Amazon Robotics chief explains why idea of ‘people versus machines' on AI rollout is the ‘wrong mindset'
This week, retail and tech giant Amazon announced its one millionth custom-designed and built robot was zipping around warehouses worldwide.
Chief technologist Tye Brady announced Amazon Robotics had created a new AI model to power these product moving bots
Speaking to a global media contingent in Tokyo this week, Mr Brady fielded multiple questions about the prospect of AI robotics replacing entry-level and even skilled jobs.
'Any job that requires common sense, reasoning, problem solving, thinking at a higher level … Those jobs will always be needed,' he explained.
'Those jobs will always be there.
'This idea that it's 'people versus machines' is the wrong mindset.'
Amazon ranks as the fifth largest company in the world, according to Forbes' latest rankings.
In Australia the company employs about 7000 people - plus contractors - across 15 business arms.
But at the business behemoth's heart is logistics and warehousing, and the company's modern warehouses are powered by fleets of robots.
The blue bots buzz across the warehouse floor, sliding under stacks of yellow plastic shelves, moving countless products to human workers for sorting, storing and packing.
Despite just one of eight Australian warehouses running the AI robots, more than 200 million physical, consumer products are available on Amazon in Australia.
With the company's global march to automation, questions persist of how many humans will work at Amazon's gigantic warehouses in the coming decades, and whether entry-level jobs will be eliminated.
'We have built the world's largest, mobile industrial robotics base,' Mr Brady said.
'They solve practical, everyday problems. These are real world, applied problems … 99 per cent is not good enough. We ship billions and billions of packages every year,' Mr Brady told media in Tokyo.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr Brady learned to program computers in the 1970s. He moved around the US to be at the various hubs of computing as the technology advanced, and now leads Amazon's wholly in-house robotics division.
'I want to reframe your mindset with machines … I see a future where smart, physical AI systems help the elderly. I see systems where caretakers can use lifts to help people get out of bed.
'I see systems where people can stay at home longer. I see robotics systems that enable people, and them to be more human. Robotics that extends and amplifies human potential.'
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