Copyright irishexaminer
Amazon employs approximately 6,500 people at sites in Cork, Dublin, and Drogheda, and while there were reports this week estimating that up to 150 jobs could be lost here, the company would not comment on this. That is not the only cause for concern here, however. Amazon’s stated wish is to cut back after a spike in hiring during the height of the pandemic, which makes perfectly good sense from a business perspective, but it is difficult to avoid a sense that this may be a sign of the future that has little to do with pandemic hiring sprees. Last week, the New York Times reported ambitious plans being prepared by Amazon to replace far more than the 14,000 jobs under threat. According to that outlet, Amazon wishes to replace over half a million of its 1.2 employees in America with robots, a move the company believes would save about 30 (American) cents on each item that Amazon picks and delivers to its customers. That is a medium-term plan for the company, however. The jobs which are specifically threatened by this week’s news are endangered not by robotics, but by artificial intelligence (AI), according to Amazon senior vice president Beth Galetti. She said the job cuts were needed because AI was "the most transformative technology we've seen since the Internet" and was "enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.” There is a generalised unease about the potential of AI to replace swathes of traditional jobs, but is that unease now to be compounded by the threat posed by robots? It will surprise no-one to learn that Amazon is so committed to this streamlining objective that it is already strategising about how to present itself in the best possible light when job cuts are announced. Participating in more community parades is one of the tactics being considered to that end. It is unclear whether robots or people will do the participating. Prunella Scales: Actor’s range The death was announced this week of actress Prunella Scales at the age of 93. In a long and varied career, she popped up briefly in Coronation Street in the early 1960s and alongside Gregory Peck in The Boys From Brazil over a decade later. She enjoyed success on stage with Alan Bennett’s A Question of Attribution in the 1980s. In recent years, she and her late husband, actor Timothy West, were the mainstays of the TV series Great Canal Journeys. Scales was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2013, but continued to appear in the series until 2019. However, Scales will be best remembered as Sybil in the 1970s TV comedy Fawlty Towers, keeping a tight rein on inept hotelier husband Basil, played by series co-creator John Cleese. Scales’s portrayal of Sybil became closely identified with her sharply delivered “Basil!” and her repeated “I know” when on the phone. It would be difficult to overstate her fame in the 70s as a result of Fawlty Towers, when the name Sybil was all but reduced to a punchline after her performance. It was a considerable achievement on her part to escape being typecast as a result. Rest in peace.
