With a million robots in its fleet, Amazon is using machines for more than taking tasks off people’s plates. Brad Greenwood, a business professor at George Mason University, says warehouse robots are squeezing humans out of physical workspaces as they reduce the company’s labor costs. For the over 1.5 million people working full- and part-time at Amazon, working alongside machines also raises a question: who controls the speed of the job?
In an interview with Ars Technica, Greenwood contrasted this arrangement with the way much automation has operated in the past. “For the last 100 years, most of the automation that we’ve seen usually happens away from workers,” he explained. “You’re taking that high-risk task away from the worker, and you’re doing so in a way that is not physically proximate.”
The expansion of Amazon’s fleet, Greenwood said, “really changes that dynamic for two reasons: one is that it is physically proximate, and two, the robot has the ability to dictate the pace of work,” so the consequences aren’t limited to a machine assuming a specific task.
Each machine contributes to Amazon’s interconnected logistics system, helping deliveries move faster while cutting overhead and reducing friction. The resulting efficiencies improve its bottom line. Critics, however, say that putting machines in charge of the pace makes Amazon less reliant on human workers and weakens their leverage, both as individuals and in any potential collective bargaining. This concern forms part of the wider argument over how Amazon uses AI to disempower workers.
Robots may take hazardous tasks off workers, but that doesn’t settle whether the remaining duties get safer when machines set the pace. The reporting about robots and workplace injuries cited by the source suggests that conditions at Amazon facilities may grow more dangerous as robots become more numerous on the floor. That possibility comes with a qualification: it doesn’t establish that every additional robot makes a workplace less safe.
Amazon also gets a continuing flow of publicity from automation. Reports on faster deliveries enabled by robots and the Tetromino project’s goal of fully automating delivery stations draw attention to technical accomplishments. Critics say that focus leaves the widespread but less attention-grabbing problem of workplace injuries in the background. Meanwhile, workers’ concerns over AI-mediated human resources decisions bring scrutiny to uses of technology outside the warehouse floor as well.
Speaking to Ars, Joan Moriarty, the trade union coalition Strategic Organizing Center’s director of strategic research, stated the criticism plainly: “Amazon likes to talk about its latest robots because it doesn’t want to talk about the tens of thousands of Amazon workers who are injured every year due to Amazon’s obsession with maximizing speed and minimizing costs.”
A robot taking over a hazardous task and a robot setting a worker’s pace are two different uses of automation. Greenwood’s point is that Amazon’s machines can do both: removing some physical work while controlling how quickly people do what’s left.
