Amazon's newest robot could one day take the place of many human workers across its giant fulfillment network, generating apprehension among some of the company's more than 750,000 US warehouse employees. The robot, called Sparrow, is Amazon's "first robotic system in our warehouses that can detect, select, and handle individual products in our inventory," a spokesperson said in a statement. Using AI, computer vision, and a suction-cup "hand," the robot is capable of handling around 65% of the products sold on Amazon's website before they are packaged, the company said at a technology expo where Sparrow was unveiled. The robot arm is currently deployed at one warehouse in Texas for testing, the spokesperson added. Amazon envisions a wider rollout as soon as next year.

As online shopping becomes increasingly the norm, there will be plenty of job openings for Amazon warehouse workers. That is, until Amazon reaches its ultimate goal of replacing all human warehouse employees with sticky, eight-legged robots (or Jeff Bezos clones). Naturally, Amazon's robots will produce enormous quantities of gunk. That's why the No. 1 job in the near future will be a gunk scrubber. That is, until Amazon invents a gunk-scrubbing robot, at which point the only job left in the warehouse will be a semi-licensed robo-spider-maintenance technician.