Inside Amazon’s Robotic Innovation

0:00Today on the podcast, we're talking about AI and robotics and the future of where this goes. We're going to be looking at essentially some case studies, some announcements and some things out of Amazon. What we're seeing there, I think it's pretty indicative of what's going to happen in the future in a lot of different industries. I think this has massive implications for the entire workforce for maybe jobs that don't require college degrees. There's a lot of really interesting things here. And of course, I feel like we already have AI that has replaced most jobs that do require college degrees or is smart enough that eventually it will be.

0:32Some people might be mad at me, yelling at me listening. I think, you know, skilled labor, or I'm sorry, you know, knowledge workers, that kind of stuff. AI has done a lot of that. So in any case, we're going to talk about robotics today. I think this is going to have some big implications for a massive chunk of the workforce. And there's two visions we're going to cover, two ideas of what the future might look like. I'll paint them both, and you can decide what you think is going to happen. Before we get into that, I wanted to mention that AI Box, my startup, has just come into beta. We have our first product, which is an AI Box Playground.

1:07And essentially, this allows you to test all of the top AI models on one platform for$20 a month. So you don't have to pay for every single subscription to every single model, which can be kind of crazy if I'm being 100 % honest. Essentially, how it works is you can select any model that you want to chat with. And then you can switch between different AI models as you go. So if you wanted to have a conversation with, you know, Sonnet 3.7, you could do that. Halfway through the conversation, you could switch to maybe DeepSeek because you need some sort of a reasoning thing with their new reasoning model.

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2:13We're adding new stuff all the time. The link is in the description, AIbox.ai. All right, let's get into what Amazon's doing. So the first thing I think I want to talk about is the fact that we have kind of these two different pathways that people are predicting are going to happen. So one of them is where essentially all jobs are getting replaced by AI and essentially AI powered robots. Some people think that all jobs except for their own, the venture capitalist Mark Andreessen doesn't think that AI could ever replace his work as an investor or that could be automated. So that's kind of interesting.

2:53And so some people think it's going to essentially do everything maybe except for a handful of things. And there's another group of people that think that robots are essentially going to do kind of all of the boring, more mundane, heavy lifting tasks. And they'll kind of be like a human companion, kind of the way when, you know, we use ChatGPT. It's not like ChatGPT has replaced our job, but it's kind of augmented us. We use it alongside that. So some people feel like, you know, a robot will be kind of like what ChatGPT is for us right now, where it's kind of helping us, but it's not like it has replaced everything.

3:22It's not like ChatGPT does everything. We still just use it. So some people, a lot of people think that this is going to be more of what actually happens in the future. So the World Economic Forum predicted that about 92 million roles are going to be displaced by the current technology trends. That's AI and robotics. But they predict that 170 million new jobs are going to be created. So, you know, net, we have almost 80 million new jobs coming out of that if they're accurate. Now, TechCrunch wrote a whole article on this and I just feel like they're I don't know I just feel so like condescending sort of their their phrase when they refer to this all but they say for those who don't have the economic power or the intellectual interest to get a master's degree in AI machine learning especially the people who now occupy unskilled labor roles like warehouse workers what does the bot filled future look like for them I don't know it just feels like for all the dumb people doing menial labor, unlike us writers at TechCrunch who are super cool and college educated master's degrees, what are the poor schlobs going to do?

4:24Okay. I know that's not what they're saying, but I just really get that feeling from a lot of journalists and a lot of people writing about this. So I just have to put my beef out there. I think it's dumb. I think that Amazon has given a clear path for a lot of people that are currently warehouse workers and it's not a terrible one. I think there's a lot of exciting things that are going to go on in the future. And like, honestly, warehouse workers like Amazon or anywhere else, for example, it's like this. Not all of them are there for life. I have lots of friends that do, you know, work in where Amazon warehouses.

4:55They go work there for a couple of years as they're saving up for college or doing things or working on their career, or maybe they want to be a forklift driver and be there forever and it pays great. I don't know. I don't think this is a career to look down on. So whatever, but robots are replacing a lot of this. So I do think that we're making some, obviously some big shifts, what are those people going to do? The reason I bring up the, I don't know, the other stuff is because like, just because someone's working in a warehouse, that doesn't mean they're dumb. Like, like tech crunches, like for those that don't have the intellectual desire, I'm like, come on, these, these aren't dumb people.

5:26It's just what they're just doing a job. It probably pays good for what they need. And it's that phase of their life, whatever. So they're not dumb people. They can do lots of other things. They're smart people. And what other things could they do? Amazon says that they can work on the robots that are coming. So when Amazon revealed their big new Vulcan robot, which is apparently doing like 70 % of everything happening in the warehouses, it says, quote, Vulcan is helping make work safer by handling ergonomically challenging tasks while creating opportunities for our teammates to grow their skills in robotic maintenance.

6:01So that was the CEO Andy JC. He posted over on X. That was his Twitter post. So on the one hand, Vulcan is replacing a ton of people. And on the other hand, they said that there is a lot of new jobs that are going to be created. So the robots, they're able to get lower shelves than humans can. They're making it so humans don't have to climb ladders or bend down all day long, hurt their backs. I just think at the end of the day, this is probably a great thing. and then they also talk about how they're going to be training warehouse workers to become robot technicians and essentially the robot is going to be more picking stuff out and people are going to be working on the robots because the robots like if we're being honest it's they're doing about 75 percent of all the customer order fulfillment so they're capable of doing virtually everything they also said that they're they're self-educating and improving but thanks to ai embedded in them and so they're getting better and better you can imagine that eventually these things are just going to be able to get everything.

7:00But we're going to need a lot of people to work on these robots to fix them. TechCrunch writers seem to think that the warehouse workers won't be smart enough to do it. Amazon seems to think that the warehouse workers will be. I'm going to side with Amazon here since they're current employers. So Amazon, the one thing that they do get criticism on is that it's obviously not going to be a one-to-one conversion, right? It's not like everyone that works a warehouse is going to get a job there. I mean, I think that's just the future. Also, not every warehouse in America is Amazon with a million robots.

7:34And so I think that, well, eventually we will have a lot of warehouse work automated by robots. If someone got laid off today, they could go somewhere else at a different warehouse that doesn't have this. So I think in the short term, the jobs will move around a little bit. I don't think it's going to be the end of the world. In the long term, of course, everyone on the whole planet It has to get re-skilled thanks to AI and robotics. So I think everyone needs to start focusing on that. I don't think that's a big scary thing. Now, I personally think, like, if we're looking at the numbers from the World Economic Forum, 80 million new jobs are going to be created.

8:07I think that there's a lot to do. I think that there's a lot of new things that are going to be needed. And so people should start working on upskilling themselves and, you know, going to take classes and courses on all this kind of stuff. and I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity there. But some people would disagree with me. There is one particular founder at a startup company that thinks everybody's going to get laid off, robots are going to do everything, and everyone's just going to live off of government welfare. I don't think this is going to happen. I don't think this is a future we want.

8:40People find fulfillment in their jobs and in their work and in creative processes. If you get laid off and you don't want to go work on being a robot mechanic, maybe you do art or whatever else, music, whatever else inspires you. So I think that there'll be a lot of, and I think there's going to be value and a demand for stuff. So I think people will be fine. I think the world is going to be fine. One thing I wanted to mention is that Amazon is obviously very bullish on this. And I think we have to take everything with a bit of a grain of salt. I personally think it's only a matter of time before robotics.

9:10And I think it's evident that robotics will replace a lot. AI will replace a lot, but it doesn't mean it's happening tomorrow because Amazon, if you remember, was super bullish on their Amazon Go technology, which was essentially you walk into a store, grab whatever you want, you walk out, and it just bills you to your Amazon account. And they were trying to sell it to a bunch of other retailers. No one else really wanted to buy it. I think a lot of people just felt like Amazon was their big competitor. They didn't want to give them another, I don't know, more revenue pretty much. Amazon itself scaled that back once everyone found out that mostly it was literally just people in India watching cameras to see what you grab and they were self-labeling the items so it still required people to be working it wasn't like ai was doing it all wasn't uh you know perfect i think we see a lot from like some self-driving car companies where some self-driving robo companies i can't remember it was cruiser waymo but kind of got not exposed but they found out that like if the car can't figure out what to do someone in india or in a you know in another country is essentially watching and like takes over control of the car and drives it.

10:13And so it's not like completely AI autonomous self-driving. So anyways, I think we're not like a hundred percent there on a lot of this technology. Evidently it's getting there, but we have a moment, but it's not like job, mass job displacement is coming for the entire world tomorrow. So I think it's going to be interesting. I will keep you up to date on everything going on in this space as people do start making these kind of job and career shifts as robots do start taking over. I think this is a very fascinating area. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure to leave us a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts.

10:44And make sure to go check out AIbox.ai if you want a playground where essentially you have access to all of the top models all in one account for$20 a month so you don't have to have subscriptions to 50 different platforms. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day.