This…actually seems like a good use of AI? I generally think AI is being shoehorned into a lot of use cases where it doesn’t belong but this seems like a proper place to use it. It’s serving a specific and defined purpose rather than trying to handle unfiltered customer input or do overly generic tasks,
Yeah, it is one of the least bad uses for it.
But then again, using literal tera-watts-hours of compute power to save on the easiest actually recyclable material known to man (cardboard), maybe that’s just me, maybe I’m too jaded, but it sounds like a pretty bad overall outcome.
It isn’t a bad deal for Amazon, tho, who is likely to save on costs, that way, since energy is still orders of magnitude cheaper than it should be[1], and cardboard is getting pricier.
if we were to account for the available supply, the demand, and the future (think sooner than later) need for transition towards new energy sources… Some that simply do not have the same potential. ↩︎
I think you’re overstating the compute power and understating the amount of cardboard Amazon uses
I think you’re overstating the compute power […]
I don’t actually think so. A100 GPUs in server chassis have a 400 or 500W TDP depending on the configuration, and even if I’m assuming 400, with 4 per watercooled 1U chassis, a 47U rack with those would consume about 100kW with power supply efficiency and whatnot.
Running those for a day only would be 2.4GWh.
Now, I’m not assuming Amazon would own 100s of those racks at every DC, but they probably would use at least a couple of such racks to train their model (time is money, right?). And training them for a week with just two of those would be 35GWh, and I can only extrapolate from there.
So I don’t think that going to TWh is such an overstatement.
[…] and understating the amount of cardboard Amazon uses
That, very possibly.
I have seldom used Amazon ever, maybe 5 times tops, and I can only remember two times. Those two times, I ordered a smartphone and a bunch of electronics supplies, and I don’t remember the packaging being excessive. But I know from plenty of memes that they regularly overdo it. That, coupled with the insane amount of shit people order online… And yes, I believe you are right on that one.
Even so, as long as it is cardboard, or paper, and not plastic and glue, it isn’t a big ecological issue.
However, that makes no difference to Amazon financially, cost is cost, and they only care about that.
But let’s not pretend they are doing a good thing then. It is a cost effective measure for them, that ends up worsening the situation for everyone else, because the tradeoff is good economically, and terrible ecologically.
If they wanted to do a good thing, they could use machine learning to optimise the combining of deliveries in the same area, to save on petrol, and by extension, pollution from their vehicles, but that would actually worsen the customer experience, and end up costing them more than it would save them, so that’s never gonna happen.
They may also save costs on trucking. Smaller boxes => less full truck.
AI
Always Indian
Just use whatever Temu uses.
Temu packagers could fit a whole factory in the boxes Amazon uses to ship my deodorant
Note that “optimizing” Amazon package can’t possibly be a very high bar to clear. Just being smart enough to package multiple items coming from the same distribution center on the same delivery route into the same box would do it… Something that other online retailers figured out decades ago but apparently somehow Amazon still hasn’t.
Bruh did you read the article at all? Nothing you talked about has anything to do with what this AI is for.
Yes, I did. And what it talks about actually ignores my complaint, which is why I file their claim about “avoid more than 2 millions tons of packaging material worldwide” in the bogus column.
Their system obviously does not take into account multi-item orders at all, and seems to operate purely on a one-product, one-package model. Which is stupid. They’re not trying to avoid landfill waste, they’re trying to minimize returns due to breakages but without putting any human intervention into the process.
This seems like it has pretty powerful potential for space flight.
Being able to aggressively min max packaging materials to secure materials could be critical for reducing payload sizes on shuttles, where every single individual gram counts.
Each kg of packaging is thousands of dollars to get into orbit, so that’s really appealing.
I’d be curious to see if Amazon is also working on box packing algorithms for maximizing fitting n parcels across x delivery trucks.
IE if you have 10,00 boxes to move, what’s the fewest delivery trucks you can fit those boxes into as fast as possible too, which introduces multiple complex concepts. Both packing to maximize space usage and the order you pack it in to minimize armature travel time…
I’d put money down amazon is perfecting this algorithm right now, and has been for awhile.
This is already worked in through mathematics, it is its own mathematical field. We can optimize packaging through formulas that are very fast and accurate. No need to train a AI for that. Especially not for space flight, AI are prone to hallucinations that is not something you want anywhere near any space mission that requires precision and predictability. I believe Johannes Kepler started this field in the 1600s, it is not something new. It is definitely a complex problem, but not new and not unheard of. Amazon is not exactly inventing something new and amazing here…
Amazon probably does have some programmatic way of determining how much to fit in a truck, but that’s not what this is. Instead, it’s them trying to cheap out on packaging materials in the dumbest way possible, by figuring out what the reasonably acceptable minimum threshold is for packaging durability but not taking into account size or packing multiples of items at all (as far as I can tell).
This is a pure cost cutting measure on their part. Anything else is just a tangential side benefit.
Whew, why not let human do this ?
