A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Amazon's workforce may start to look a little less human in a few years. The New York Times reports that the company plans to avoid adding more than half a million jobs by 2033 by putting more robots to work. Times technology correspondent Karen Weise found that Amazon's robotics group has a long-term goal to automate 75% of its operations, and I asked her why.
KAREN WEISE: It's a huge cost for the company to pay so many people to deliver all the products that we all order, it seems like, all the time. And there's been a lot of advancements in robotics in recent years, particularly with AI and other things like that. So you can actually see progress being made in this effort to kind of keep the headcount down or from growing as fast as it has in the past.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, and people have accidents. People need medical insurance. I don't think robots need all that, as far as I know, right?
WEISE: Exactly, yes. All of that, if you can standardize, just becomes a lot more predictable and a lot more in their control.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, you visited Amazon's warehouse in Shreveport, Louisiana. What did you see there?
WEISE: Yeah. It's honestly pretty incredible to see. It's the most advanced warehouse that Amazon has. It's a fulfillment center, so this is where they pick kind of traditional small-package orders - you know, you buy, like, hand soap or a eye mask or whatever. And there are large portions of the facility that are almost without people in them that - where you have robotics doing the work, robotic arms moving things from place to place or little - almost, like, little scooters moving products between different places. But there are also some parts of the building where there are still a lot of people, and they are doing parts that so far have been hard to get robots to do efficiently or consistently.
MARTÍNEZ: But eventually - right? - the robots are going to be able to do them.
WEISE: Yeah. Over time, you'll see us kind of progress towards knocking out more and more that can be automated.
MARTÍNEZ: Amazon is planning on selling twice as many products but saving $0.30 on each item it delivers, you report. I mean, I think for a lot of people that don't have someone that they know that works at Amazon, that's all they want to hear - right? - that they're going to save money and still get all their products.
WEISE: Exactly. And what Amazon says is they have this long history of saving money in one place and then using that to invest in other places. So, like, for example, right now they're expanding in making deliveries in rural areas. That's an investment they're making because of efficiencies they've been able to make elsewhere. So there's a big question of kind of how that all balances out. But that $0.30 per item is actually a lot when you think about how many items Amazon moves.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, Amazon told you the documents viewed by The Times were incomplete and don't represent its overall hiring strategy. But, Karen, I mean, does this move at Amazon tell us anything about what might happen in the broader economy?
WEISE: These documents represent some presentations to the board itself that said, great. Do this. Do more. And so what you see is a company that's really at the cutting edge of this. And there's a lot of jobs and a lot of companies that now work in this world of e-commerce in warehousing and fulfillment. And this will put pressure on competitors to pick up the pace of their own investments to be both literally faster - like, they can move more products more quickly. And we all - literally, you can see it in Amazon's reports. The more quickly they ship things, the more people buy.
MARTÍNEZ: That's New York Times technology correspondent Karen Weise. Karen, thanks a lot.
WEISE: Thank you.
MARTÍNEZ: And just a note - Amazon is a financial supporter of NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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