Amazon is reportedly using artificial intelligence to inspect products and look for signs of damage before they are packaged and shipped to people.
Jeremy Wyatt, director of applied sciences at Amazon Robotics, said workers today check the quality of goods as they pack and sort them, but damaged goods are less common. He said he often couldn’t find it.
“It’s a cognitive thing because obviously you’re looking for something unusual and that’s not what you’re supposed to do,” Wyatt told The Wall Street Journal.
Fewer than 1 in 1,000 products are said to be damaged, which probably means that staff are less likely to encounter damage and pay less attention to the problem. But with Amazon processing billions of packages each year, the number of defective items is staggering.
The software works by scanning objects placed in bins and detecting signs of wear with an image station. If the item is flagged, an Amazon employee will double-check the item for damage and determine if it can be packed and shipped.
The technology has been implemented in two warehouses so far. Amazon’s software development manager Christoph Schwertfeger said they are three times more likely to find damaged items than human employees. The AI was trained to learn how to identify visual characteristics common to damaged items by comparing images of undamaged and damaged products, he said. It says.
Amazon invests in deploying technology to automate tasks that tend to be repetitive, monotonous and unionized. The e-commerce giant showcased robots designed to lift and move heavy objects, scan barcodes and put products in carts. However, machines cannot do all the work and work in tandem with humans.
Amazon believes robots are the future, but the company has been criticized for its relatively high workplace injury rate, faces accusations of union-busting and labor-law violations, and understandably blames its employees. Given that it struggles to maintain, this is not surprising.
Warehouse workers aren’t the only ones unhappy. Hundreds of company staff staged a protest in front of the company’s headquarters in Seattle on Wednesday. climate policy And I have to go back to my office work.
register has reached out to Amazon for further comment. ®
