[HN Gopher] Amazon hid its safety crisis
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon hid its safety crisis
Author : mcspecter
Score : 167 points
Date : 2020-09-29 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.revealnews.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.revealnews.org)
| Aperocky wrote:
| > The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so
| quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than
| doubled, according to a former senior operations manager who saw
| the transformation. And they kept climbing. At the most common
| kind of warehouse, workers called pickers - who previously had to
| grab and scan about 100 items an hour - were expected to hit
| rates of up to 400 an hour at robotic fulfillment centers.
|
| The gist of the message above. It seems that robots made the
| process so efficient that workers were suffering from repetitive
| motion injuries.
|
| It also would seemed to be a matter of time that the
| packing/picking will be fully replaced by robots. At which time
| Amazon will no longer have a safety issue, but an entire separate
| political issue.
| BelleOfTheBall wrote:
| They'd get rid of their union 'problems' and face a whole other
| crisis. But that wouldn't really stop Amazon and I'm sure bad
| PR isn't as expensive as having to pay out workers who got
| injured because they couldn't keep up with 'supreme' robotic
| workers.
| palijer wrote:
| That's an item every 10 seconds without missing any. Not sure
| about the exact work, but damn, did a human even look at those
| numbers and try to do the job?
| Animats wrote:
| _The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so
| quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more
| than doubled_
|
| Here's an old Kiva Robotics video that shows how picking
| works.[1] It's an utterly mindless job. An automated laser
| pointer points to the bin from which to take an object. A
| lighted button shows which box to put it in. A new bin then
| moves into position, and this goes on. Training time required
| is about 30 seconds. Amazon liked the system and bought Kiva.
| The company, not just the system.
|
| So anyone with basic eye-hand coordination can do picking,
| computers check that it's done right, there's no future in the
| job, and Amazon is trying to automate the picking process
| anyway. Classic assembly-line job.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/CWNuaPE4DTc
| Klinky wrote:
| Well, until it's fully automated, human safety is still
| important.
|
| I think the problem we have is that destroying a human body
| with mindless repetitive tasks is often still "cheaper" than
| engineering an automated solutions. It is simply cheaper to
| feed off desperation than to value human lives, and there is
| the engrained notion that humanity cannot be productive
| without putting humans into positions of desperation. This is
| a mindset issue that needs to eventually change.
| gowld wrote:
| It's only cheaper because of the externalities. If
| employers were required to pay for the damage the work
| does, it's be a different story.
| Aperocky wrote:
| When I was a graduate student, the lab next door was
| working on robotic arms and picking challenges, their PhD
| grad was then hired by... Amazon.
|
| I don't think it's cheaper, it's just that a solution has
| yet to exist. Once it start working, it will go out at
| breakneck pace.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I don't think it's cheaper, it's just that a solution
| has yet to exist. Once it start working, it will go out
| at breakneck pace.
|
| I don't think this is a single problem. There are several
| dimensions to it, and you can trivialize some at the
| expense of others. Stop storing things compactly in bins
| and you can make it a lot easier to grab those things
| with a robotic arm. Give everything very robust packaging
| and you no longer have to worry about appropriate grip
| strength.
| hinkley wrote:
| There still seems to be a degree of 2.5 dimensional
| thinking with the current robotics systems.
|
| If you occupy the entire volume of a warehouse, then the
| volume occupied per object becomes less of an issue than
| when you have huge air columns between the roof and
| robots, workers, or shelves.
|
| You could move most of the manual handling to the ingest
| side; having truck workers load product into what amounts
| to a fancy Pez dispenser customized to each high volume
| product. The humans spend more time dealing with oddball
| items and trying to arrange the order to fit within the
| box, instead of grabbing things out of bins.
| Klinky wrote:
| I'd imagine hiring PhDs to work on hard problems is not
| cheap, and I doubt Amazon would invest unless they
| believed that the long-term investment would result in a
| cheaper outcome than what they have now. The problem is
| that human labor has been so cheap that automation is
| often not even worth any R&D effort for most companies.
| If human labor cost more, this would cause more impetus
| upstream to find automated solutions.
|
| Also the burger-flipping robot and self-driving car have
| been just around the corner for the last two decades.
| Although the end solution to those issues may very well
| be that we need to stop eating so many burgers and stop
| designing cities around cars, rather than robots coming
| in to allow even more consumption.
| gowld wrote:
| Full automation is always out of reach, but McDonald's is
| extremely automated.
| Klinky wrote:
| Is that automation or scale? Doing things on a large
| scale can be more efficient and require less labor, but
| McDonald's is still hiring people to do effectively the
| same thing in the stores as they did 50 years ago.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This is why I see capitalism eventually failing. On one hand,
| I think it's great that these mind-numbingly boring jobs can
| be automated away. On the other hand, the end result is that
| more profits go to Amazon, while many more people have fewer
| opportunities to participate in the economy. For the old
| predictable arguments of "Well, these people can do something
| else, do you expect buggy whip makers to still be around?" -
| at some point if the rate of automation is faster than people
| are able to retrain, and faster than the economy is able to
| create new opportunities for these people, the outcome is
| still the same: all the benefits of capitalism go to very few
| people while huge swaths of people are made "redundant".
| reaperducer wrote:
| The response to this is usually, "Well, then people should
| be retrained." It's kind of an elitist, SV bubble trope at
| this point.
|
| There are millions of people who simply cannot be
| retrained.
|
| Yes, pick-and-pack is mind-numbingly boring for many
| people. But for others, it's good. Or even challenging.
|
| I've worked on an assembly line three times in my life. I
| found it tedious and pointless, and to keep my mind busy, I
| mostly just focused on what I was going to do after work.
| But there were people there for whom the work was a perfect
| fit.
|
| Not everyone has the intellectual capacity of a SV keyboard
| jockey. Not everyone has average motor skills. These people
| still need jobs. Still need to earn money. Still have the
| right to participate in society.
|
| The solution is not to just throw UBI money at them and
| warehouse them in apartments like cattle. The solution is
| to automate an appropriate amount of factory jobs, but also
| keep an appropriate amount of low-skill jobs so that these
| people can be part of society.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > It's kind of an elitist, SV bubble trope at this point.
|
| I agree with the "elitist" part but not the "SV" part.
| "Well, they'll just get retraining" has been the orthodox
| economist's standard dismissal of any and all concerns
| related to automation and/or globalization for decades,
| long before Silicon Valley became economically or
| culturally influential. In fact, SV is more likely to
| support UBI, which is still a handwavy way-too-hopeful
| solution, but it's a step in the right direction.
| komali2 wrote:
| > These people still need jobs.
|
| I think this is a statement worth teasing apart a bit.
|
| Nobody "needs" a job, for most definitions of "job."
|
| _Everyone_ needs
|
| food
|
| water
|
| shelter.
|
| Maslow's hierarchy makes this clear.
|
| In most places in the world, you justify your right to
| access food, water, and shelter by providing labor to
| earn capital (or you just have capital because your
| parents had capital) to give to someone else for the
| food, water, and shelter they control. Sometimes this is
| the person that gave you the capital in the first place!
| (What if you work for Safeway? ...or whole foods? )
|
| So you're not technically incorrect to say "these people
| need jobs." Of course they need jobs, if they don't,
| they'll starve to death or die of exposure! But it
| doesn't sit right with me. Why is the solution
| automatically "let's find a way for them to justify their
| existence in a world quickly filling up with robots," and
| not simply "let's sit back and enjoy the fruits of
| robotic labor?"
| pfranz wrote:
| > just throw UBI money at them and warehouse them in
| apartments like cattle
|
| I think this is how the bottom portion of Maslow's
| hierarchy is often dismissed.
|
| What I think the parent is talking about is higher up in
| the hierarchy--esteem needs. In our current society, most
| people get fulfillment through their job or raising kids.
| You often hear about issues with empty nest or retirement
| because people have trouble losing that purpose in their
| life.
|
| I've heard a lot of people bring up this dilemma, but not
| a lot of discussion about solutions. Often, they seem to
| imply work is the only way for fullfilment and don't even
| mention raising kids.
|
| I think history has a bunch of examples. None are going
| to be a good fit for everyone and I can imagine many
| people just being warehoused, consuming media with no
| other purpose. Historically, you saw well-to-do women run
| charities outside of raising children. A lot of
| scientists were very well to do people following their
| whims. For retirees, they can find purpose in maintaining
| a garden, playing music, or something else that offers
| personal fulfillment.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| > The solution is to automate an appropriate amount of
| factory jobs, but also keep an appropriate amount of low-
| skill jobs so that these people can be part of society.
|
| Yeah but, isn't the fact that those are going away the
| whole problem? If there already was an "appropriate
| amount of low-skill jobs" we wouldn't be talking about
| this. Do you want the government to mandate certain
| companies have to keep X number of certain jobs around
| for low-skilled workers? And what do you do about jobs
| that simply aren't needed anymore (not automated away,
| just gone due to something new)?
|
| I'm not saying it's a terrible idea, but it seems odd to
| me that you're complaining about UBI but your solution to
| the problem is likely just UBI with extra steps - is it
| more 'demeaning' to just give people money for nothing,
| or to force them to do a literally unnecessary job to get
| it?
|
| It's also not like there isn't _anything_ for people to
| do if they 're receiving UBI in place of their (now gone)
| job, Ex. they could volunteer at a non-profit, work on
| hobbies, work for a local business (that maybe couldn't
| afford to hire them at a full salary), etc. And all those
| things are arguably more useful usages of their time than
| making them do an unnecessary job.
|
| Still, fundamentally I agree with most of your
| criticisms, there's definitely a subset of the population
| that really can't be retrained from what they currently
| do, but recognizing the problem and solving the problem
| are two different things. And numbers here matter as well
| - the number of people losing their jobs to automation is
| a different number from those that can't reasonably be
| expected to be retrained somewhere else. If that second
| group is small enough, just giving them UBI/SS/etc. and
| telling them to retire is honestly not that bad of an
| option.
| djsumdog wrote:
| I think we'll see more low/mid scaled jobs. Capitalism is
| about continually innovating. The problems of course, are
| the finite set of resources, and the fact that you can't
| have infinite growth.
|
| We need to businesses around reuse and recycling. We need
| a ton of people who can find new ways to disassemble and
| dismal complicated parts, quickly, so they can be turned
| into new resources; so we're not shipping all our e-waste
| to kids in Africa who get heavy metal poisoning for a
| little bit of copper or lead.
|
| There are lots of things that still need innovation. You
| throw UBI and people, and you won't get that.
|
| UBI would work if we didn't have resource scarcity. We do
| not have Star Trek style replicators. We are far from
| being scarcity free.
| [deleted]
| cmxch wrote:
| > The solution is not to just throw UBI money at them and
| warehouse them in apartments like cattle
|
| What would be wrong with targeted career replacement
| income? Instead of throwing a little money at everybody,
| completely fund the remainder of careers at the
| functionally obsolete/long-term disabled/otherwise
| unhirable. Then create incentives to hire these
| individuals that outpace
| offshoring/outsourcing/automation.
|
| Either they get a good job that replaces what they lost,
| or enjoy getting what their career promised - including
| sizable wage increases.
| WalterSear wrote:
| I don't see how any of that leads to the failure of
| capitalism: it is, and will continue to succeed at
| explicitly everything it set out to accomplish.
| mistermann wrote:
| Does capitalism (as opposed to capitalists) have _goals_?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Is that a failure of capitalism or of our education systems
| or simply an oversupply of humans?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| well given that Capitalism also increasingly optimises
| the education sector in the way it optimises conveyor
| belts it arguably is.
|
| In all of these discussions about automation, Capitalism,
| economic dynamics and so on a lot of people seem to try
| to argue that the process can be divided into the
| automation part, call it capitalism with a small c, and
| the education/political/human part, when in reality,
| technological process changes both in the exact same way.
|
| I mean even the term you went with "oversupply of
| humans", from which vantage point does such a label come?
| Sounds more like a rogue AI than a humanistic
| consideration. That would be Capitalism with a capital C
| speaking, I guess.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| An oversupply of humans?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >all the benefits of capitalism go to very few people while
| huge swaths of people are made "redundant".
|
| While that's true, it's only true from a short to medium-
| term perspective.
|
| In the US at least (perhaps some folks from elsewhere can
| chime in on this), nearly 70% of GDP is _consumer
| spending_.
|
| As you automate away jobs, that leaves fewer people with
| money to spend. The very wealthy, while certainly able to
| consume vastly more than others, can't make up for this.
|
| Mostly because there's a limit on how many pairs of pants,
| skirts, socks, sofas, T-bone steaks, homes, cars, half-caf
| soy lattes, etc., etc., etc. that one person or household
| can reasonably use.
|
| If current trends continue, eventually there won't be
| enough demand to satisfy the levels of production over the
| long-term -- which will cause the economy to crash and
| burn.
|
| As such, creating incentives to raise wages, employ more
| people and encouraging real investment by the wealthiest,
| rather than incentivizing the hoarding of financial
| resources, could ensure a vibrant economy for the long-term
| -- with benefits to _everyone_ , including the very
| wealthy.
|
| Yes, it will mean that someone whose net worth could be
| hundreds of millions may only be tens of millions, but from
| the standpoint of living a good life, how would that make a
| material difference?
|
| Please note that I am emphatically _not_ advocating for
| "forced wealth redistribution" or "nationalization of
| private industry."
|
| Rather, I'm suggesting that changing the _incentives_ WRT
| wages, taxes and jobs in a capitalist system could have a
| profound positive effect in the near, medium and long-term
| on those with the least, and a profound positive effect on
| those with the most in the long-term.
|
| In fact, creating incentives to inject more consumer
| spending (through higher wages, incentives to innovate and
| engage in entrepreneurial activities, disincentives to
| using arbitrage and financial chicanery to increase wealth,
| etc.) is a market-based way to bolster the strength of the
| economy for the long-term, increase the consumer power of
| those with the least and ensure the long-term growth and
| stability of our economy and society.
|
| Let's do capitalism _right_ and create a better world for
| _all of us_.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| That's why we have a government, to adapt society to an
| ever changing world. You can postulate as to _if_
| government will step in an enact the requisite policies
| (UBI, Retraining, ect) but it doesn't take a big
| imagination to see a world post-automation. There's even a
| whole TV series set in such a world: Star Trek.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Sure would be cool if we could skip the whole dystopian
| bit, and the WWIII part, and the genetically engineered
| people rebellion.
| qppo wrote:
| > It's an utterly mindless job
|
| I worked as a picker/packer one summer. This is an
| understatement, even before the robots did the walking for
| you.
|
| It's interesting that the only thing left is to make a robot
| that can handle the objects to be placed, currently they cost
| more than minimum wage human labor unless the thing being
| picked is designed to be handled by a machine.
|
| Ultimately that's what I think will happen, the packaging
| will be designed for picking by machine and the job can be
| fully automated.
| 8note wrote:
| That's essentially what's happened with shipping containers
| gowld wrote:
| Jeff Bezos has a speech he gives, a about how shipping
| containers are interfaces and Amazon's primary value
| proposition is to metaphorically apply the shipping
| container "interface" concept to the retail industry.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That only thing left is also one of ultimate problems in
| robotics. What's brilliant(and inhuman) about Amazon is
| they don't push it but just wait for the technology to
| mature while humans cheaply do it.
| amelius wrote:
| The question is whether the solution will be heavily
| patented, or that it will be a generic machine-learning
| application (like classifying images).
|
| So either Amazon will own it, or we all own it and
| distribution centers can become like public utilities.
| Animats wrote:
| Alibaba already has warehouses using robots that work
| just like the Kiva robots.[1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/FBl4Y55V2Z4
| hinkley wrote:
| Amazon is getting big enough that it's only a matter of
| time before they start trying to dictate packaging on
| products, to make it easier for robots to pick them up.
|
| Walmart has been flirting in the same space to automate
| inventory management.
| programd wrote:
| THe Kiva video is not state-of-the-art I think. Check out
| this automated grocery warehouse, something right out of
| Factorio:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKrcpa8Z_E
|
| Humans would just get in the way and get mangled.
| hinkley wrote:
| That warehouse burned to the ground about a year ago,
| didn't it?
| tpmx wrote:
| That's a rendered video of the Ocado warehouse system,
| which I think is a ripoff of the Swisslog Autostore system.
| There was a lawsuit. Then Ocado hired Swisslog...
|
| Btw: This Autostore system is becoming the standard
| automated warehouse system for Swedish e-retailers, as they
| prepare for Amazon entering the Swedish market in a month
| or two.
|
| I think there are at least like 10 _very large_ Autostore
| installations in Sweden for various niche online
| e-retailers. And like 20 "large" installations.
| Animats wrote:
| I'm amazed that Swisslog system works reliably. All that
| precision track and rack. All those moving parts. There
| have been big automated storage and retrieval systems for
| decades, but they're often a maintenance headache.
|
| The Kiva system just needs is a flat floor. The robots
| are mechanically simple and totally interchangeable. On-
| site maintenance is limited to replacing batteries and
| wheels; for anything else it goes back to a repair
| center.
| tpmx wrote:
| I think the major design philosophy differences between
| the two systems are:
|
| - Kiva robots are designed to work along with cheap labor
|
| - Swisslog Autostore is designed to minimise labor,
| because labor is expensive in Europe (it does more of the
| work).
| jedberg wrote:
| I'm curious as to what political issue you think they will face
| by replacing all their warehouse workers with robots? Do you
| think people would demand they pay more in tax? Wouldn't that
| be a political issue that all large companies face together?
| ShimmyGuy wrote:
| The issue is the one that Andrew Yang built his platform
| around. If full automation outpaces the rate that people can
| retrain, you end up with a growing unemployed population.
| This in turn can drive political change to account for that
| fact (such as the institution of a UBI system, possibly
| funded in part by taxes on large automated companies).
| d1zzy wrote:
| Depends on if those companies are negotiating lower local
| taxes when opening a local office with the argument of
| "hiring people". If so, that argument won't hold anymore.
| all_blue_chucks wrote:
| Those tax negotiations regarded high pay white collar jobs.
| We are talking about warehouse work here.
| Aperocky wrote:
| We've already seen the large tech hate, it's just going to be
| more intense after even the most menial jobs are automated
| out of existence.
|
| That and potential driverless trucks are going to create a
| potential jobless future of the less fortunate/educated, that
| is an enormous political issue - though the burden will not
| be completely on Amazon, it will be a huge part of that.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| In the past, unionized workers negotiated compensation
| schemes when their jobs were automated or moved overseas.
| This isn't going to happen for Amazon's employees, though.
| That's the issue.
| [deleted]
| m-ee wrote:
| Local political perception of a company seems pretty divorced
| from the economic reality, just look at the Foxconn Wisconsin
| boondoggle
| causality0 wrote:
| Amazon's abysmal safety standards are no secret. There's an
| expose about them every six months. So far nobody with the power
| to change anything cares. What would it take to get actual
| change? Even politicians who hate Amazon don't seem to care about
| their workers.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Maybe the public isn't wrong and correctly ascertains that it's
| exaggerated.
| zepto wrote:
| The public correctly ascertains things all the time, so this
| is a good assumption to make.
|
| /s
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Jeff Bezos' 14 leadership principles are famous inside and
| outside Amazon for vividly articulating what is expected of the
| company's leaders. The first is customer obsession. "Leaders
| start with the customer and work backwards," it reads.
|
| And yet Amazon has no _real_ interest in solving its counterfeit
| problem, the same way it has no _real_ interest in solving its
| safety problem.
|
| I feel like it's all PR and bullshit at this point. And I'd say
| the overwhelming evidence of them lying about safety reports is a
| pretty strong indicator of how their actions don't match their
| words.
|
| This obsession with growth is metaphorically cancer. It has to
| grow no matter what, until the once-healthy host has long since
| died and all that's left is an enormous tumor.
| ColanR wrote:
| > And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its
| counterfeit problem
|
| I don't get this Amazon hate. Weren't they the ones who
| originally came up with the idea for putting purchaser reviews
| with the product, and the 5-star rating system? It seems like
| their solution was to 'crowdsource' the problem. Now people
| have learned to game the system, but I buy plenty of
| electronics from amazon and from ebay, and I'm careful enough
| that I've never ended up with a counterfeit.
|
| Edit: I've noticed that ebay gives seller ratings, and amazon
| does product ratings. I guess that belies the different focus
| they each have. It would be cool (and probably a big
| improvement) if amazon put both product and seller ratings in
| equally prominent positions.
| JoshTko wrote:
| The mental overhead spent checking if the order could be
| counterfeit or choosing a more reliable seller is exhausting.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I routinely get offers to buy a review from me inside the
| actual Amazon product itself. The system is being gamed under
| the nose of Amazon.
| ColanR wrote:
| Yeah, it took me a while to track down a cheap bluetooth
| headset recently. When there's >50-100 reviews, usually
| someone mentions if the reviews are being bought.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _purchaser reviews with the product_
|
| No. Companies have been doing this for as long as there has
| been advertising and mail-order catalogs. Did Amazon do it on
| the web first? Unlikely, but cannot be proven.
|
| _and the 5-star rating system_
|
| Also unlikely. The five-star system has been around for at
| least a century. In digital form, I had it on one of the
| first web sites I built, around the same time that Amazon.com
| launched, and even that was cribbed from online review
| systems that existed before the web.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Weren 't they the ones who originally came up with the
| idea for putting purchaser reviews with the product, and the
| 5-star rating system?_
|
| Were they? I doubt it...
| ColanR wrote:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-10-15/amazon-
| tu...
|
| It doesn't say if they were the first, but it looks like
| they were at least one of the first.
|
| Edit: yep, Bloomberg says they were the first to do it.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Maybe first on the web, but not the first online.
| wyxuan wrote:
| Oh gosh, the purchaser reviews are even worse. Either they're
| for a different product, or as I found out when I ordered a
| pair of earbuds and found a small leaflet claiming to provide
| a free gift card for a 5 star review, paid for.
| buildbot wrote:
| Yep, I got counterfeit parts for my 3d printer that resulted in
| it need a lot of repair, and fighting with Amazon only got them
| to pay half the cost of the repair...It's the last thing I'll
| order from them for sure. Canceling prime, just done with them.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What 3d printer part was it? I've been shopping mainly on
| aliexpress for my parts since amazon.ca has a very anemic
| offering (and what it has is basically dropshipped parts from
| aliexpress anyways). But I'm curious to know what I should be
| cautious of. I always thought most 3d printer parts are
| usually not "genuine" and made by a 3rd party anyway.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Some guy below you:
|
| > I work at Amazon, we are hiring all the top ML people to
| work on this problem. Legions of ML PhDs.
|
| It doesn't take legions of PhDs in machine learning to fix a
| basic counterfeit problem on a glorified online shopping
| store.
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Amazon doesn't even let their customers choose the correct
| reason for returns when they receive counterfeit items.
| Instead of being able to choose " _This item is a
| counterfeit_ " or " _I believe this item is a counterfeit_
| ", the customer must choose between reasons for their
| return that aren't entirely accurate, like " _Inaccurate
| website description_ " or " _Item defective or doesn 't
| work_".
|
| You'd think that a company that claims it is throwing vast
| amounts of resources at stopping counterfeiting on their
| platform would at least try to collect data on the
| counterfeits their customers receive.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's like politicians preventing studies on racism in
| police (a current hot topic in Germany): As long as there
| is no data, no one can demand action (i.e. getting rid of
| racist cops) or subpoena it (i.e. a class action lawsuit
| against Amazon).
|
| Amazon has a vested _massive_ interest in _not_ provably
| knowing numbers about counterfeit rates!
| brewtide wrote:
| "If you don't test, there are no cases". Emu reactions
| never solve anything.
| logicslave wrote:
| No interest in solving the problem? I work at Amazon, we are
| hiring all the top ML people to work on this problem. Legions
| of ML PhDs. Its not easy and you are just making stuff up
| gdulli wrote:
| Do those people know they've been hired for show, so that
| Amazon can deny that they're not trying to solve the problem
| that they're profiting from?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's super easy. Stop commingling inventory and put back the
| option to only search for items shipped and sold by
| Amazon.com. Didn't need a PhD for that.
| fredophile wrote:
| How hard can it be? Keeping inventory from different sources
| separate should go a long way to fixing things. Right now, as
| a customer I can't rely on the trustworthiness of the seller
| because they may not be the one who supplied the product I
| ultimately get.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to... _stop buying and selling
| counterfeit products_? This is what almost every other shop
| in the world does. Verify your suppliers. What does ML even
| have to do with it?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Fulfilled by Amazon products ship with offers to buy reviews
| inside them, lol.
|
| Could start by inspecting the merchandise. You don't need
| legions of PhDs. You need eyes and ears on the ground doing
| checks.
| [deleted]
| stefan_ wrote:
| A legion of ML researchers toiling away, but one middle
| manager to comingle all product!
| biztos wrote:
| > we are hiring all the top ML people
|
| Thank God, now none of the top ML people will go work for
| Facebook and destroy the world!
| yowlingcat wrote:
| > No interest in solving the problem? I work at Amazon, we
| are hiring all the top ML people to work on this problem.
| Legions of ML PhDs. Its not easy and you are just making
| stuff up
|
| I think you may be a touch defensive here. Take a look at
| what makes the the problem hard -- it's the incentives, not
| the lack of PhDs. The problem is that Amazon makes money off
| the counterfeits until caught, and when caught the penalty is
| low enough that it's not worth it to the GM to prevent the
| problem.
|
| If you truly have an interest in solving the problem, take up
| that incentive problem with the GMs in charge and see how far
| you get.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It sounds exactly like Amazon has no interest in solving the
| problem, and would rather waste money on legions of ML PhDs
| to come up with yet another technology solution that doesn't
| work and would simply get gamed in a few weeks even if it did
| work, leading to an endless tech war cycle, than spend the
| money on QC/QA staff that could snuff the problem out in days
| or weeks even with relatively little training and in a way
| that can't be easily gamed by counterfeiters.
| m-ee wrote:
| How many PhDs does it take to figure out that commingling
| stock results in people getting counterfeit products?
| [deleted]
| coldtea wrote:
| Those ML PhDs are for "solving the problem" or for finding
| more ways to hook, dupe, promote stuff to, and take the
| customer's money?
| prewett wrote:
| I don't think all the ML PhD's in the world can fix a system
| with misaligned incentives. Anonymous seller says this
| product is the same as that name brand one, oh we believe
| you, we'll co-mingle them. This right here is undoing the
| whole point of a brand, that it comes from a known source.
| You can't ML your way out of that. The system is bad by
| design: it trusts those who have an incentive to lie.
|
| So when people say Amazon doesn't want to solve the problem,
| this is what they mean. Amazon doesn't want to solve the real
| problem (co-mingling doesn't work) and wants to tech their
| way around that. Some things don't scale, and dealing with
| people is one of them.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| Amazon's approach of letting customers return "shipped and
| sold by amazon" items and letting an automated system issue
| refunds proactively for basically any reason is actually
| one of the more scalable approaches. It just sucks that the
| system pushes quality control to the customer
| fizixer wrote:
| I understand the sentiment but for the records: I don't think
| employees are the customers of Amazon. I definitely don't think
| Amazon sees it that way.
|
| What you said makes more sense if you replace both the words
| with the word 'humans'.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _And yet Amazon has no real interest in solving its
| counterfeit problem, the same way it has no real interest in
| solving its safety problem._
|
| Well, as told by Bezos, "Leaders start with the customer and
| work backwards," doesn't mean "Leaders start with the customer
| and his needs in mind".
|
| It just means "leaders start with how to get the customers'
| money doing what's minimally required, and/or profitably duping
| them without consequences".
| davisr wrote:
| > The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was
| 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent
| industry standard.
|
| This seems extraordinarily high. I wouldn't accept that risk.
| Makes me all the happier that I closed my Amazon account.
| Aperocky wrote:
| The article defined serious injury as
|
| > those requiring days off or job restrictions.
|
| Meanwhile OSHA defined serious injury here:
| https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1993-...
|
| Exerpt:
|
| > 1 Impairment of the body in which part of the body is made
| functionally useless or is substantially reduced in efficiency
| on or off the job. Such impairment may be permanent or
| temporary, chronic or acute. Injuries involving such impairment
| would usually require treatment by a medical doctor. Examples
| of injuries which constitute such harm include:
|
| a Amputation (loss of all or part of a bodily appendage which
| includes the loss of bone).
|
| b Concussion.
|
| c Crushing (internal, even through skin surface may be intact).
|
| d Fracture (simple or compound).
|
| e Burns or scald, including electric and chemical burns.
|
| f Cut, laceration, or puncture involving significant bleeding
| and/or requiring suturing.
|
| The differences in standards (which the article does mention in
| passing, but in no details) is a potential differentiator.
| sct202 wrote:
| There could be a mismatch with the national statistics, but
| the Amazon data has rates by year and warehouse type so the
| upward trend is still bad. I know at the factory/distribution
| center I worked at once upon a time, we tracked OSHA
| recordables / hour.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _The article defined serious injury as "those requiring
| days off or job restrictions."_
|
| Given what we know about the working conditions there
| (threatened to be fired for any sick day, wearing adult
| diapers to avoid bathroom breaks, etc.) getting a medical day
| off in an Amazon wharehouse scenario means something like
| your leg was cut off or you're bleeding green blood...
| throwanem wrote:
| Likewise. The real surprise has been how much I _haven 't_
| regretted doing that - small business ecommerce turns out to be
| alive and well, despite all Amazon and I guess Walmart's
| efforts to the contrary.
| Droobfest wrote:
| I wonder if Amazon really skews that industry standard so they
| might even have way more than double the injuries of other
| warehouses
| jinpan wrote:
| At the risk of defending a faceless megacorporation, I'm curious
| what injuries per package look like at Amazon vs "Industry
| Average".
|
| According to the article, productivity expectations per worker
| doubled with robotics, and Amazon has about double the injury
| rate per worker, so my super rough back of the envelope
| calculation says they should fare similarly on that metric.
|
| If the industry alternative takes twice as many workers to do the
| same job, ultimately leading to approximately the same number of
| injured workers, has Amazon really created a safety crisis?
| rathel wrote:
| Speaking of Amazon trying to downplay its wrongs, I recall there
| was a post here that counted Amazon PR team at 400-odd people.
| But I could not find it. Are they so effective or have I
| Mandela'd myself and this did not happen?
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