Tag: robots

Amazon Go, This is How You Could Go

Earlier this year, Amazon announced its Amazon Go concept. The cashier-free, and hopefully hassle-free grocery store. The news did seem to receive a disproportionate amount of public interest.

  

Sources: 1 – link, 2 – link

Of course we’ve all had our share of standing in queues. Queues where cashiers billed and packed at a pace, a sight that looked like it was buffering on a crappy internet connection. Given those occasions and memories of it, I’d have to agree. Amazon Go does sound like you’re being given a year or two extra on your natural lifespan.

But the concept itself, doesn’t exactly a stretch of our imaginations.

What might have been more interesting, is one of these two scenarios.

First one, if Amazon did away with most of that expensive real estate.

Imagine walking up to an Amazon Go store. The store comprises of only several telephone type booths. You pick up a heads-up display unit (similar to Google’s Cardboard; and yes, one that has been sanitized after the last customer), and get into an empty booth and put it on. A menu appears before you. You move your hand around and tap a section of wall right in front of you (not on your screen, but an actual wall). Clicking on a section makes that aisle appear on your heads-up display. Perhaps generic items, milk, cheese, chips, breakfast cereal, etc. Click or tap to pick more specific options and quantities. You  confirm the order, pay wirelessly (just like in the video), and leave.

As you shop through virtual sections of the store, a robot is activated at a warehouse on the outskirts of your city. It zips through aisles at a blinding pace, picking up your order. Your stuff, delivered home, by one of their drones, at your convenient time.

Then again, heck, why even have an outlet when you can order online? I guess for those who might miss their regular trips and human interactions at the grocery store.

Or, if real estate is really a big part of their intended strategy (something it should be careful about), here’s another alternative. In this case, the store comprises of a larger warehouse, and the same booth concept mentioned above. In the adjoining warehouse, robots zip through, collecting your stuff. You spend a few moments after shopping to enjoy a coffee or try samples of an introductory snack. By this time, your designated robot has tagged, bagged and billed you. You pick up your stuff, and you are ready to Go!

Thoughts?!

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Is A Bot After Your Job?

Image: Robin Williams in the Bicentennial Man

Yuval Noah Harari paints an interesting and arguably grim picture of the future, in his book Homo Deus. He runs through possible ways in which the world and we humans might evolve.

To give you a glimpse, think of computer programs evolving at the blistering pace they are. From predicting our needs to seamlessly trying to simplify our lives of seemingly increasing complexity. And on the other side, think of technology we have been able to integrate with our bodies in the last few decades. From pacemakers, to prosthesis that can be controlled by our brain by simply connecting them to our body or head. Yuval’s picture of the future includes super-humans and machines; either or both of which can make us humans, redundant. It does undoubtedly paint a bleak picture in some ways.

A few decades ago, we felt mankind was unstoppable. Even as we raced at a feverish pace, to advance biotechnology and communication technology.

An amusing incident comes to mind. Back in 2011, I was overseeing strategy and marketing for an industrial robotics company out of Pune. One day, I was having a casual conversation with a senior industry acquaintance. I inquired about automation at his company factories, and if he’d want us to help them. He shook his head and said, “sir, don’t think we’ll be needing anymore robots on our production line. Two years ago, we invested over INR 2 crore in robots. They’re catching dust (and possibly rust), as our factory workers won’t allow them to be installed on the line.”

Back then, I laughed it off as a temporary attempt by the workers to delay the inevitable. Today, in the backdrop of the world population, I finally see the workers’ perspective.

According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study, the UK might lose 30% of its jobs to automation by early 2030s. Similarly, the 38% in the US, 35% in Germany 35%, and 21% in Japan. While the report says this loss will be offset by job gains elsewhere in the economy, I have serious doubts.

Till over a decade ago, one felt confident that creative jobs were safe from being wiped out by technology. Yet now, programs can compose captivating pieces of music, even create mesmerizing art! Back in 2009, Spanish researchers had developed ‘Inmamusys’, a program that could create music in response to emotions that arise in the listener. And robots have been employed in the food industry since quite some time.  Now, it’s tough to list even a few jobs that seem shielded from future robots being built to get them.

‘Rainbow Smoke‘ – made by an algorithm written by Hungarian programmer József Fejes in 2014

Looking at the pace of technology, only someone lacking imagination, could assume mankind will be unaffected by robots. But while humans push their abilities through newer boundaries in pursuit of their growing imagination and potential, one wonders, what happens once humans have created a higher being.

While the fate of the human race need not follow the plot of the Terminator series, what remains to be found out, is what the ever-growing population will do to stay relevant?

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