Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg's Thomas Black He recently wrote in an opinion piece and he talked about the hype around humanoid robots being pretty i with forecasts of nearly one billion humanoids in service by twenty fifty, but the reality is that most people overestimate what robots
can do at this point in their development. Got to say, though, one company that's been using robots a lot and for a long time and has deployed its one millionth robot happens to be one of the world's largest marketcat companies out there. It's also a household name. So we wanted to check in once again with Ty Brady. He is chief technologist at Amazon Robotics. He joins us from Amazon's Delivering the Future twenty twenty five event from Amazon's dur three.
It's a delivery station in Millipedes, California, and so we kind of want to find out where they are in terms of the world of robotics. Ty, I gotta tell you, Tim, and I love talking to you last time, so so glad to check in with you again. First of all, this event, where you are I mean right now, I just see a curtain, but I'm assuming there's lots of stuff happening at the event. Who's there, what's going on? Tell us a little bit about it?
Yep. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me, and I really appreciate it, and I enjoyed our conversation as well. It's just really great to be here. We are fourth delivering the Future event here and there's a bunch of press that we have here, and we made a couple of big announcements in robotics set today.
Can you tell us about them if you have.
But the first is in our manipulation. About that we call blue Jay, and what blue Jay? The way that you can think of that as we can you can take three assembly lines and put it in the same footprint of one. What it does is help eliminate the menial, the mundane, and the repetitive, and it could pick more than seventy five percent of the inventory that we actually sell in our sortable network, which is a really big deal.
I'm really proud of that. And I also say there's just something interesting about blue Jay as well as compared to our other bird manipulation systems, Cardinal Sparrow and Robin it took us about three years to kind of design, deploy, and get out to our frontline employees. We have actually done blue Jay with the power of AI in just over a year. So it's really the pace of innovation.
I think one a lot of people think about Amazon and robots, I just want to jump in because we don't have a ton of time, but I have that I want we'll get to some of the other announcements. They think about the Kiva Systems robots, the big acquisition at the time, you know, twenty twelve, that was a big acquisition for Amazon, and they've seen pictures of the way that those can move large loads of things across warehouses.
But if you were to go into a state of the art Amazon warehouse today, what would you see That's in addition to those Kiva robots.
Yeah, in addition to the world's first goods to person fulfillment strategy, which was just a really good idea where we have more than a million robots that we manufacture action in Massachusetts doing that job every day. You're going to see more of the unstructured fields, right, So you're going to see green robot that we call Proteus that can move big cargoes of packages to the right dock
at the right time. You're going to see many more manipulation systems that they we have in there, eliminating the kind of the repetitive motions that they we have. No one wants to lift a fifty pounds box box all day. Robin does that, Cardinal does that. Moving into some of these proteus bound krts that we have, you're going to see much more collaborative robotics.
Right.
So that's where we build our robotic systems to enable people to augment what people are capable of. And we really believe in the philosophy of people and machines working together. How can we build a tool set that enables our employees to do their job not only more efficiently, but also with better safety in mind?
All right, So there's this robot arm called blue Jay. You just talked about it. You know, you guys are using this AI agent called the Iluna, and then you're also working with augmented reality glasses to be worn by drivers and delivery trucks in the field. There's like so much going on. Step back for a moment, because you guys have a lot of data. You look at what you're doing. I'm just curious investors who are thinking about
Amazon and what you are doing. How do they think about the long term, like ROI return on investment when it comes to the investments you guys make in robots. Is the goal about labor efficiency, through put speed or is it margin expansion kind of tie across your fulfillment operations? What is it?
Yeah? Well, definitely efficiency. We think about efficiencies and how can we gain efficiency through all the chain of our fulfillment processes for sure, And you mentioned data and data is the fuel for AI systems. Data has allowed us to bring think of the body of being our robotics, but bring the mind to robotics, allowing it to be
more adaptable, more fluid. You can almost think of this as the ability to pour our robotics systems into any size building, any scale of building, to amplify what our employees are already doing. We want to give them an amazing tool set, and we see that when we do that,
we're more productive. Right when you do robotics, Right when you do collab of robotics where you need both people and machines doing what they do best and they do different things better, That it allows you to be more productive, and when you're more productive, that allows you to invest
more in people. We've skilled more than seven hundred thousand of our employees, which is a great stat And also in our robotics, we've expanded from the Kiva days, We've expanded from just a movement solution to now movement and mobility and sortation and storage and perception systems, packing systems that have really changed the game for our customers. That's a big deal to us. What ty.
Well, you need less workers and I got to bring it up. You know, The Times had a story out. They talked about interviews and a cash of internal struts documents that they saw that it reveals that your execs think that the company's on the cusp of its next big workplace shift. I'm reading from the Times and replacing more than half a million jobs with robots, so you know, we know things change. I'm not in a horse and buggy anymore. I don't make things piecemeal. I get it.
I don't get tons of faxes and I don't get tons of pieces of physical mail. Thank god. Things change. Having said that, is Amazon, do you guys believe that you're on the cusp of a workplace shift and that you won't need as many workers because the advancements in robotics.
Well, there's no doubt that things change. I mean, and we're actually really proud of that day. And Amazon is that we avoid stasis at all costs. We change and we adapt and the nature of tasks definitely changed. There's no doubt about that. We are laser focused on efficiencies inside of our buildings. But when it comes to that article, that article was speculating ten years out right, that's a ten year speculation, and it's it's hard to say what's
going to happen in the next ten years. But I can tell you what happened in the last ten years, the last ten years, which is when we seriously invested in robotics, that we created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and new job types. And there's been no employer in the United States that has employed more people than Amazon in ten years. I mean, that's and that's the power of efficiencies and building your robots in way that's applied and real that actually augments the human potential.
All Right, my brother say, I'm like a dog with a bone. Wait, so does that mean ten years out. It could be less jobs or we just don't know, or you don't think that's the case.
Well you have to think about I mean, there's jobs and there's tasks, right, so we of course we're changing the nature of tasks. Like I'm very bullish on eliminating every menial, mundane and repetitive job out there. Nobody wants to do that. So we were going to change those tasks one hundred percent. But we can again, as history has shown, we continue to create jobs, right with the goal of two things. Can you have it all? Can you be more productive which means more efficiency, and can
you also create a safer environment for employees? And we're actually doing both. That's what history has shown. In the last ten years. We have created better than thirty percent reduction in our overall recordable injury rate over the last five years because of our robotics and also much more efficient. For example, our latest generation filment center in shreport is
twenty five percent more efficient the order. So you can have it all, but you have to build your robotics in the right way that empowers people.
We're speaking with Ty Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics. When we think about hiring for these one off or seasonal events like the holiday season, our Amazon Prime Day. I'm wondering how you're putting pencil to paper right now and thinking about those numbers and to what extent automation has read deduced Amazon's dependency on seasonal or hourly labor for holidays, for Prime Day. What does that look like or what will that look like this year next year?
Well, it's the same philosophy of empowering employees, whether they're temporary or the full time employees with the world's best machines that help them do their job. It's the same philosophy. I'm really proud of the fact that this year we're going to offer more than two hundred and fifty thousand temporary jobs for our employees to come in during the holiday season. Those are good paying jobs. I'm really happy
about that, really pleased with that. And I'm really pleased with the work that our women and men have done in the robotics field designing the pioneering these new physical AI systems that help them do their jobs better.
I got to say, one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is what's going on overseas, whether it's China, whether it's Japan. Bloomberg has done some reporting about service industries in Japan because they have a labor shortage that
they are leading increasingly on robotics. Have you been over there and looking at what they're doing, and I'm just cures if you're seeing some things that are pretty impressive and that the US as a creator of things or its role in the robotics industry, has to keep a watch on what's going on in other countries.
Yeah, I think it's easy, especially in robotics, to get distracted about, you know, what other people are doing. I think anybody can make a YouTube video. I think anybody can kind of you pop in and overflate something. But if you come into our world, our world is all about application. Our world is the reality, all right.
We're talking with Ty Brady, chief technologist robotics at Amazon. Of course our shot FROs. That's the world of technology. We're talking a lot about technology. Stuff happens, and we're hoping we can get tied back just to finish up this conversation.
Maybe the robots are using all the Wi Fi.
Robots, Like, I don't like what it is that is a connectivity thing though, Well, fees into the past, right like you.
All passion about resources?
Yeah, charge these puppies. Can't just plug them in right if there? I don't know.
We need recharging too.
Okay, yeah, it's called food and sleep. Yeah, for Tim, it's called food, food and sleep.
You know what I will say?
Do we have tie back? Can we grab them for twenty seconds? Tye, twenty seconds forgive us your final thoughts here?
Sorry about that.
No, it's okay, let it go.
I'm ready for you.
Okay, twenty seconds, just final thoughts for our audience because we got to run.
So final thoughts are is that robotics, when done the right way, when you reframe your relationship with machines, you can enable more productivity, create greater efficiencies, and create a more safer environment for employees. And this collaborative mindset that we've had, that we've done for the last ten years really does make the day.
Ty Brady over at Amazon, so appreciate it.