Tye Brady’s interest in robotics began in the 1970s when Star Wars was released in theaters and Luke Skywalker’s beloved robotic sidekick, R2-D2, caught his youthful imagination.
Inspired by the fictional relationship between man and machine, Brady studied aerospace engineering at Boston University and earned a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also worked through the 1990s.
Over the course of a career that has spanned several decades, Brady’s robotics work progressed alongside technology innovations: Machine learning advancements helped hone computer vision, lower cost sensors and actuators improved robotic mobility, and most recently, generative artificial intelligence advancements have improved robot testing, monitoring, and automation.
“I’m 40 years in and we’re just starting to get there,” says Brady, who has served as chief technologist of Amazon Robotics for nearly a decade. “Generative AI is here, and finally, after all these years, I feel like we have the mind and body of robotics coming together.”
Generative AI is playing a crucial role in the future development of Amazon’s warehouse robotics, a fleet that already totals more than 750,000 in the U.S. market to help workers identify, pack, and ship millions of online orders each day. A few examples of generative AI at work include trajectory planning for robotic arms to better understand the degrees of movement and what sequence is most optimal to grab items. There’s also the use of generative AI to create visual packages and conceptualize how robotics can pick up atypical package sizes.
“We’re using generative AI in just about everything that we’re doing inside of robotics,” says Brady.
Generative AI systems are also being used to serve as a traffic controller, keeping an eye on how to efficiently move devices across the warehouse floor. The technology is also used for damage detection, to help Amazon better understand the flow of how goods should be stored throughout the fulfillment center, and AI code generation tools are being used by Amazon Robotics’ software engineers.
The company’s Shreveport, Louisiana fulfillment center is where Amazon is most forward-thinking when it comes to reimagining logistics. This location has ten times more robotics than the rest of Amazon’s fulfillment centers, including the autonomous mobile robot Proteus, Sparrow’s robotic arms, and Sequoia, which uses AI, robotics, and computer vision to retrieve inventory from the floor and deliver those goods to a workstation where humans will pick out items from the robotics-delivered crates for a customer order.
Shreveport can process customer orders 25% faster and at a 25% lower cost than other buildings in Amazon’s system, according to the company. Brady says the environment is also safer for employees.
But adding robotics and creating more automation will also impact jobs. A study out of MIT and Boston University found that for every robot added per 1,000 workers in the U.S., wages would decline by 0.42%. More robots also led to fewer workers, the researchers say, and certain industries, like automotive, and regions like the Rust Belt and Texas are most at risk of disruption.
Amazon acknowledges that jobs have and will continue to change, but also says technological progress is beneficial to workers. Rather than have humans move heavy, 50-pound boxes, those risky and laborious tasks can be handed off to robots. “I want to automate every single repetitive, mundane task that we have,” says Brady.
Amazon also points to a 2020 pledge to invest $1.2 billion through 2025 on upskilling, which includes robotics apprenticeships programs in Shreveport and other buildings that feature robotics automation. Those that graduate one of the programs can see a 40% bump in pay, the company says. Amazon has hired more than 9,000 safety experts for robotics and other automated technologies and in 2024, put $750 million toward enhancing the company’s safety systems.
Frontline workers also play a crucial role in the development of Proteus and other new robotics, along with product developers, manufacturing engineers, and safety engineers. Brady says before any robotic system is designed and deployed, Amazon always begins with the question: What is the problem we are trying to solve?
After settling on that desired outcome, a prototype is built in a lab, then tested on one quarter of one floor of a fulfillment center. Amazon iterates the design of the prototype as it works through friction points, and as the project evolves it will expand to a full floor, and then an entire fulfillment center. If all goes well, robotic innovations may be deployed more broadly across additional locations.
As robotics breakthroughs continue to advance, Brady says the onus on ensuring these systems work harmoniously with the workforce ultimately rests with technologists.
“We cannot put the burden onto the person to have 18 degrees in order to figure out how to use the machine,” he added. “We have to make our machines very, very simple to use.”
John Kell
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NEWS PACKETS
Musk’s AI startup debuts chatbot aimed at rivaling ChatGPT, DeepSeek. Grok 3, the new chatbot from Elon Musk’s xAI, is debuting as part of a subscription tier for xAI users and as a premium feature on Musk’s X social network. xAI claimed that Grok 3 is better across math, science, and coding benchmarks than Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s GPT-4o, and DeekSeek’s V3 model, though CNN reports it wasn’t clear if it outperformed other popular reasoning models including OpenAI o3-mini and DeepSeek R1.
DeepSeek increasingly racking up bans. South Korea this week announced it had temporarily suspended new downloads of the Chinese AI company’s DeepSeek product, with government regulators saying the app would be available again once they were sure it conformed with local privacy and security laws. Concerns about DeepSeek’s handling of sensitive information have caused a number of countries and government bodies—including the U.S. Navy and the Pentagon— to ban the company’s AI models and chatbot apps.
Intel may split up as Broadcom, TSMC weigh deals. The Wall Street Journal has reported that two of Intel’s rivals—Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Broadcom—are weighing deals that would give TSMC control of Intel’s chip fabrication facilities while Broadcom snags Intel’s chip-design and marketing business. But there would be some major hurdles to overcome: When the Chips Act established a $53 billion grant program for domestic chip-making, Intel was the largest recipient of funding. But a condition of that deal was that Intel would be required to maintain a majority share of its factories if spun off into a new entity.
Humanoid robots are capturing the attention of Big Tech. While much of the tech industry’s focus and hype has centered on generative AI the past few years, interest in robots is also catching the attention of some of the world’s most valuable companies. Recent reports say Meta and Apple are each exploring AI-powered humanoid robots, while electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla says it plans to make “several thousand” of its Optimus humanoid robots in 2025. But in a clear sign that there’s no way to predict how fast robotic technologies will advance, estimates for the future humanoid robot population are exceptionally broad. Morgan Stanley has predicted 63 million by 2050, but Citigroup has forecasted 1.19 billion by the same year.
ADOPTION CURVE
Open source AI wins on cost, proprietary AI seen as more secure. A survey of more than 700 technology leaders and senior developers conducted by McKinsey, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation found that more than 50% of organizations are using open source AI technology, often alongside proprietary tools from the likes of OpenAI and Google.
Lower costs were listed as the top preference for open source (63% of respondents), which still comes with some expenses such as computing power and development expenses, while “security, risk, and control over system” was the top reason to prefer proprietary AI (72%). Uncertainty about long-term support and updates was also listed as a concern for open source tools (45%).
The authors of the survey say they anticipate that a multimodal approach that blends both forms of the AI technologies will prevail, similar to the approach for the cloud and software industries. And along those lines, even with the concerns about security and reliability, 76% of respondents expect to boost their usage of open source AI over the next several years.
JOBS RADAR
Hiring:
- CampusWorks is seeking a CIO, based in Canton, New York. Posted salary range: $155K-$185K/year.
- Horizon Media is seeking a head of technology, based in the New York City metropolitan area. Posted salary range: $210K-$500K/year.
- John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is seeking a CIO, based in Washington. Posted salary range: $250K-$325K/year.
- MetroPlusHealth is seeking a deputy CIO, based in New York City. Posted salary range: $295K-$315K/year.
Hired:
- Walter P Moore promoted Aaron White to the role of chief information and digital officer, after serving as director of digital practice at the engineering services company for a decade and leading many of the firm’s efforts in AI. White has more than 25 years of experience at the firm, initially joining in 1997 as a graduate engineer.
- Drive Health announced the appointment of Alexander Sicular as CTO, joining the digital health startup after a more than six-year tenure at Google, where he most recently served as an executive lead for the tech giant’s healthcare and life sciences partnerships with the public sector. Sicular also previously spent 13 years in the neurology department at Columbia University.
- Twin Vee PowerCats appointed Tom Huffman as its new CIO, effective immediately. Huffman will steer the sport boats manufacturer’s digital division, helping to propel revenue growth from the e-commerce channels including BoatsForSale.com. Previously, he served as CIO at insurance agency First American Financial.
- Ingenovis Health promoted Jan Ross to CIO, after joining the healthcare staffing company in March 2023 as SVP of tech operations and last year’s promotion to EVP of tech operations and security. Previously, Ross served as CIO at healthcare software provider nThrive.
- Breakthru Beverage Group announced the appointment of Glenn Remoreras as CIO, where he will oversee investments in digital and execute the company’s IT and AI strategies. Prior to joining the beverage wholesaler, Remoreras most recently was CIO at beverage manufacturer Mark Anthony Group and previously served as VP of IT at alcoholic beverages producer Constellation Brands.
- Wayflyer appointed Victor Tuson Palau as the Irish-based e-commerce loan startup’s first-ever CTO. Previously, Palau served as chief product and technology officer at trading platform Bitpanda and served as CTO at fintech company Ebury.
- Spectrotel promoted Sanjay Patel to CTO, a newly established role where he will oversee IT, platform, and solution engineering for the telecommunications service provider. Patel initially joined Spectrotel in 2024 as SVP and previously held various leadership roles at AT&T and Broadview Networks.