but will automation replace workers like li yen?won't become my competitors, apart from sorting out goods i can do other work, i can monitor the system, take orders and other work. i don't think they will affect me. alibaba and its partners say automation is an irreversible trend in china, but they say sectors like e—commerce were born out of innovation. online shops replace many high—street stores, but they insist their workers and machines will need to continue to work together. we are going to interrupt this broadcast with some breaking news coming into us here at the bbc. it is a world first, bbc click presenter spencer kelly has been replaced by a robot. it has been dubbed robospen and the artifical intelligence machine is apparently capable of a whole host of emotions as well as understanding and writing stories and crucially, he neverforgets his lines. robospenjoins the now from the factory that created him. over to you. sounds like you said i was artificially intelligent. as a robot i am often asked to pose for photos and tv

li yen is a 28—year—old worker from south—western china. she followed a family tradition of migrating thousands of miles to find better paid work. translation: it saves me from walking to every shelf to pick up the goods. now ijust had to stand at the pick—up platform to wait for the robots to send me the goods. i don't have to constantly walk here and there. they are part of a data system collecting information notjust about their environments, but also the sales patterns. understanding what sells more regularly, rearranging where products are placed, shaving off valuable minutes from overall delivery time. translation: in a traditional warehouse, it is purely manual. there are so many products, so the job for the human workers is very heavy. they could walk 50,000 steps a day. it is like finishing a marathon. here, the machines do all of that, making the work easier and more efficient. china has the largest workforce in the world but it is shrinking and rising labour costs is making it harder for logistic companies to recruit low skilled