A giant new retail fulfillment center in China has only four employees

[beijingwalker]

A giant new retail fulfillment center in China has only four employees

Will Knight
June 13th, 2018 4:20PM

JD.com, one of China’s big e-commerce companies, has unveiled a warehouse in Shanghai that, it says, only keeps humans on board so they can service all the robots.

Wage hikes: The rising cost of labor has triggered a race to automate many areas of industry in China. That has translated into ambitious investment and research in robotics, and it is likely to figure in China’s grand artificial-intelligence push as well.

Automation angst: The news conjures images of rapid automation and job displacement. But it’s important to note that the process of filling retail orders on a large scale is already heavily automated. Step inside one of Amazon’s fulfillment centers, for instance, and you’ll see robots moving around shelves of goods, as well as automated systems routing and tracking products and packages by the million.

Pick that up: While many fulfillment tasks are easily automatable and scalable, some, like picking and packing items, are more difficult to automate. As a video released by JD.com shows, the company is trying to tackle some challenging stuff, like packing products, using specialized machinery. It also apparently uses an AI vision system to inspect packages as they are processed.
https://www.technologyreview.com/th...ment-center-in-china-has-only-four-employees/

 

[beijingwalker]

 

[Cybernetics]

More than a military program, military-civil integration is an economic upgrade program. It will compel firms to adopt new technologies that will increase their automation and multipliers on human capital.

Automation is one of the most important aspects of the military-civil integration. Capital inputs has much more leverage and upper limit than relying heavily on human inputs. Human input is a long term bottle neck to increasing production. Once automation is achieved for the entire supply chain, the only constraining factor to production would be resources. Scaling up production would be much easier compared to a human heavy work force.

China still has a long way to go to in increasing the productivity of its military industry. It has made good progress for many armaments manufacturing but still lacking productivity in the aerospace sector compared to the most advanced nations. PLA logistics had been working on automation for more than a decade now, this will only provide a boost to their efforts.

JD.com is pushing the frontiers in applying automation and drone technology in China. This along with military-civil integration would create long term value for the firm. A good long term asset for your investment portfolio.

 

[IblinI]

Impressive, this is the future.

 

[Kai Liu]

Impressive, this is the future.

No. This is not the future. The future is about demographic dividend like this:

 

[Imran Khan]

what a stupid idea man . if humans have no jobs how they will buy online items ?

 

[Kai Liu]

what a stupid idea man . if humans have no jobs how they will buy online items ?

No sir.
Even if machines take over all our jobs, there is nothing to worry about: with such super high productivity, we humans can just treat machines as our slaves to create wealth for us, and set up a wealth distribution system to let every people live like kings.

 

[Imran Khan]

No sir.
Even if machines take over all our job, there is nothing to worry about: with such super high productivity, we humans can just treat machines as our slaves to create wealth for us, and set up a wealth distribution system to let every people live like kings.

i failed to understand sir please explain me how a middle class worker can create money via machines ? i see these action making poor middle class like me jobless and its worrying me .

 

[Kai Liu]

i failed to understand sir please explain me how a middle class worker can create money via machines ? i see these action making poor middle class like me jobless and its worrying me .

A social welfare system based on super-high productivity will solve all problem. You never see those highly developed nations like Switzerland, etc. to have an unemployment problem: with super high productivity, people can work less hours, but still everyone has a job and get paid much better than those rely on human labors and work day and night...

 

[empirefighter]

i failed to understand sir please explain me how a middle class worker can create money via machines ? i see these action making poor middle class like me jobless and its worrying me .

It is the trend. Maybe we cannot fully foresee what will happen In the future,but we have to move forward. China was once ahead of the West for centries, but we refused to move forward, then history give us a big punishment. We all take that lesson In deep heart. Though we also worry the future, we cannot stay still and lose the future.

 

[Offshore]

i failed to understand sir please explain me how a middle class worker can create money via machines ? i see these action making poor middle class like me jobless and its worrying me .

in the future, AI will assist human. it will reduce work hour. today we worked 8 hours / days.. in the future we only need 4 hours / a day.

 

[Imran Khan]

in the future, AI will assist human. it will reduce work hour. today we worked 8 hours / days.. in the future we only need 4 hours / a day.

i thin i will be dead before that day

 

[bolo]

i thin i will be dead before that day

How old are you?

 

[Huan]

Your AI husbands or AI wives will somehow become your breadwinners. Their evolving resumes will be shown as constant upgraded software with upgraded hardware.