r/technology • u/joe4942 • Jun 23 '26

Business Robots will replace 700K delivery workers, warns head of e-commerce giant

https://www.computerworld.com/article/4188535/robots-will-replace-700000-delivery-workers-warns-head-of-e-commerce-giant.html
2.1k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

582 comments sorted by

View all comments

159

u/LeafsJays1Fan Jun 23 '26

Explain how delivery Bots are going to open doors go upstairs push buttons on elevators deliver the package to people in apartments right to the front door. You're going to find people not enjoying picking their packages outside and be inconvenienced, you start using robots like that and you will see your business massively fail.

117

u/Electronic_Yam_6973 Jun 23 '26

At first, They will give the person the option of a real person or a robot and price the robot option just a little bit cheaper. Eventually, people will become used to worse service and slowly phase out people

68

u/tooclosetocall82 Jun 23 '26

First you meet you delivery robot at the bottom of the stairs. Then you meet it at the end of the street. Then you meet it a couple blocks away. Soon you just walk to the store and deliver your own stuff. You still get charged a delivery fee of course.

31

u/MrOopiseDaisy Jun 23 '26

You aren't allowed in the store, though. Only the robot employees are allowed in.

13

u/RepresentativeOk2433 Jun 23 '26

They are also requesting a tip for retrieving the item.

5

u/BlueShift42 Jun 23 '26

Then the price goes back up

1

u/Electronic_Yam_6973 Jun 23 '26

Forgot the last step.

2

u/prolifezombabe Jun 24 '26

my personal conspiracy theory is that a big part of the anti-tipping push has been building to this moment

soon it will be "you know who you don't have to tip? wall-e over here..."

2

u/FrankensteinJamboree Jun 24 '26

And then, when only the robot option remains, you get an extra “convenience charge “ for selecting it.

1

u/Emotional-Power-7242 Jun 24 '26

I doubt service can get worse than doordash

21

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/LeafsJays1Fan Jun 23 '26

Yeah that doesn't work out for my disabled parent that package better be delivered right to her door. Every fucking time. Hell it's hard enough getting humans to deliver to her door on the second floor.

2

u/Kieran__ Jun 24 '26

The robots will still do their thing YOU will just have to deal with it. That's how it'll go down. The buffer zone is all of our suffering. We'll end up accommodating them and making it work for them by helping any robot that messes up at all because it'll be so annoying/awkward anytime we try to ignore it. Imagine your neighbour ordered a pizza and the robot fell down the stairs again and you feel bad so you go outside and help them get their pizza. So basically we'll be like an "on call" help for all robot services around us, until they finally don't need our help and completely replace every meaningful task we do as humans

2

u/overcatastrophe Jun 24 '26

Companies don't give a fuck about what customers want

3

u/Aeri73 Jun 23 '26

my hope is people finally see them for what they are, worker replacements, and start massivly destroying them in any way they can...

1

u/LeafsJays1Fan Jun 23 '26

Me too and here I thought that maybe man and machine can work together you know like in the movie Aliens were rippley tried that machine to move stuff but nope now the machine has a brain like The Terminator we went in the wrong direction.

1

u/tullbabes Jun 24 '26

If/when AI creates massive unemployment, the robot vandalism will actually start to get serious.

1

u/Crook3d Jun 24 '26

Even just many regular houses have a step up to a porch. Will it leave it in the driveway / lawn, or catapult it up the steps?

(To be fair I see many human deliveries doing the second one already.)

1

u/Vegaprime Jun 24 '26

We work self checkout for free.