22 Oct 2018

“It’s just letting people know that you’re being watched,” another said. Workers are surveilled and pushed to reach such high quotas that some resort to peeing in bottles to save time. In 2015 a British labor union complained that constant stress was making Amazon employees physically and mentally ill. Workers were pressured to be “above-average Amazon robots” and were “chewed up and spat out by a brutal culture,” a union rep told the London Times. Some Amazon workers in Britain were so badly paid that they resorted to living in tents beside a highway. One day in December 2016, just before Christmas, Craig Smith, a newspaper reporter in Scotland, was driving his Honda Civic on the A90 motorway when he noticed a few tents in a field, about a half mile from a big Amazon facility in Dunfermline.

The Hilarious World of Depression
by John Moe
Published 4 May 2020

My team at work was moved to new offices in the International District in Seattle, away from the top executives, and thus I was at less risk of murdering Jeff Bezos over a turn signal or some such shit. One day, the toys editors were called into a meeting with a bunch of Amazon software developers. They were excited to show us a brand-new piece of in-house software that they called Amabot. As in Amazon Robot. If you looked at a product page, Amabot could form associations with similar pages, then conclude what copy and design should be on that page and fill it in automatically. It edited through artificial intelligence. It was very cool software, I had to admit. As far as robots rolling up to replace you go, it was impressive.

Billion Dollar Brand Club: How Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, and Other Disruptors Are Remaking What We Buy
by Lawrence Ingrassia
Published 28 Jan 2020

With more than two hundred thousand robots: Lauren Feiner, “Amazon Shows Off Its New Warehouse Robots That Can Automatically Sort Packages,” CNBC, June 5, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/05/amazon-shows-off-its-new-warehouse-robots.html; Nick Wingfield, “As Amazon Pushes Forward with Robots, Workers Find New Roles,” New York Times, September 10, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html. testing new warehouse automation equipment: Jeffrey Dastin, “Amazon Rolls Out Machines That Pack Orders and Replace Jobs,” Reuters, May 13, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-automation-exclusive/exclusive-amazon-rolls-out-machines-that-pack-orders-and-replace-jobs-idUSKCN1SJ0X1.

Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce
by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights
Published 28 Jan 2019

The robots are responsible for moving proprietary shelving ‘pods’ along a predefined grid to workstations where Amazon picking staff pick, pack and prepare the items for shipment, loading them onto a network of conveyor belts that can handle some 400-odd orders per second. Its warehouse management software matches the right sized box with each order and handles the application of shipping labels. The parts of the process managed by the Amazon Robotics system are claimed to be five to six times more productive than manual picking and eliminate the need for human-scale aisles, taking up half as much space as a traditional, non-automated warehouse. Their flexibility also means they can be used to constantly reconfigure the warehouse space based on sales data, so high-velocity items can be retrieved more quickly.

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty
by Benjamin H. Bratton
Published 19 Feb 2016

In the essay “Utopia as Replication,” in Valences of the Dialectic (London: Verso, 2009), Fredric Jameson draws links between Walmart and certain infrastructural utopian potentiality. 64.  On Amazon's ongoing implementation of robotic systems in its warehouse and distribution chain, see Sam Grobart, “Amazon's Robotic Future: A Work in Progress,” Bloomberg Business Week, November 30, 2012, 2012 http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2012-11-30/amazons-robotic-future-a-work-in-progress and Sarah O’Connor, “Amazon's Human Robots: They Trek 15 Miles a Day around a Warehouse, Their Every Move Dictated by Computers Checking Their Work. Is This the Future of the British Workplace?” Mail Online, March 1, 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2286227/Amazons-human-robots-Is-future-British-workplace.html.

The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot
by Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy
Published 14 Apr 2020

Matt Simon, “Catching Up with Pepper, the Surprisingly Helpful Humanoid Robot,” Wired, April 13, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/pepper-the-humanoid-robot/. 11. James Vincent, “Amazon Is Reportedly Working on Its First Home Robot,” Verge, April 23, 2018, https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/23/17270002/amazon-robot-home-alexa-echo. 12. Kyle Wiggers, “Amazon’s Vesta No-Show Highlights the Challenges of Home Robots,” VentureBeat, September 28, 2019, https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/28/amazons-vesta-no-show-highlights-the-challenges-of-home-robots/. 13. Robb Todd, “There Might Not Have Been an iRobot without Rosie the Robot,” Fast Company, September 17, 2015, https://www.fastcompany.com/3051214/there-might-not-have-been-an-irobot-without-rosie-the-robot. 14.

Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A. I. To Google, Facebook, and the World
by Cade Metz
Published 15 Mar 2021

By 2019, as researchers and entrepreneurs recognized what Amazon and the rest of the world’s retailers needed in their warehouses, the market was flooded with robotic-picking start-ups, some of them employing the sort of deep learning methods under development at Google Brain and OpenAI. Pieter Abbeel’s company, Covariant, wasn’t necessarily one of them. It was designing a system for a much wider range of tasks. But then, two years after the Amazon Robotics Challenge, an international robotics maker called ABB organized its own contest, this one behind closed doors. Covariant decided to join. Nearly twenty companies entered this new contest, which involved picking about twenty-five different products, some of which the companies were told about ahead of time, some of which they weren’t.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Published 28 Jan 2020

See: https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/amazon-com-buys-kiva-systems-for-775-million/?mtrref=undefined&gwh=A926616EBBF3A219E03216397142BB8B&gwt=pay&assetType=REGIWALL. Kiva robots: Sam Shead, “Amazon Now Has 45,000 Robots in Its Warehouses,” Business Insider, January 3, 2017. See: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-robot-army-has-grown-by-50-2017-1. 306 items per second: Jay Yarow, “Amazon Was Selling 306 Items Every Second at Its Peak This Year,” Business Insider, December 27, 2012. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-holiday-facts-2012-12. Order jeans from the Gap: Bob Trebilcock, “Resilience and Innovation at Gap Inc.,” Modern Materials Handling, November 12, 2018.

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire
by Brad Stone
Published 10 May 2021

“I only know one way to play poker”: Spencer Soper, “The Man Who Built Amazon’s Delivery Machine,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-17/amazon-holiday-shopping-the-man-who-makes-it-happen (January 23, 2021). find a robot that could do a better job: Chris Welch, “Amazon’s Robot Competition Shows Why Human Warehouse Jobs Are Safe for Now,” The Verge, June 1, 2015, https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8698607/amazon-robot-picking-challenge-results (January 23, 2021). 50 percent more products per square foot: “Meet Amazon’s New Robot Army Shipping Out Your Products,” Bloomberg Technology video, 2:10, December 1, 2014, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2014-12-01/meet-amazons-new-robot-army-shipping-out-your-products (January 23, 2021).

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
by Tim O'Reilly
Published 9 Oct 2017

You don’t need a salesperson to help you understand which product is the best—Amazon has built software that lets customers rate the products and write reviews to tell you which are best, and then feeds that reputation information into their search engine so that the best products naturally come out on top. You don’t need a cashier to help you check out—software lets you do that yourself. Amazon’s use of automation goes far beyond the use of robots in its warehouses (though Amazon Robotics is one of the leaders in the field). Every function the company performs is infused with software, organizing its workers, its suppliers, and its customers into an integrated workflow. Of course, every corporation is a kind of hybrid of man and machine, created and operated by humans to augment their individual efforts.

The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite
by Daniel Markovits
Published 14 Sep 2019

buys each part individually: See Head, Mindless, 29–46; Simon Head, “Worse Than Walmart: Amazon’s Sick Brutality and Secret History of Ruthlessly Intimidating Workers,” Salon, February 23, 2014, accessed November 18, 2018, www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/. Kiva Systems: Nick Wingfield, “As Amazon Pushes Forward with Robots, Workers Find New Roles,” New York Times, September 10, 2017, accessed November 18, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/technology/amazon-robots-workers.html. only four human workers: Danielle Paquette, “He’s One of the Only Humans at Work—and He Loves It,” Washington Post, September 10, 2018, accessed October 24, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/hes-one-of-the-only-humans-at-work—and-he-loves-it/2018/09/09/71392542-9541-11e8-8ffb-5de6d5e49ada_story.html?