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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.
Chapter 2: What are Amazon's plans for upgrading warehouse operations?
Amazon has unveiled its plans to upgrade the operations within its warehouses with the aid of AI-powered robots. It's part of a €10 billion investment in its European Fulfillment Centres. And here to explain it all to us is Newstalk's technology correspondent, Jess Kelly. So Jess, this is not just another big spend by a tech company.
You think this is going to change things for everything, right? Yeah, absolutely. This is a very strategic investment by Amazon. Anyone who has driven past the fulfilment centres here in Dublin... On the Nace Road, you see the big ones there?
Chapter 3: How much is Amazon investing in European fulfillment centers?
Exactly, yeah. They are the size of 12 football fields back to back to back to back. I have been out there. I've done reports out there. They are colossal. They're across a number of levels. And right now in that centre, they have workers who have handheld devices. They receive your order and it will tell them the shelves that they need to go to to pick up your items.
They have to scan them all manually, put them into baskets or trolleys that they then manually move around the place, bring them to the packing station. Again, the handheld device tells you how to pack them and then off they go. What Amazon is now doing is investing in, as you say, AI powered robots that also have the large language model conversational style built in.
So you can say to your robot or your collaborative robot, which is called a cobot, you can say, order one, two, three, four. Can you get the third item on the list? because it's something heavy or whatever it may be. And the robot will understand plain English conversations, will go receive the items, fulfil the order, fulfil the order that you've given it and work alongside the workers.
The idea with these is that they can move and carry weights of up to 400 kg, which is significant and obviously much more than a human can do. The big thing with these as well is, They don't need breaks.
Chapter 4: What role do AI-powered robots play in Amazon's strategy?
They don't need sleep. They don't call in sick. So every hour of the day, these robots can be in operation. They don't need pay. They don't need to be paid. Exactly. And the thing is, I was struck by the level of tech that's already in use in the Dublin facility. I haven't been in ones in the UK, elsewhere in Europe or in the US yet.
But from my research, I understand that these type of robots are already in place in the US and they will be coming to Europe. Dublin hasn't been specifically mentioned as of yet, but in the first part of next year, they will be rolled out in various parts of Europe. So you can only imagine it's a matter of time before they come to Ireland as well.
I was listening to the boss of Microsoft UK in an interview on the BBC and he was talking about AI and job losses. And he said, well, a lot of the big companies that we're talking to, they're not talking about getting rid of staff.
They're talking to us about, you know, being more efficient in your job and getting more done and being more productive and your job becoming easier in a way and flowing and workflows working better. Do we accept that? No.
No.
Full stop. Thank you. Good night. Goodbye. No, because I think that's a very simplistic view coming from a boardroom in a company that has certain types of workers where there are efficiencies to be made to allow people to free up. If you're working in a job that involves manual labour... I do think that there will be an element of displacement of people.
Things like stacking the shelves of supermarkets. Things like, was it last week? I was in Explorium, a fantastic kids play facility. I did have kids with me. And they had robots there that you could put trays on to bring drinks around the place. We're seeing subtle examples of it already. And I think what's happening is we are wowed by the innovation and the novelty aspect of it.
we haven't quite, it hasn't become normalised yet. What's going to happen over the next few years is it will become normalised.
And then we will see, you know, the recruitment spikes that happen in supermarkets around Christmas time or busy periods, those types of things will stop because what we will see is these co-bots, which are being manufactured right around the world and already utilised in some manufacturing plants here in Ireland, will take on a lot of that work.
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Chapter 5: How do AI robots improve efficiency in Amazon warehouses?
Yes. You don't have to leave the house. That is going to be massively appealing to so many people. We're always hearing the phrase time poor. Everybody is time poor. Are you good at online shopping? Like grocery shopping? I see I can't buy food because all I do is just go to the ice cream and just get ice cream. And that's the extent of it. I can't do meal planning with online shopping at all.
I think I'm just an impulse shopper. So I like to get in there and see and then I'll decide what I need. I mean, I'm not a list person. So with online shopping, I always forget stuff. So I end up collecting my shopping and then having to go into the shop to get all the things that I forgot to buy. Yeah, I'm just not a good candidate for this.
But I can imagine in a few and not that distant future. And if you look at what's happening with housing sales at the moment. So if you go on to DAFT or one of those sites to view houses, you can now do virtual tours of homes. So I want to be able to walk virtually through my supermarket so I can impulse buy. And they'd love that and I'd love that. So we're all happy.
And I think I can fully see this becoming the norm. You know, back when everyone was talking about the metaverse and VR headsets and all the rest. And now, even with what we talked about last week, which is the smart glasses integration, I can fully imagine you putting on your smart glasses and doing sort of a visual tour of a supermarket.
Chapter 6: What is the significance of collaborative robots (cobots) in logistics?
You speaking to the AI assistant built into your glasses going, oh, get me one of those glasses.
you know random spices that I will probably never use but it looks really interesting chuck that into the bag as well everything about how we shop and how we consume you know what we're going to spend our money on is going to change if you look at what Disney is doing in the US even you know if you're watching a show with your kids on Disney it's
We've seen early mock-ups and, you know, some various rumours and so on that you'll be able to say, oh, that Moana T-shirt looks great. Yes, please add that to the basket. It'll be charged through your TV. It's too much. This is where we're going. Too much. It is too much. So the other, our Irish supermarkets, you know, our Dunn stores are super value. Then the multinational ones as well.
They're going to be under serious pressure if we have Amazon delivering our groceries in real time almost. 100%. And when you look at the price wars, you know, if you walk by any bus stop around the country, you'll probably see an ad for a supermarket promising that they can save you 6 cent if you shop with them versus another one.
We know that the loyalty programs, the discount programs, all of that is incredibly competitive. If somebody like Amazon comes into the fore if they find ways to have, whether it's frozen goods, canned goods, that they can deliver at a severely discounted price and the delivery is part of your Prime membership, our supermarkets are going to be under massive pressure.
So as I said, I can see the co-bots coming into play. I can see drone delivery coming to play. The way we shop right now is not going to be how it will be in five years' time. Jess Kelly, thank you very much. Jess Kelly's Newstalk's tech correspondent. Plenty more on the way.
The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance. Weekday mornings at 9 on Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
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