{"id":454994,"date":"2026-03-03T08:24:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T08:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454994\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T08:24:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T08:24:06","slug":"ocado-job-cuts-the-result-of-rivals-catching-up-and-using-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/454994\/","title":{"rendered":"Ocado job cuts the result of rivals catching up and using AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former employee John Williams remembers working at the original warehouse in Hatfield more than 20 years ago when the company was &#8220;tinkering&#8221; with robotic systems.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At the time, Ocado Group was out on its own, pioneering the not-so-popular idea of online supermarket shopping.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They had a sophisticated-looking connecting system \u2013 like a robotic trolley \u2013 that went around by itself,&#8221; he recalled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was regarded as the automatic shopper, but it didn&#8217;t quite work. It had to be loaded by people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He worked in the unloading team until 2004, and said at the time, it was not yet clear that robots could one day &#8220;replace us&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former employee John Williams remembers working at the original warehouse in Hatfield more than 20 years ago when&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-454994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}