In a post, Amazon highlighted Blue Jay, a robot it calls “an extra pair of hands that helps employees with tasks that involve reaching and lifting,” and its Project Eluna agentic AI system, which “acts like an extra teammate, helping reduce that cognitive load” while optimizing sorting to reduce bottlenecks.
Blue Jay can move 75% of the item types stored in Amazon stores and is ultimately expected to be a “core technology” powering same-day delivery sites. The company says it developed Blue Jay in just over a year based on AI, digital twins and data from robots already in use, creating a system that “coordinates multiple robotic arms to perform many tasks at once, bringing together what were once three separate robotic stations into a single streamlined workspace that can pick, put away and consolidate in one place.”
Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, says in the company’s post that “the real headline isn’t about robots. It’s about people and the future of work that we are building together. » The blog post also reiterates a spokesperson’s response to the Times report, saying that “no company has created more jobs in the United States over the past decade than Amazon” and touting its plans to fill 250,000 positions for the holiday season.
CEO Andy Jassy’s June letter to employees about the impact of efficiency is a bit clearer. He wrote of generative AI: “We will need fewer people to do some of the work that is done today, and more people to do other types of work. It’s hard to know exactly where this will play out over time, but in the coming years we expect it to reduce our overall headcount across the company as we achieve efficiencies by using AI widely across the business. the company.”
THE Times The report suggests a similar plan for robotics and automation, citing Jassy’s efforts to reduce e-commerce costs and showing examples of how redesigning its warehouses is creating facilities that handle more items with fewer employees who will increasingly focus on servicing robots.
