MILPITAS, Calif. – Amazon’s Delivering the Future Summit kicked off this week to showcase the future of the e-commerce giant’s delivery wing. But amid its push to become more efficient, concerns have emerged that it may come at a steep cost – jobs.
The New York Times recently reported, citing interviews and internal strategy documents, that Amazon’s automation push could allow the company to avoid hiring 160,000 fewer people by 2027 and more than 600,000 fewer people by 2033.
But Amazon’s chief technologist for robotics, Tye Brady, sees it differently. Brady said the robots he’s developing are meant to help humans, not replace them.
“Our strategy is people and machines working together. The growth that we’ve seen is because of this mindset of machines augmenting and amplifying the human potential,” said Brady. “We build our machines in a way that allows our employees to have the best tool set in the world in order to do their jobs, not only safer, but also with more efficiency.”
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Brady said no current employees will be laid off, and the more efficient the robots, the more delivery centers Amazon can put across the country, which would result in more jobs, not fewer.
One of those robots was on display Wednesday at a delivery center in Milpitas, California, about 15 minutes north of San Jose. It’s a project Brady has been working on for years, codenamed “Blue Jay.” It’s an AI-powered robotic arm that can pick and sort hundreds of millions of differently shaped items at one station, handling repetitive tasks normally assigned to frontline employees.
The smaller footprint means “creating the efficiencies that we know our customers love by passing along a low cost to our customers and also creating a safer environment for our employees so they don’t have to pick items from the top of our shelves or the bottom of our shelves,” said Brady.
Factory workers aren’t the only ones getting some AI relief – delivery drivers will soon be wearing smart glasses specially designed to keep their hands free, allowing them to pick up boxes and carry them with both hands, reducing the risk of injury in a fall. It also means no more having to carry a phone to take pictures of the packages at the front door.
“They don’t need to look at a phone, enter information into a phone,” said Beryl Tomay, vice president of transportation at Amazon. “They can focus on their surroundings instead, and it enhances their safety as well. So, just to make it a little bit more real, when a driver parks their vehicle, they can just go in the back, glance around, and the glasses will tell them which specific packages to pick up.”
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The glasses don’t record drivers’ activities, and have been tested in pilot programs and received positive feedback.
“We’ve tested this with hundreds of drivers over the past few months, and the feedback has been that they love it. It enhances their safety because they can focus on their surroundings,” said Tomay.
Amazon also plans to convert its entire fleet to electric vehicles, with 100,000 EVs by 2030. It’s a step toward not just driver safety, but the company’s goal to be at the forefront of sustainability.
“So many things we’re doing in sustainability right now are really thinking about how we are using resources more efficiently,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer. “So, how we’re using more carbon-free energy in the ways that advance our operations, how we’re looking at water and thinking about it as a natural resource.”
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And as Amazon focuses increasingly on AI integration, powering these data centers is top of mind. Hurst said the company is exploring small modular nuclear reactors, as well as fusion and geothermal technologies.
“The energy space is really growing and has a lot of potential for those new technologies,” Hurst said.
Other technologies unveiled at the summit included disaster relief technology kits that can be deployed after natural disasters, providing everything from solar and battery power to networking connectivity to drones for assessing damage.
The company sees itself as much more than an online storefront.
“I really believe that the work that we’re doing, the pioneering work that we are doing inside of Amazon, will start to transcend and others will see, ‘Hey, it’s not a replacement strategy, it is an augmentation strategy and that makes a huge difference,'” said Brady. “So, what do we get in the end? We have machines allowing us to be more connected to one another, allowing us to do our jobs better, and allowing us, frankly, just to be human.”
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