About an Amazon warehouse worker's account and whether robots could replace them.
Has this happened?
Yes 16 (16%)Not sure 32 (31%)No 54 (53%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About an Amazon warehouse worker's account and whether robots could replace them.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Glad to hear a different side to this. There absolutely are not any robots that can do all of the tasks the people in the sortation center do as quickly as they do them. Not even close.
I actually think that deep learning systems can be trained for all or almost all the fixed tasks already, but there are no robots that have anywhere near the combination of mobility, power-to-weight, flexibility, speed and agility necessary to replace humans in those jobs.
I think that it's going to take a new type of more effective artificial muscle to get there.
But then absolutely all of those jobs will be eliminated.
I think Marshall Brain's books are pretty good on the subject.