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No Humans, Just Robots – Amazing Videos of the Modern Factory

45 points by kkleiner 17y ago

sailormoon 17y ago
A day ago I made a comment here about how I wasn't sure that a large population of available working-age people is the huge advantage everyone seems to think it is anymore, and this is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. Look at that flexpicker video. Bet you didn't think a robot could stack pancakes. Well baby, a robot can sure stack pancakes all right. How long before it can flip burgers? I bet they already can and it's just a matter of cost. Wouldn't want to only have repetitive manual labor skills in about 10-15 years' time when these things drop in price to below $10k or so. Robots are going to cut through the service and manufacturing sectors like a 2 megawatt laser through room temperature butter.
- marshallp 17y ago
  It's not really a matter of cost of the robot, the limiting factor of more widespread adoption is actually just that there aren't enough people building automation systems (the robot and machine vision combination), a worker shortage.
  - ippisl 17y ago
    Building , as in assembling ? or building as designing those system ?
    - marshallp 17y ago
      integrating off the shelf robots, computers, machine vision software to create a specific 'automation machine' for a specific production line
RoboTeddy 17y ago
Will there be jobs in 20 years for anyone with an IQ under 90? Are we going to end up with vast structural unemployment?
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  Isn't that the thesis of Jeremy Rifkin's book The End of Work?
  - marshallp 17y ago
    The thesis is wrong, as certain types of work are automated, people will be forced into other kinds of work. My guess is that majority of people today will become online content producers (bloggers and youtubers) - if the price of everything drops significantly because of robots, you can probably live off of your meager adsense earnings. (Of course, at some point blogging and youtubing could be done by computers, but then you have AI and the singularity and nothing matters anymore).
    - marshallp 17y ago
      Can the downvoter please explain the downvote. If it's about people working as online content producers, well let me ask you - what is the most difficult task for computers to do - I would say natural language and human emotion production (which is essentially what blogging and acting are about). Hence, it's the last large occupation to be automated (there will other niches such as politicians,scientists,programmers but the majority of the population won't even try to become one of those).
    - nradov 17y ago
      The majority of people are incapable of producing anything that anyone would care about or watch. Adsense revenue is finite. No matter how much automation you add to the production of physical goods, natural resource constraints will prevent the price of essential goods from dropping significantly.
      - marshallp 17y ago
        demand media for example gets unsavvy people to produce economically useful content. if 99 percent of people are poor, the price of constrained things such as real estate,food,energy will still drop to floor as the rich 1 percent can't consume a significant enough chunk of it that's also a risen for the currnet economic crisis, people assumed that even though the median wage hasn't increased for 30 years, house prices should keep going up anyway,
rauljara 17y ago
Near the beginning of the 20th century, a lot of theorists predicted that our increase in per worker productivity would leave a population with huge amounts of leisure time. The average person would only have to work a couple of hours a day for all of humanity's basic needs to be met. With robots, we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs. Unless something drastic happens to our economic system, however, I seriously doubt it will translate into a shorter work day.
- philwelch 17y ago
  Someone still needs to build and maintain the robots. How we avoid turning this into some sort of aristocracy is the interesting question.
  - jared314 17y ago
    I think it is more probable for the mechanics to get pushed lower rather than elevated to some higher status.
- exit 17y ago
  there's a disconnect between your last two sentences. "we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs." and then "i seriously doubt it will translate to a shorter work day." what's going on here? why will people work harder (or at least just as hard) if survival becomes easier?
  - krakensden 17y ago
    Culture, mostly, and besides- just because the average wealth level rises doesn't mean the lives of the bottom 10% are going to get better.
- camccann 17y ago
  The average person would only have to work a couple of hours a day for all of humanity's basic needs to be met. With robots, we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs. Question: What percentage of the work done in modern Western societies actually qualifies as "meeting humanity's basic needs"?
thinkbohemian 17y ago
Good collection of videos, though many corporations are finding that robots are costly to purchase, install, and maintain and are very inflexible in their tasks. People on the other hand are free to purchase, take no installation, and maintain themselves (granted you still have to pay them). Most importantly they are very flexible. You could give them a new task every day and they would adapt. If you've ever toured a Toyota factory, you would be surprised by the large amount of work not being done by machines.
dkimball 17y ago
Wait just a second, didn't we have an article about the exact same thing, but about how it was _worrisome_, not _amazing_, just two weeks ago? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086492 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086492) What is this, Pravda?
petercooper 17y ago
I find that site hard to read whenever it gets linked here.. it just looks like a badly done TechCrunch knock off. Distracting :-(

45 points by kkleiner 17y ago

A day ago I made a comment here about how I wasn't sure that a large population of available working-age people is the huge advantage everyone seems to think it is anymore, and this is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. Look at that flexpicker video. Bet you didn't think a robot could stack pancakes. Well baby, a robot can sure stack pancakes all right. How long before it can flip burgers? I bet they already can and it's just a matter of cost. Wouldn't want to only have repetitive manual labor skills in about 10-15 years' time when these things drop in price to below $10k or so. Robots are going to cut through the service and manufacturing sectors like a 2 megawatt laser through room temperature butter.

marshallp 17y ago
It's not really a matter of cost of the robot, the limiting factor of more widespread adoption is actually just that there aren't enough people building automation systems (the robot and machine vision combination), a worker shortage.
- ippisl 17y ago
  Building , as in assembling ? or building as designing those system ?
  - marshallp 17y ago
    integrating off the shelf robots, computers, machine vision software to create a specific 'automation machine' for a specific production line

RoboTeddy 17y ago

Will there be jobs in 20 years for anyone with an IQ under 90? Are we going to end up with vast structural unemployment?

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Isn't that the thesis of Jeremy Rifkin's book The End of Work?
- marshallp 17y ago
  The thesis is wrong, as certain types of work are automated, people will be forced into other kinds of work. My guess is that majority of people today will become online content producers (bloggers and youtubers) - if the price of everything drops significantly because of robots, you can probably live off of your meager adsense earnings. (Of course, at some point blogging and youtubing could be done by computers, but then you have AI and the singularity and nothing matters anymore).
  - marshallp 17y ago
    Can the downvoter please explain the downvote. If it's about people working as online content producers, well let me ask you - what is the most difficult task for computers to do - I would say natural language and human emotion production (which is essentially what blogging and acting are about). Hence, it's the last large occupation to be automated (there will other niches such as politicians,scientists,programmers but the majority of the population won't even try to become one of those).
  - nradov 17y ago
    The majority of people are incapable of producing anything that anyone would care about or watch. Adsense revenue is finite. No matter how much automation you add to the production of physical goods, natural resource constraints will prevent the price of essential goods from dropping significantly.
    - marshallp 17y ago
      demand media for example gets unsavvy people to produce economically useful content. if 99 percent of people are poor, the price of constrained things such as real estate,food,energy will still drop to floor as the rich 1 percent can't consume a significant enough chunk of it that's also a risen for the currnet economic crisis, people assumed that even though the median wage hasn't increased for 30 years, house prices should keep going up anyway,

rauljara 17y ago

Near the beginning of the 20th century, a lot of theorists predicted that our increase in per worker productivity would leave a population with huge amounts of leisure time. The average person would only have to work a couple of hours a day for all of humanity's basic needs to be met. With robots, we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs. Unless something drastic happens to our economic system, however, I seriously doubt it will translate into a shorter work day.

philwelch 17y ago
Someone still needs to build and maintain the robots. How we avoid turning this into some sort of aristocracy is the interesting question.
- jared314 17y ago
  I think it is more probable for the mechanics to get pushed lower rather than elevated to some higher status.
exit 17y ago
there's a disconnect between your last two sentences. "we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs." and then "i seriously doubt it will translate to a shorter work day." what's going on here? why will people work harder (or at least just as hard) if survival becomes easier?
- krakensden 17y ago
  Culture, mostly, and besides- just because the average wealth level rises doesn't mean the lives of the bottom 10% are going to get better.
camccann 17y ago
The average person would only have to work a couple of hours a day for all of humanity's basic needs to be met. With robots, we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs. Question: What percentage of the work done in modern Western societies actually qualifies as "meeting humanity's basic needs"?

thinkbohemian 17y ago

Good collection of videos, though many corporations are finding that robots are costly to purchase, install, and maintain and are very inflexible in their tasks. People on the other hand are free to purchase, take no installation, and maintain themselves (granted you still have to pay them). Most importantly they are very flexible. You could give them a new task every day and they would adapt. If you've ever toured a Toyota factory, you would be surprised by the large amount of work not being done by machines.

dkimball 17y ago

Wait just a second, didn't we have an article about the exact same thing, but about how it was _worrisome_, not _amazing_, just two weeks ago? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086492 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086492) What is this, Pravda?

petercooper 17y ago

I find that site hard to read whenever it gets linked here.. it just looks like a badly done TechCrunch knock off. Distracting :-(