Artificial intelligence is becoming a permanent element in the world of work, with Silicon Valley calling it the dawning of a new age. Many people are afraid of losing their job, but Germany is well-prepared. In the northern part of the U.S. state of Louisiana, right next to the prison on the outskirts of Shreveport, looms a gigantic building of concrete and steel. Welcome to the future," reads a colorful greeting painted on the wall at the entrance, right next to the obligatory American flag. It is 9:30 a.m., a busy time of day. Yet the halls and corridors of SHV1, as the building is referred to internally, are completely empty of people. A blueprint for the future," as the site manager calls it. The Seattle-based company operates the largest fleet of industrial robots in the world, more than a million of them, and many are outfitted with artificial intelligence, helping them to lift, sort, search, weigh and scan. Guided and directed completely by AI. Without the massive use of this technology," says Aaron Parness, a former NASA aerospace engineer who now heads up the retail giant's AI robotic department, we would be a different company." The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 41/2025 (October 2nd, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL. Amazon, though, also employs people. But their role is changing rapidly.

Amazon has developed a new warehouse robot that uses touch to rummage around shelves to find the right product to ship to customers. The robot, called Vulcan, is a meaningful step towards making robots less sausage-fingered compared to human beings. Honing robots' tactile abilities further may allow them to take on more fulfillment and manufacturing work in the years ahead. Aaron Parness, Amazon's director of robotics AI who led the development of Vulcan, explains that touch sensing helps the robot push items around on a shelf and identify what it's after. "When you're trying to stow [or pick] items in one of these pods, you can't really do that task without making contact with the other items," he says.

The rate of innovation in machine learning is simply off the chart -- what is possible today was barely on the drawing board even a handful of years ago. At Amazon, this has manifested in a robotic system that can not only identify potential space in a cluttered storage bin, but also sensitively manipulate that bin's contents to create that space before successfully placing additional items inside -- a result that, until recently, was impossible. This journey starts when a product arrives at an Amazon fulfillment center (FC). The first order of business is to make it available to customers by adding it to the FC's available inventory. In practice, this means picking it up and stowing it in a storage pod.

A new'pinch-grasping' robot system unveiled by Amazon shows the machine deftly grabbing and stowing a wide range of items - moving at a rate of 1,000 items per hour, which is far faster than a human worker could. Although humans don't spend much time figuring out how to grasp a bottle from the back of the fridge that might fall and break open, teaching a robot to deal with cluttered spaces, locate a wide range of items and deftly move them is a challenge for the retail giant's robotics division. In a video posted to Amazon's science blog, the robot prototype can be seen using its finger-like pinchers to move and stow 19 items - including small bags, a broom, a spice container and a small box - in 60 seconds. A new'pinch-grasping' robot system unveiled by Amazon shows the machine deftly grabbing and stowing a wide range of items - moving at a rate of 1,000 items per hour, which is far faster than a human worker could In a video posted to Amazon's science blog, the robot prototype can be seen using its finger-like pinchers to move and stow 19 items - including small bags, a broom, a spice container and a small box - in 60 seconds This is an improvement over existing warehouse robotic systems that use vacuum-like suction cups to lift and move items. Some packages, like books which may flop open if only grasped on one side, require other innovations.