Staples, Gap, and Amazon replace workers with robots

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/staples-gap-amazon-replace-workers-robots-205415235.html

Staples, Gap, Amazon replace workers with robots

By Zachary Roth | The Lookout – 23 hrs ago

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Robots, though not those referred to in this article. AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye

A new book argues that increased automation is reducing the number of jobs available to human workers--and it is only likely to get worse in the coming years. We interviewed one of its authors last month. Now comes news that bolsters that notion. Big-name retailers like Staples, Amazon, and the Gap are using robots to help stock warehouse shelves, CNNMoney.com reports. Using a grid system, the machines travel around the warehouse and pick up shelves of goods to bring to human workers.
The good news: The robots help companies reduce costs. The bad: They also take jobs away from flesh and blood workers, at a time when unemployment is at 9 percent, and workers are already having to compete with lower cost foreign labor.end quote.

When I was young I dreamed of each person having their own robot to work in their place so that they could stay home and do creative and recreational things. However, it didn't turn out that way. Instead, people are being replaced with Robots and computers more and more and more because robots and computers work 24 hours a day everyday of the year and never get sick or pissed off or have problems like humans do. But the end result is a whole lot of relatively unskilled people won't have jobs anymore. And it looks like this is only going to get worse over time.