As artificial intelligence continues reshaping the workplace, tech companies face growing scrutiny over the role humans will play in this new landscape. In a world where machines are increasingly handling repetitive tasks, what’s left for the people currently doing those jobs?
Amazon has offered a rare glimpse into this future with the introduction of Vulcan, a warehouse robot designed to handle physically strenuous picking tasks — ones that often involve awkward bending or climbing. This isn’t just about efficiency; it’s also a shift in how human labor is valued and repurposed.
Unlike earlier generations of warehouse bots, Vulcan is equipped with a sense of “touch,” allowing it to better grasp a wider variety of items. It’s already being used to handle 75% of customer orders by managing goods stored on hard-to-reach shelves. The remaining tasks, including items stored at mid-level or those the robot still can’t handle, are done by humans.
But Amazon isn’t just swapping people for machines. It’s also launching initiatives to retrain warehouse workers into roles like robotics technicians, reliability engineers, and floor monitors — new positions born from the very technology that’s replacing traditional labor.
This hybrid approach reflects a broader belief in the tech industry: that automation will create more jobs than it destroys — even if the new roles require different skills. The World Economic Forum predicts that while 92 million jobs may be displaced by AI and automation, 170 million new ones could emerge.
Still, retraining a workforce at scale is a major challenge. Not every worker will have the interest or aptitude to become a robot tech. And as Amazon’s case shows, the transition won’t be one-to-one — far fewer people are needed to maintain and monitor bots than to do manual warehouse picking.
Amazon’s retraining efforts are significant because they move beyond vague promises and into tangible programs. For now, only a small number of workers are being trained for robot-related roles, but it hints at what could become a common template: humans supervising and maintaining machines, rather than being replaced by them wholesale.
However, there’s also skepticism about how widespread such transformations will be. Not all companies have Amazon’s resources to deploy or maintain advanced robotics. Many industries — especially smaller retail and food service businesses — may remain human-dependent for years or even decades.
Amazon’s past attempt to automate retail with its “Just Walk Out” technology met limited success, partly due to its reliance on human video reviewers and low adoption outside Amazon-owned stores.
Amazon’s Vulcan robot might not be the end of warehouse jobs — it could be the beginning of a new kind of job altogether. The big question is whether companies will genuinely invest in preparing the current workforce for these new roles or if only a select few will benefit from the AI revolution.
Source: (Techcrunch)
