Amazon Robotics

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

air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, big-box store, blue-collar work, Boeing 747, book scanning, business logic, business process, call centre, cloud computing, company town, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, data science, Dava Sobel, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital twin, Donald Trump, easy for humans, difficult for computers, electronic logging device, Elon Musk, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, guest worker program, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, hive mind, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, intermodal, inventory management, Jacquard loom, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Kiva Systems, level 1 cache, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, machine readable, Malacca Straits, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, Nomadland, Ocado, operation paperclip, Panamax, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, polynesian navigation, post-Panamax, random stow, ride hailing / ride sharing, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Rodney Brooks, rubber-tired gantry crane, scientific management, self-driving car, sensor fusion, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skunkworks, social distancing, South China Sea, special economic zone, spinning jenny, standardized shipping container, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, workplace surveillance

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

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, anti-bias training, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer vision, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, fulfillment center, gigafactory, Google Chrome, growth hacking, hive mind, income inequality, Infrastructure as a Service, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Jony Ive, Kiva Systems, knowledge economy, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, new economy, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, super pumped, tech worker, Tim Cook: Apple, uber lyft, warehouse robotics, wealth creators, work culture , zero-sum game

“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

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, AI winter, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Swan, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, corporate raider, creative destruction, Danny Hillis, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, money market fund, natural language processing, no-fly zone, Ocado, pets.com, plutocrats, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, wealth creators, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture

“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, Julia Kirby

"World Economic Forum" Davos, AI winter, Amazon Robotics, Andy Kessler, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, business intelligence, business process, call centre, carbon-based life, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, commoditize, conceptual framework, content marketing, dark matter, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, deliberate practice, deskilling, digital map, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, estate planning, financial engineering, fixed income, flying shuttle, follow your passion, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, Freestyle chess, game design, general-purpose programming language, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Hans Lippershey, haute cuisine, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, industrial robot, information retrieval, intermodal, Internet of things, inventory management, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, lifelogging, longitudinal study, loss aversion, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter Thiel, precariat, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, robo advisor, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, social intelligence, speech recognition, spinning jenny, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, tech worker, TED Talk, the long tail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Works Progress Administration, Zipcar

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

A Pattern Language, active measures, AI winter, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, asset-backed security, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, big-box store, bike sharing, Blitzscaling, Boston Dynamics, business process, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, company town, computer vision, conceptual framework, congestion charging, congestion pricing, connected car, creative destruction, crew resource management, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data is the new oil, Dean Kamen, deep learning, deepfake, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, dematerialisation, deskilling, Didi Chuxing, drive until you qualify, driverless car, drop ship, Edward Glaeser, Elaine Herzberg, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, extreme commuting, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, food desert, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, Future Shock, General Motors Futurama, gig economy, Google bus, Greyball, haute couture, helicopter parent, independent contractor, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, jitney, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Lewis Mumford, loss aversion, Lyft, Masayoshi Son, megacity, microapartment, minimum viable product, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, North Sea oil, Ocado, openstreetmap, pattern recognition, Peter Calthorpe, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Ray Oldenburg, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, technological singularity, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Great Good Place, too big to fail, traffic fines, transit-oriented development, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, US Airways Flight 1549, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Vision Fund, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics

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

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, anti-communist, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, big-box store, business intelligence, Charles Babbage, Colonization of Mars, computer age, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Flynn Effect, Ford Model T, Future Shock, Google Glasses, hive mind, Howard Zinn, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, independent contractor, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John von Neumann, knowledge economy, Kodak vs Instagram, life extension, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Armstrong, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Ponzi scheme, precariat, prediction markets, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological singularity, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Virgin Galactic, warehouse robotics, working poor

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, Daniel Susskind

23andMe, 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, Atul Gawande, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Bill Joy: nanobots, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, business process outsourcing, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, Clapham omnibus, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, death of newspapers, disintermediation, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, full employment, future of work, Garrett Hardin, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Ethic, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, lump of labour, machine translation, Marshall McLuhan, Metcalfe’s law, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, optical character recognition, Paul Samuelson, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, pre–internet, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, semantic web, Shoshana Zuboff, Skype, social web, speech recognition, spinning jenny, strong AI, supply-chain management, Susan Wojcicki, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, telepresence, The Future of Employment, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Turing test, Two Sigma, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, world market for maybe five computers, Yochai Benkler, young professional

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, H. James Wilson

3D printing, AI winter, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, circular economy, cloud computing, computer vision, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, digital twin, disintermediation, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, friendly AI, fulfillment center, future of work, Geoffrey Hinton, Hans Moravec, industrial robot, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Benioff, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, personalized medicine, precision agriculture, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sensor fusion, sentiment analysis, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snow Crash, software as a service, speech recognition, tacit knowledge, telepresence, telepresence robot, text mining, the scientific method, uber lyft, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics

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

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Robotics, Andrew Keen, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, automated trading system, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business process, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, computer age, computer vision, continuation of politics by other means, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, digital divide, digital map, disinformation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of work, Future Shock, Gabriella Coleman, Google bus, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, industrial robot, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, machine translation, Metcalfe’s law, mittelstand, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, night-watchman state, Oculus Rift, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, payday loans, Philippa Foot, post-truth, power law, price discrimination, price mechanism, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, selection bias, self-driving car, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, tech bro, technological determinism, technological singularity, technological solutionism, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, universal basic income, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture , working-age population, Yochai Benkler

<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

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, Andy Rubin, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, bread and circuses, call centre, Chris Urmson, congestion charging, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital divide, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, Flynn Effect, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, gender pay gap, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, lifelogging, lump of labour, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Milgram experiment, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, PageRank, pattern recognition, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-work, precariat, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Rodney Brooks, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, TED Talk, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, working-age population, Y Combinator, young professional

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

"Susan Fowler" uber, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Bob Noyce, Brewster Kahle, business intelligence, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, commoditize, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, Didi Chuxing, digital divide, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of journalism, future of work, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Conference 1984, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, passive income, Peter Thiel, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Mercer, Robert Shiller, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, Tesla Model S, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, undersea cable, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, working poor, you are the product, young professional

“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

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, antiwork, Apple II, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hacker News, hiring and firing, holacracy, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, John Gruber, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Menlo Park, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parker Conrad, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, RAND corporation, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, web application, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

“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

Amazon Robotics, benefit corporation, David Sedaris, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)

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

air freight, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, barriers to entry, call centre, commoditize, computer vision, data science, fake news, fulfillment center, global supply chain, Hacker News, industrial robot, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, rolodex, San Francisco homelessness, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, WeWork

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, Miya Knights

3D printing, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, asset light, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, business intelligence, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, computer vision, connected car, deep learning, DeepMind, digital divide, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, driverless car, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), Elon Musk, fulfillment center, gig economy, independent contractor, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Kiva Systems, market fragmentation, new economy, Ocado, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, QR code, race to the bottom, random stow, recommendation engine, remote working, Salesforce, sensor fusion, sharing economy, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, trade route, underbanked, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, WeWork, white picket fence, work culture

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

1960s counterculture, 3D printing, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, additive manufacturing, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, Charles Babbage, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, company town, congestion pricing, connected car, Conway's law, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Graeber, deglobalization, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, distributed generation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, functional programming, future of work, Georg Cantor, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, High speed trading, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Laura Poitras, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, McMansion, means of production, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, OSI model, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, peak oil, peer-to-peer, performance metric, personalized medicine, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-Fordism, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reserve currency, rewilding, RFID, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, skeuomorphism, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Startup school, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, the long tail, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y Combinator, yottabyte

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, Jenny Kennedy

active measures, Amazon Robotics, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Boston Dynamics, cloud computing, cognitive load, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, cyber-physical system, data science, deepfake, Donald Trump, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, feminist movement, game design, gender pay gap, Grace Hopper, hive mind, Ian Bogost, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, Masayoshi Son, Milgram experiment, Minecraft, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, pattern recognition, planned obsolescence, precautionary principle, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, smart meter, social intelligence, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Turing test, Wall-E, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce

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

AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, Amazon Robotics, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Big Tech, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, carbon-based life, cloud computing, company town, computer age, computer vision, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital map, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, Frank Gehry, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Earth, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, Internet Archive, Isaac Newton, Jeff Hawkins, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Markoff, life extension, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Menlo Park, move 37, move fast and break things, Mustafa Suleyman, new economy, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, OpenAI, PageRank, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, profit motive, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, tech worker, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, Turing test, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Y Combinator

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, Steven Kotler

Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, call centre, cashless society, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital twin, disruptive innovation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, fake news, food miles, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, gigafactory, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hive mind, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, loss aversion, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mary Lou Jepsen, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, mobile money, multiplanetary species, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, QR code, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, urban planning, Vision Fund, VTOL, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, X Prize

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

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Picking Challenge, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, business climate, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gigafactory, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kiva Systems, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, NSO Group, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, private spaceflight, quantitative hedge fund, remote working, rent stabilization, RFID, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, search inside the book, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, two-pizza team, Uber for X, union organizing, warehouse robotics, WeWork

“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

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, DevOps, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disinformation, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, gravity well, greed is good, Greyball, Guido van Rossum, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kaizen: continuous improvement, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, Lean Startup, Leonard Kleinrock, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, microbiome, microservices, minimum viable product, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, OSI model, Overton Window, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, software as a service, software patent, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strong AI, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the map is not the territory, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Fadell, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, VA Linux, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, zero-sum game, Zipcar

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

8-hour work day, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, algorithmic management, Amazon Robotics, Anton Chekhov, asset-backed security, assortative mating, basic income, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, carried interest, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, computer age, corporate governance, corporate raider, crony capitalism, David Brooks, deskilling, Detroit bankruptcy, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Emanuel Derman, equity premium, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, fear of failure, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, hiring and firing, income inequality, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, Kiva Systems, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, machine readable, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, medical residency, meritocracy, minimum wage unemployment, Myron Scholes, Nate Silver, New Economic Geography, new economy, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, precariat, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, savings glut, school choice, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, six sigma, Skype, stakhanovite, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Davenport, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, traveling salesman, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero-sum game

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?