In a post, Amazon highlighted BlueJ, a robot that “has an extra set of hands to help employees with tasks that involve reaching and picking up,” and its agentic AI system Project Ilona, which “acts like an extra teammate, helping to reduce that cognitive load” while helping reduce such cognitive load.
BlueJ can move 75 percent of Amazon stores’ items, and is ultimately considered a “core technology” that powers same-day delivery locations. The company says it developed Blue J in a year based on AI, digital twins, and data from robots already in use, creating a system that “coordinates multiple robotic arms to perform multiple tasks at the same time, eliminating three separate robotic stations in the same location that can pick, stow, and stabilize the same location.” can do.”
Ty Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, said in a company post, “The real headline isn’t about the robots . . . it’s about the people. The blog post also reiterated the spokesperson’s response to the Times report, saying that “no company has created more jobs in the U.S. over the past decade than Amazon,” and that 250,000 positions will be cut over the holiday season. Intended to fill.
CEO Andy Jesse’s June letter to employees is a little clearer about the performance implications. He wrote of generative AI, saying, “We will need some people doing some of the jobs that are done today, and more and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know where this nets out over time, but over the next few years, we expect it to reduce our corporate workforce as we gain efficiency gains from using AI at a larger scale across the company.”
Times The report proposes a similar plan for robotics and automation, citing Jesse’s push to reduce e-commerce costs and showing examples of how it is creating warehouse maintenance facilities that process more items with fewer employees who will increasingly focus on robot maintenance.
