For Amazon supply drivers, new glasses promise one thing extra than simply clearer imaginative and prescient or the blocked solar glare.
Amazon is growing AI-powered good glasses for its supply drivers, the corporate stated in a Wednesday weblog publish. The glasses will enable drivers to scan packages, following detailed strolling instructions, and doc proof-of-delivery with out their telephones. Utilizing cameras, in addition to AI-powered sensing talents, the expertise will create an augmented actuality show for drivers that features data like hazards, in addition to maps that direct drivers to explicit constructing unit numbers.
The glasses will routinely activate as soon as a driver parks at a supply location and might help prescription and transition lenses inside its design. Eliminating needing to make use of a telephone, as was the supply of comfort directions, is aimed to extend the protection and effectivity of the supply course of, the corporate stated.
Future iterations of the glasses purpose to offer drivers “real-time defect detection” in the event that they drop off a bundle at a incorrect deal with. The system may even be capable of modify to low-light situations and detect pets in clients’ yards.
Expedited supply has remained a trademark of Amazon’s enterprise because it competes with the rising e-commerce capabilities of Walmart and different retail giants. Amazon introduced in June a $4 billion funding in tripling its supply community dimension, significantly in rural areas, by 2026. One Amazon supply driver made on common 65,700 deliveries in 2024, translating to 100,375 packages yearly, in accordance with information compiled by CapitalOne Purchasing. That’s about 27 deliveries per hour.
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Reuters reported the product’s improvement final November. Nameless sources informed the outlet that whereas the glasses may enhance driver productiveness by liberating up hand area for employees to hold extra packages, the corporate could have bother growing a battery in a position to final a whole shift, which could be as much as 10 hours. Drivers can also not wish to put on the gadgets, which can be uncomfortable or distracting, the sources stated.
Amazon didn’t reply to Fortune’s request for touch upon issues concerning the battery length or comfortability of the glasses.
Amazon’s automation push
Along with AI-powered glasses for drivers, Amazon can be growing operational applied sciences for warehouse employees, the corporate introduced Wednesday. Blue Jay, a robotics system utilizing a number of arms to raise and kind packages, goals to mitigate the necessity for workers to raise heavy gadgets. Venture Eluna is an agentic AI mannequin that can monitor quite a few dashboards and make choices, reminiscent of about decreasing sorting bottlenecks, with the purpose to minimize the “cognitive load” of employees. The AI agent will likely be piloted at a Tennessee success heart in the course of the vacation season.
The corporate’s automation push has introduced with it concern about the way forward for human employment. Some AI specialists have stated automation processes will certainly displace human employees, with College of Louisville professor of laptop science Roman Yampolskiy saying AI may spike unemployment ranges as much as 99% within the subsequent 5 years—a extra eye-popping determine than even Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s projection of the expertise changing 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs in the identical interval.
“Earlier than we all the time stated, ‘This job goes to be automated, retrain to do that different job,’” Yampolskiy stated in an episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast final month. “But when I’m telling you that every one jobs will likely be automated, then there isn’t any plan B. You can not retrain.”
A New York Instances investigation printed on Tuesday reported, citing inside paperwork, Amazon plans to automate 75% of its operations. That interprets to roughly 600,000 jobs for which the corporate wouldn’t want to rent sooner or later.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel stated the investigation didn’t precisely replicate the corporate’s hiring technique, and that the corporate lately introduced plans to fill 250,000 positions forward of the end-of-year vacation push.
“Leaked paperwork typically paint an incomplete and deceptive image of our plans, and that’s the case right here,” Nantel informed Fortune in an announcement. “On this occasion, the supplies seem to replicate the attitude of only one crew and don’t symbolize our general hiring technique throughout our numerous operations enterprise traces—now or shifting ahead.”
Amazon executives have made an effort to assuage anxieties about the way forward for employment. Amazon Robotics’ chief technologist Tye Brady informed Fortune in Could the corporate’s automation developments are supposed to improve, not exchange, the roles of people. The interview at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI convention in London occurred after Amazon introduced the launch of Vulcan, a robotic arm with a way of contact.
“I will likely be unabashedly proud that we purpose to get rid of, I imply get rid of, each menial, mundane, and repetitive job on the market,” Brady stated. “And if it’s repetitive, we wish to automate that, as a result of we’ll by no means run out of issues to do for our staff. We wish them to give attention to higher-level duties.”
“Individuals are superb at utilizing frequent sense, reasoning, and understanding advanced issues,” he continued. “Why would you not use that?”
