JD.com robots will eventually replace the company’s 700,000 couriers, its founder says. It is a rare admission that automation is coming for blue-collar jobs.
Most tech bosses hedge when asked whether machines will take people’s jobs. Richard Liu just said it plainly.
He chairs JD.com, one of China’s biggest e-commerce groups. At the APEC China CEO Forum in Shenzhen on Sunday, Liu said robots will take over deliveries. They will replace the firm’s 700,000 delivery workers, he said, “sooner or later”.
“In the future, when robots are delivering parcels, sooner or later, there will be a day when couriers are basically no longer needed,” Liu said, according to the Financial Times. “But I really do not want our 700,000 brothers to go without meals, without jobs.”
He did not say when robot deliveries would become widespread.
