20 ms·

Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'

• ghgfhgfhn 10y ago
  "denied that it meant long-term job losses". Of course it will I am astounded at the mental gymnastics that people go through to deny this obvious truth.
• criddell 10y ago
  If I'm a company making $1000 gadgets and then adopt some technology (like robotics) to reduce the cost of my gadget to $500, have I just reduced my country's GDP?
  • willvarfar 10y ago
    If you half the cost, don't half the price! Only drop the price enough to get business. However, if people are laid off and they don't get other jobs then yes that will indirectly lower GDP too.
    • advantark 10y ago
      Theoretically, those people who lost their jobs are now free to use their time producing some other product, thus increasing GDP. We'll see if that happens, though.
      • iask 10y ago
        Exactly. Skilled labor and an aged population doesn't help much. What happens to the worker over 50...or even 40 with a family to privide for...there isn't much time to acquire new skills. It's easier said when you don't have a family to provide for or responsibilities. There should be a transition period where people are allowed time to obtain new skills instead of being dropped...and in some cases, left to be picked up by local government - job training programs are not cheap.
        • VLM 10y ago
          They have those training programs in America. The problem is training or education never created a job. You can stamp all the degrees and certifications you want, but if there's no jobs, its fundamentally not going to help. If you have 11 pounds of flour to put in a 10 pound bag, no matter what you do with applying nice looking labels, its not gonna fit.
    • xviia 10y ago
      It depends on the demand curve; if the demand is inelastic, then don't bother changing the price much. http://i.imgur.com/sxZMh1M.png http://i.imgur.com/sxZMh1M.png
    • stale2002 10y ago
      Let's say you are competing in a market though. Your competitors will implement the same technology, and cut the price themselves to beat you.
  • neoeldex 10y ago
    Probably not, due to that the production rate and stability will increase. Also the investments need to be paid off before prices could drop.
  • dnadler 10y ago
    Well, for one, supply & demand says you would sell more of the gadget if it was priced lower. If not, you'd keep it the same price and enjoy wider margins.
  • xyzzy4 10y ago
    No, because you can still charge the original price to maximize profits.
  • maelito 10y ago
    Depends on what people will do of their "free" time ?
  • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    If it costs $900 to make a gadget you sell for $1000 and you replace the staff with robots which cost $500 per gadget then there is no effect on GDP as it only tracks value produced. The only way to reduce GDP is by lowering the price of your goods (assuming demand stays constant), or implicitly by letting your excess profits sit as cash instead of consuming or reinvesting (which both create and increase value).
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      > If it costs $900 to make a gadget you sell for $1000 and you replace the staff with robots which cost $500 per gadget then there is no effect on GDP as it only tracks value produced. If you are selling in a competitive market, the price for per gadget will drop with the price of production, reducing GDP before considering other effects (while the purchasers will probably spend their additional cash on some other good, there is no guarantee that good will come from your country, so while world product may not decrease, your domestic product may.) If that's not the case and you have pure monopoly pricing power, then the effect on GDP depends on how you spend the excess profit: if you spend it in ways that have the same velocity in your domestic economy as your old employees would have (and if the maintenance expenditures for the robots likewise are spent in such a way), the effect is neutral -- if the net of these two things is spending that has less domestic velocity, then GDP could still drop as a fairly direct result of the decision to bring in the robots.
    • reality_hacker 10y ago
      Unless they sell gadget oversea, like Samsung.
  • Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    Just because the cost of production of a widget falls doesn't mean the cost of the widget to the consumer also has to fall.
    • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      As can be seen by anyone watching the price of oil drop by half while airfare remains high.
      • Scirra_Tom 10y ago
        It's complicated because as I understand it airlines hedge the price of oil far into the future. However, big business are often corrupt so wouldn't surprise me equally if there was some sort of cartel. It's strongly in their collective interests to not drop the prices.
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
      • raverbashing 10y ago
        While the price of oil is an important part, it's not the only cost factor (personal, aircraft leasing, airport fees, etc) also play a part
  • tuna-piano 10y ago
    Great question. The answer is no. This is one of those many cases where thinking in money terms confuses the issue. If the country had 100 people making gadgets, and now it only requires 50 to make the same number of gadgets, the country can now double the amount of gadgets it makes, or the 50 people can go make something else. Therefore, a doubling in productivity will not decrease GDP (total production of an economy), but increase it.
    • jordanb 10y ago
      Underlying assumption here is that the economy is supply-constrained. If the economy has insufficient demand all you'll do is create more unused capacity.
      • tuna-piano 10y ago
        True in the assumptions. When looking around the world, I don't see any constraint in demand. I see people wanting better healthcare, iPhones, yachts, food, etc. I also see people wanting longer weekends and earlier retirement. The alternative demand constrained world with excess supply would look very different
        • jordanb 10y ago
          People may want a lot of things but in order to belly up to the demand side of the economic table they have to have the means to buy them. Create an economy where the vast majority are unable to consume very much while aggressively expanding productivity and you'll create an economy with a demand shortfall.
    • arximboldi 10y ago
      By doubling the amount of gadgets in the market you are also reducing price of the gadgets (according to offer and demand). The parent's idea is not new, it was already introduced in the first chapter of Marx's Capital. The only capitalistic solution to the devaluation of work introduced by increases in productivity is to increase the demand for things: by increasing peoples consumerism via marketing, reducing the durability of the things, etc. This vicious circle has to stop, or the planet will stop it for us. We should think about how to work less and consume less.
  • savanaly 10y ago
    That alone isn't enough. Don't forget that you will sell more of them at $500 per gadget, so the total revenue from gadgets may go up. But it is possible, and does happen, that technological change messes up GDP measurement. It was definitely a metric formulated without changes in the production process or even consumption process in mind.
  • JoshTriplett 10y ago
    Possibly, assuming people don't just buy $500 worth of other random things instead, and that you haven't expanded the market for the gadget to include people who can't or won't pay $1000 but can and will pay $500, and the resources you no longer consume don't go into producing something else, and any number of other factors. But even if those don't happen and you have lowered GDP, a lower GDP is not a bad thing; it's perfectly acceptable, and desirable, for people to spend a smaller fraction of their income. As for your company, if you can reduce costs such that instead of making $50 on each $1000 gadget, you make $100 on each $500 gadget, both you and the consumer of your product win. Arguably, GDP seems broken as a metric for not taking that into account.
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      > But even if those don't happen and you have lowered GDP, a lower GDP is not a bad thing; it's perfectly acceptable, and desirable, for people to spend a smaller fraction of their income. Lower real GDP doesn't mean lower individual spending, it means lower domestic production of value relative the cost of living. Lower nominal GDP also doesn't mean lower individual spending, it means lower domestic production in terms of some particular unit of currency, ignoring cost of living. Both spending and capital investment within the domestic economy (that is, excluding imports), as well as all exports (whether consumer or capital goods) are included in GDP. > As for your company, if you can reduce costs such that instead of making $50 on each $1000 gadget, you make $100 on each $500 gadget, both you and the consumer of your product win. But the suppliers of the inputs to the product lose. > Arguably, GDP seems broken as a metric for not taking that into account. GDP does take all of that into account, including the parts you ignore.
      • JoshTriplett 10y ago
        Exports were one of the many things included in "and any number of other factors" (that could cause GDP to not drop in the scenario described in the post I replied to). The point I was trying to make is that production/GDP alone does not seem like an entirely appropriate metric, if you don't necessarily consider the increased production and consumption (of "gadgets" or otherwise) a universally desirable property. Be careful what you measure and reduce to a numeric metric. > But the suppliers of the inputs to the product lose. GDP doesn't include that. GDP includes "final goods and services", not intermediate parts or business-to-business transactions. There are other metrics that include the intermediate steps, if that's desirable.
  • danmaz74 10y ago
    At least in theory no, because GDP growth calculation is inflation-adjusted. If lots of gadgets get a lower price because of lower costs, but with the same features/performance, then this should be accounted for in the GDP deflator [1] and be neutral to GDP growth accounting. Of course, correctly estimating the GDP deflator in practice is very difficult. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator
  • ars 10y ago
    You had to buy a robot - that purchase is also reflected in the GDP.
  • guard-of-terra 10y ago
    The value of $ is measured in gadgets. We don't eat bank notes or browse internet with them. Basically, $ used to cost 0.001 gadgets, but now it costs 0.002 gadgets. But your country's Product, measured in gadgets, does not change.
  • VLM 10y ago
    A lot depends on the definition of "my country" are you talking the exporter or importer? You seem to be implying the exporter country. In that case GDP will drop. Competition means the price you charge the importer has to drop by "something" otherwise your competitors (assuming you haven't used the .gov to outlaw competition) will undercut you. Unless you use .gov or "something" to prevent competitors from installing the same, or even newer better robots. Surely as per efficient market hypothesis the employees working there were already at their best possible job over a long term average over a large group of people, like an entire factory. So an external force eliminating those jobs mean in an efficient market they'll by definition be working less well matched to their abilities jobs. This ripples thru the economy see anecdotes about aerospace engineers driving taxi and so on. Whoops taxi driving jobs are going away too. So society as a whole will be less productive, have less revenue, have an inferior match of their abilities to their jobs. This will further depress the GDP. Traditional income inequality models indicate the marginal use of a dollar / yuan is much lower for small higher income brackets. Not just the wealthy CEO but say, engineers. So the impact on the greater economy of taking away 1000 line jobs is much higher than taking away 1000 line jobs equivalent out of the CEO's bonus. This is not seen as overly controversial, obviously the velocity of any given yuan is much faster for a poor dude than a rich dude. Finally there's the multiplier effect where productive jobs that generated 1 yuan or whatever also generated as a side effect service transactions of 1.5 or 3 or 10 yuan per productively generated yuan. Obviously the real estate agent won't be selling homes to the now unemployed people which has downstream effects like the commissioned mortgage broker and commissioned bank reps all the way down to title registration won't get those service dollars, er, yuans. There seems to be no reason to expect the GDP to increase or stay the same. There is a tragedy of the commons aspect where every individual benefits individually, but society suffers. Its much like dumping industrial waste into parks, for example.
  • dharma1 10y ago
    depends on what those people who previously made your gadgets start doing. Provided they end up doing productive work elsewhere, you haven't reduced your country's GDP
  • alan-crowe 10y ago
    GDP is a weak proxy for wealth. We are much more interested in adding up the consumer surplus and the producer surplus, but getting accurate numbers is usually impossible. If we are comparing economies that are, in a suitable sense, "the same shape" then more GDP is better. But adopting new technologies in the way that your question imagines, changes the shape in a way that breaks the proxy. GDP goes down and that is a good thing. No surprises or paradoxes here; GDP is well known to be a poor proxy for wealth. http://lesswrong.com/lw/jmm/true_numbers_and_fake_numbers/aic5 http://lesswrong.com/lw/jmm/true_numbers_and_fake_numbers/ai... works through the details, but the other way round - the robot breaks down, prices go up, GDP goes up and that is a bad thing.
• SCHiM 10y ago
  The people there are really starting to feel the encroaching mass-automation of low wage jobs then :/ I hope that the spokesperson was speaking the truth when they said that the increased automation would not lead to long-term loss of employment. But I can't imagine reeducating that much (previously) low(?) skilled employees, rather than hiring a new graduate (of which there are reportedly many) for R&D.
  • binthere 10y ago
    That is just PR bullshit.
  • Scirra_Tom 10y ago
    Not only are jobs being lost through robotics on factory floors, they will also be lost through self driving vehicles. Massive swathes of people are at the risk of facing unemployment, and I think it's going to catch a lot of people off-guard. Increasingly to me a universal income guaranteed by the government seems like sensible policy to ease in sooner than later. I see no other option, lobbying to allow lower minimum wages or eradication of minimum wage to keep humans competitive against mass produced robotics and AI is quite frankly idiotic.
    • ManFromUranus 10y ago
      High minimum wage is what prompted this automation in the first place. UBI will solve some problems and create new ones. So we will likely have the same amount of problems or possibly more after UBI as before. How UBI will be funded is another matter, also how much $$$ will it provide? What is a necessity anymore, internet in my home? A cellphone? What a can of worms UBI is.
      • Scirra_Tom 10y ago
        > High minimum wage is what prompted this automation in the first place. `High` is subjective. $x minimum wage did not prompt automaton, a rising minimum wage catalyses R&D into automaton with better incentives. It's inevitable, and Mr CEO was always going to fire everyone and replace them with robots the moment it became cost effective. > How UBI will be funded is another matter Larger profit margins for big corporations turning to automaton, let's tax them more.
• adrianlmm 10y ago
  Not only Robots, but software can also replace workers, I know, mine has done that.
  • sageikosa 10y ago
    Mine too!
• sbrk2 10y ago
  Also reduces jumper-type suicides, due to the robots being bolted to the factory floor.
• wcummings 10y ago
  How long until the first robot suicide?
• devnull255 10y ago
  Robot workers of the world, unite!
• lanestp 10y ago
  It seems to me until we need a real conversation of the ethics of automation and how we can do it without destroying the lives of the workers we are displacing. A few years ago I made a vow to myself that I wouldn't work on software that puts people out of jobs. When I worked on job automation projects I would get very depressed watching people lose jobs because of me. I can't imagine the damage of something at this scale.
  • beachstartup 10y ago
    > I wouldn't work on software that puts people out of jobs how can you tell? what is the heuristic here?
    • lanestp 10y ago
      I switched to game development! F2P might be obnoxious but it's not going to take someone's job. That's not to say that there aren't ethical issues here. My boss wants to automate customer service operations with customer service bots. So I'm not even safe there.
      • 6d6b73 10y ago
        You could argue that games put a lot of people out of work. After all people playing games might not be interested in other forms of entertainment, thus killing these other industries. Also, people spending a lot of time playing games might not want to go out to meet with other people, which in turns kills the restaurant industry,the oil industry (less miles driven), car industry (less accidents) etc.
        • kazagistar 10y ago
          And, in fact, games are one of the cheaper forms of entertainment that people partake in, so the destruction of jobs is pretty damn high.
        • beachstartup 10y ago
          i know people who dropped out of college or otherwise destroyed their lives because of video games.
• biggio 10y ago
  There should be laws on replacing a human worker with a robot. Certain revenue of what the robot generates must be paid to the replaced worker directly.
  • jorge_nunez 10y ago
    A bit drastic don't you think? Wouldn't it be better that whatever the person was making and now the robot makes becomes cheaper for everyone?
    • crimsonalucard 10y ago
      Money flows in a cycle. The worker must get wages to buy the product. The company must sell product to get the money needed to pay workers their wages. When you put robots in the mix you break this cycle. When workers/customers don't have money to be customers of employers, everybody loses. It doesn't matter if products are cheaper. The tragedy of the commons is that corporations in seeking to become more efficient by eliminating employees are actually shooting themselves in the foot. The change the OP suggests is drastic, but it is a valid methodology to maintain the money cycle. The only thing wrong with it, is that it is not fair. Why should someone who produces no economic output get paid?
      • looquagra 10y ago
        Probably in classic Capitalism. There is a huge potential of consumers due to unprecedented human population. Once wages will further rise in China-South East Asia, there will be plenty of consumers to buy more products. However, I'm afraid that this is also only a transition phase. It's not a matter of money, they can print as much as they want. It's a matter of power and control. Once the elites reach the point to control all the resources and the means of production, the model will change from capitalism to global Feudalism. But of course you may be right. In many cases, the endless greed of big corporations lead their owners to act without thinking the consequences.
      • logfromblammo 10y ago
        Because otherwise they pick up a gun and rob the robot-owner. That's the essential element that the rich folk concentrating capital and eliminating labor are forgetting. When the people have no bread, they do not eat cake. They start chopping off heads, without being very discriminating about whether they deserve to remain attached to their necks or not.
• BatFastard 10y ago
  Welcome to the automated future. As a world we are going to have to adjust to the changes brought about by automation. We need to start talking about how society will be structured with 50% unemployment.
  • biggio 10y ago
    Solution: most of the revenue generated by robots should go to welfare benefits
    • kristofferR 10y ago
      How do you do that when countries have to compete by offering attractive tax-rates and terms for businesses and business owners/investors?
    • BatFastard 10y ago
      I like the idea, but it gets tricky, what if the robots are in a different country?
      • toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Tax the goods at the border.
  • flatM 10y ago
    This reminds me a scene of the wonderful AniMatrix clips. Here is what I recalled (may not be exactly accurate): Escaped robots established their own country in remote area and started to export products for natural resources. Since robots never need a salary and can keep producing goods 24/7, human beings cannot compete and all countries ran into deficits and their societies collapsed. In the end, all countries blockaded the Robot country and the war started, then the rest is history.
  • imtringued 10y ago
    I think the solution is quite simple. Everyone should own some robots. Either through financial assets or they posses them directly.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• huphtur 10y ago
  Related: Adidas to make shoes in Germany again – but using robots http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/adidas-to-sell-robot-made-shoes-from-2017 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/adidas-to-sell-...
  • studentrob 10y ago
    > The shoes made in Germany would sell at a similar price to those produced in Asia, he said. Interesting.
• ChrisBland 10y ago
  Some might ask; well if this is the case, can we move production (back) to the US? The answer (imo) is no. The Chinese have done an amazing job building the supply chain. Need a part, go right down the street and meet the vendors, need packaging, its just down the other street. The infrastructure built to bring products to market is their real advantage here. Try sourcing a new chip in the states and then try over there. This is true not just for electronics, but also with textile production.
  • drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    >Some might ask; well if this is the case, can we move production (back) to the US? The answer is no. Says who? Addidas is moving its robot factory into Germany and the US. The perceive benefit you see from China doesn't exist once we have proper automation. http://fortune.com/2016/05/25/adidas-robot-speedfactories/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/25/adidas-robot-speedfactories/ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/adidas-to-sell-robot-made-shoes-from-2017 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/adidas-to-sell-... >Try sourcing a new chip in the states and then try over there. Fabs are different because western nations have strict environmental laws. China's big benefit with fabs is its willingness to pollute its lands and poison its people for us. This is a negative all around and the sooner we get fabs out of China and into environmentally responsible countries and using environmentally responsible methods the better.
    • no_flags 10y ago
      Does China actually have that many fabs? I used to work in the semi industry and I never heard of anyone going to China for customer support, even for older tech. Taiwan and Korea led the industry.
  • kbenson 10y ago
    I thought textile production had long since shifted to another location, multiple times. Isn't textiles what is generally used to bootstrap the rest of manufacturing, but the margins get too thin as you increase your national standard of living through competition in the local market, so textiles moves to the next country that's trying to bootstrap their poor economy?
• deskamess 10y ago
  This is the angle I thought first world countries would take to get manufacturing back in-house. It still makes sense to do it if the recurring infrastructure costs (like power) are similar. However a plant may no longer bring in 100-200 workers so not much for the politicians to preach about. It is going to be a few high skilled personnel, a handful of physical workers (to replace and maintain robots), and a temporary building supervisor (required while humans inhabit the plant). Eventually second generation plants will reduce that even further with only a supervisor coming around for extreme cases.
  • ThomPete 10y ago
    The way worldwide logistics and shipping is constructed makes this more more or less impossible. The supply chains are based around china, india being the primary manufactoring.
    • macspoofing 10y ago
      That can change. The supply chain wasn't always based around Chinese and Indian manufacturing.
      • my_username_is_ 10y ago
        Working at a 'traditional manufacturing' company that makes a lot of products in Asia, I can see that we are already starting to move manufacturing back to America (where the bulk of our customers are), despite our supply chain still being deeply entrenched overseas. I would expect this trend to continue in the coming years.
      • ThomPete 10y ago
        Sure but we are talking 30 years of change.
    • darkerside 10y ago
      Disruption is an abused term these days, but it applies precisely to this kind of thinking. When conventional wisdom says things are impossible, there is money to be made by making it possible.
• Cozumel 10y ago
  Guess they won't be needing the suicide nets anymore! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
• Shivetya 10y ago
  Two other recent robot stories. Adidas comes back to Germany but with a heavily automated factory http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/adidas-to-sell-robot-made-shoes-from-2017 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/adidas-to-sell-... and ex McDonalds executive pointing out robots are cheaper than 15 bucks an hour employees http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/mcdonalds-ex-ceo-15hr-minimum-wage-will-unleash-the-robot-rebellion/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/05/mcdonalds-ex-ceo-15h... Automated at the bottom and outsourced at the top, going to be an interesting squeeze and I am more worried about all the screams for protectionism in trade which pretty much shut down the world the last time it was tried
• looquagra 10y ago
  Already happens: Capitalism destroys human labor force and goes to the next phase http://bit.ly/1JPiUzp http://bit.ly/1JPiUzp
• rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Stories like this make me think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie's father was a factory worker who struggled to make ends meet, the irony being that his job was to screw toothpaste caps on toothpaste tubes. After the events of the book, Charlie's father went back to the factory but as an engineer to work on the machines that do his old job. Not everyone at the factory could have received that kind of promotion. I wonder what happened to them?
  • retube 10y ago
    I dunno. But what happened to all the people that used to till the fields until tractors and combine harvesters came along? Thousands, literally thousands of professions have been made redundant by mechanisation and automation over the last few hundred years, but we're still all just as busy as ever. Look at all the professions that have been created in just the last 20 years thanks to the internet. Sure automation changes the nature of work, and the type of jobs that need doing, but I've yet to see a shred of evidence that continued advances in automation are going to put us all out of a job, other than vague "this time it's different".
    • dota_fanatic 10y ago
      Praise it! With the death of those thousands of jobs, we now have tens of thousands of new jobs, all filled by the billions of people, and boy is it great. Our work is more fulfilling as we get more done in less time in ways that improve the world while earning money that buys magnitudes more than what it used to. People are healthier with mental health at an all time high since the great shift of 2008 when the majority of humanity reached the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I work 10hrs/wk at double the total pay what it took my parent a 60hr week to do. My commute is 10 minutes where his was 40. My healthcare is 3000x better and costs 1/100th. My house is three times bigger and 5x as energy efficient. All my friends live nearby and have similarly awesome lives with growing families across the board. Nobody has to rent anymore either. /s
    • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      What happened to the horses after cars and trains took their jobs? Sure we still keep them around but mostly just for fun. We don't need horses anymore. If robots can farm, mine, refine, and manufacture everything, what's left for people to do? Secretary? Replaced by AI. Customer service? AI. Fast food? AI. Bartender? AI. Doctor? AI. Lawyer? AI. Accountant? AI. Programmer? AI.
• nihonde 10y ago
  I would take it a step further than universal income: provide people with easy-to-use services that ensure their basic needs——food, shelter, medical attention. This is not some "pie in the sky" idea. It can be done, but first we need to be able to trust each other. The key to making those social programs work properly is to nurture a community that actively works toward a common goal. We do this in our jobs all the time...why not in our cities, states, countries, planets? Right now, people are encouraged and incentivized to be selfish and shamelessly so. We need to instill a culture of compassion and humility before any progress can be made. My personal opinion is that the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions are the biggest obstacles to a sensible, peaceful world. Why? Because they breed conflict, bigotry, and cater to myopic, arrogant, finger-wagging blowhards. (Edit: Why do they do that? I don't know, but the evidence is in, and it's conclusive.) The original idea behind organized religions has been totally lost in translation——i.e., that we can use myths and allegories to preserve valuable lessons-learned that are too nuanced and subtle to be distilled as dry checklists of "what you should do". We've become a sad echo of the original wisdom——dullards who take the allegories as literal truths without any meaningful investigation or inquiry and who wear ignorance as a badge of honor and who ridicule those who dare to pursue progress. We waste our time and energy on frivolous debates about cults of personality and chase money as a signifier of worth, while real love of ourselves and our brothers and sisters slips down the drain with the toxic waste of the despicable squalor that we make of our unfathomably beautiful world. If we can discard the mind-control relics of old-world religion, admit that we've failed to achieve our potential, and get to work on building a lasting peaceful and compassionate civilization, we'll easily evolve to the next level of humankind. C'mon!
  • j2bax 10y ago
    I don't see how you boil this all down to being not possible because of religion. What specifically about these religions limits a more compassionate peaceful world? As I understand it, this is exactly the nature of Christ's teaching. Just because a large swath of people that identify themselves as Christian are 'finger-wagging blowhards', doesn't mean they'd be any different if they were Atheists or Agnostics. They might just be assholes no matter what. See Matthew 25:35-40 on Christs thoughts on the subject. I could just as easily say that this progress is impossible because of the theory of evolution and survival of the fittest thinking, but that would be ridiculous because despite some people believing whole wholeheartedly in evolution they can still be humanists. I'd encourage you to not put large groups of people in such small boxes.
• mgolawala 10y ago
  Robotics and AI have improved significantly and will continue to improve into the future. How much have humans improved over the last 30 years? People simply cannot compete, and this is a trend that cannot be reversed, or shouldn't be reversed. Just as mass industrialization necessitated huge social change in response. The emergence of a middle class, the growth of cities, organized labor and work hours, etc. As automation and AI continue to replace jobs and more and more people find it difficult to compete at any price. I predict you will see similar societal changes in response. I don't know what those will be, and they probably will not come easy. We could see a utopian future similar to Star Trek, or a dystopian one instead. We live in interesting times. :)
  • allisthemoist 10y ago
    This begs the question: as human productivity is increasingly usurped by machines, what will happen to the human manufacturing population? Will we finally figure out a way to distribute wealth in a agreeable way (through, for example, basic minimum income) or will we go back to the a feudal model of living? Interestingly, someone has to purchase the goods that these systems create. Thus, giving people the funds to do so, regardless of where they come from, seems like a necessity.
    • arethuza 10y ago
      Wasn't feudalism mainly a hierarchical means of controlling land and the people that worked the land? If you don't actually need peasants/serfs to do anything then you wouldn't need feudalism.
      • neutronicus 10y ago
        I mean, you can have hereditary control of land and a military apparatus _without_ letting anyone live on the land.
      • bwanab 10y ago
        Not exactly. Feudalism was rent seeking from top to bottom. Local Barons obtained the right to get rent from peasants who lived on their land. In turn they paid to their local Earl who paid to the local Duke and so on up the ladder to the King. Without the peasants at the bottom their would have been no feudalism. Of note, the peasants alone were generally forbidden from bearing arms.
• sergiotapia 10y ago
  Will this decrease the cost of the chips and pass along the savings to the consumers?
• dogma1138 10y ago
  This is what I've been thinking for quite a while but what allot of people seem to ignore - the "AI revolution" can very well "only" hit developing nations while skipping the developed ones. Better, smarter robots are a threat to Chinese workers, not so much to say Dutch or Canadian workers. The west can afford and is willing to pay more even for less, just look at how many people are willing to pay 10 times the price for "Organic Fare Traded Tomatoes" or any other "artisan" goods. The west is also not as much dependent on manufacturing and the manufacturing it does do is usually high tech, low(er) volume and highly specialized one where it both might not make sense to automate everything and where people are more than willing to pay the extra to know that something was "hand crafted". But overall we've developed a consumer culture especially in the past decade that is pretty much focused on retro/old school craftsmanship, small scale production and "artisan" touches, it almost makes one wonder if the whole "hipster revolution" wasn't hand crafted by some cabal of shadowy figures that foresaw the "rise of the machines", because our willingness to pay 250$ for a hand crafted hemp bag on etsy is just might be the thing that would protect us from AI automation.
  • artursapek 10y ago
    I think the point is that robots will do the shitty low-margin jobs like drive trucks, bag french fries, and change tires, and humans will get to do more enjoyable jobs like creating "artisan" goods as you refer to them.
    • st3v3r 10y ago
      With what money?
      • artursapek 10y ago
        Robots are happy to work for free (minus operating costs) and there won't be enough work left to occupy all adults for 5 days a week. I think the economics of all this are the hardest question to answer right now.
        • 10y ago
• microDude 10y ago
  From the picture in the article, it seems that a "pick-and-place" machine [1] that is typical to SMT operations would do the same job as the workers in that photo. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMT_placement_equipment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMT_placement_equipment
• louprado 10y ago
  The OP doesn't mention, but could it be that hedging against bad PR and government incentives for capex purchases are accelerating this. For example, if this trend continues Apple will no longer get bad PR for supporting sweatshops. In the US there were also years (might still be true) where a company fully could write off capex purchases in the first year and not a multi-year depreciation schedule. Perhaps China is doing something similar.
• nametakenobv 10y ago
  Have you grown food, ever?
  • athenot 10y ago
    Yes. It's hard work. It also dispenses with the need for a gym membership.
    • nametakenobv 10y ago
      It's not a replacement for gym membership. It's a full time job. You can't do anything else than work in the field, eat and sleep. People did that their entire lives so they can send their kids to school to have a better life and you are advocating to go back to this?
  • dang 10y ago
    We've banned this account for repeated trolling. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11770928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11770928 and marked it off-topic.
• dmode 10y ago
  Did they demand a $15 minimum wage ?
• nametakenobv 10y ago
  Gees, I don't know. The world is ending. Give all the people free monies. It will end well. We are all brothers and humans are great.
  • ghurtado 10y ago
    Way to make parent's point about handwaiving.
    • nametakenobv 10y ago
      I just realized I'm not interested in this internet back-and-forth "but you are wrong" thing. It's absolutely pointless. Hopefully we don't get to enjoy the socialism people are trying to bring back.
      • st3v3r 10y ago
        So what is your answer? Or are you just going to handwave it away?
  • unprepare 10y ago
    So thats a no? Not even 1 example of a career that has been created to replace these 60,000 jobs? But you're SURE that these jobs will be created.... eventually?
  • dang 10y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11771369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11771369 and marked it off-topic.
• njharman 10y ago
  Good for them.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• hereonbusiness 10y ago
  I'm surprised the Chinese government didn't intervene in this case. China is a developing country of a billion+ people many of which are still poor and not well educated. Manufacture creates a lot of jobs that don't require a lot of training, so if this becomes widespread I can see it leading to civil unrest as millions become unemployed in a short timespan.
• unabst 10y ago
  Robots are owned, and this is key. They are productive assets, much like houses produce rent. If they become a problem, all we need to really do is tax them. This means robots will be working for the people, because that's what taxes are -- asset distribution facilitated by government. Of course, two major problems here. First, the government, for obvious reasons, and second, the corporations that have a stronghold on the government. If the government did it's job, it would simply be re-funneling money where it needs to go; to pay for education, social services, safety, and so on. And if corporations didn't have their way, they wouldn't be able to twist laws and regulations in ways to maximize profit and avoid taxes, because that's precisely what taxes are designed to do -- cut profits. But if history can teach us anything, it's that even when manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas and call center jobs were shipped and agricultural labor jobs were swept by undocumented immigrants, the government here didn't do much of anything, and the businesses got their way with increased profits. In turn, our labor force got displaced, but we survived because ultimately people find a way to make money. Every non-government job is created by an entrepreneur, either directly, indirectly, or down the line. Entrepreneurship is really what has driven America. Many will take that over government and taxation (solving the two major problems outlined above), and this is the free market argument in a nutshell. The takeaway is, if we tax robotic labor, they'd be working for us, the people. Just as anyone paying 15% in income tax is working 2 months out of the year for the USA. Or we could hustle it out and have everyone desperately seek work to save their lives. Our choice. One leads to greater inequality.
  • VLM 10y ago
    > but we survived because ultimately people find a way to make money. Or more accurately, we just stopped caring about the people who can't. And to treat our fears about inevitably joining them, the denigration starts. "well, they're just red state rednecks" "Poor folks should just learn more and work harder and pull those bootstraps" "if there's 5 jobs for 10 people, then the 10 people need to go back to school and get degrees, then they'll have 5 jobs for 10 people with degrees, which will be much better"
    • vkou 10y ago
      Pretty much this. "Utopians on the coasts occasionally feel obliged to dream up some scheme whereby the unnecessariat become useful again, but its crap and nobody ever holds them to it. If you even think about it for a minute, it becomes obvious: what if Sanders (or your political savior of choice) had won? Would that fix the Ohio river valley? Would it bring back Youngstown Sheet and Tube, or something comparable that could pay off a mortgage? Would it end the drug game in Appalachia, New England, and the Great Plains? Would it call back the economic viability of small farms in Illinois, of ranching in Oklahoma and Kansas? Would it make a hardware store viable again in Iowa, or a bookstore in Nevada? Who even bothers to pretend anymore?" https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/ https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
• bunkydoo 10y ago
  https://imgur.com/gallery/7drHiqr https://imgur.com/gallery/7drHiqr It's happening.
• known 10y ago
  One more reason for not opposing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_around_the_world
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• altonzheng 10y ago
  I'm always confused at how people pity those that work in menial, repetitive, uncreative manufacturing jobs (to give an example, see the flack that Amazon receives for the drudgery of its warehouse jobs) and at the same time worry about job loss from automation. These uncreative, "inhumane" jobs we have are precisely the low hanging fruit ripe for the picking by robots. Of course, there is always friction in the redistribution process of the labor, but in the long run, I can't help but be optimistic about the increased human potential that can result from moving people away from menial tasks. Unless of course, you believe that some people are better off with tasks that require low creativity and human initiative.
  • Spooky23 10y ago
    Some people lack creativity and initiative. They need to eat too.
  • SandersAK 10y ago
    I can't project what your life situation is like, but it would be very very hard to find someone who could make a statement like this who has ever done or known someone who depended on a job like this to survive.
    • altonzheng 10y ago
      Fair enough. I'm in a very good situation now, so I am speaking from a privileged position. However, I have worked as a cashier at a grocery store in the past (admittedly I didn't depend on it to survive.) I empathize with those hard workers who take pride in their job, but I feel like keeping jobs around for the sake of giving people livelihoods is a signal of something very flawed in how our economy, or even society, operates. I dream of a world where we collectively choose to work less, because robotics and AI has picked up the lion's share of labor.
      • SandersAK 10y ago
        Yeah, I'm definitely not in disagreement. I just think often in tech we are so excited for a future that we see is potentially very close that we overlook some of the ramifications of those actions. It's not that I don't want a world where automation makes shit-work go away, it's that I want that future to be empathetic to, and understand that it needs to incorporate a solution for those who don't have the power to change their situation. Otherwise, what's the point?
• tn13 10y ago
  Light bulbs did not kill candle makers job. Light bulb made it possible for humans to work at night speeding up humanity's progress by several factors in more ways than we can imagine. The dominant left narrative is to see automation as "job loss" but in reality automation is bring manufacturing back to USA. Helping Americans live in a more safer and better workplaces and rapidly increasing technological progress. Also, people whose jobs are replaced don't just go and jump into river. They simply find some other jobs possible at lower wages thus helping other businesses get even more competitive.
• matco11 10y ago
  Just in case there was anyone still left thinking that China's manufacturing advantage is in low labor costs
• dreamcompiler 10y ago
  People buy iPhones. Robots don't. At some point, replacing your workers with robots becomes replacing your customers with robots, and the economy goes to hell. Are we there yet?
  • studentrob 10y ago
    Give the robots enough salary to buy a phone, and program them to buy it. Problem solved.
• skoocda 10y ago
  There seems to be a lot of discussion in this thread hinting at the detriment of economic slowdown. Can we all agree that ever-increasing industrial GDP, inflation notwithstanding, will ultimately be problematic? It must be driven by either population or productivity per capita increase, period. Industrial economies cannot continue to grow in this unregulated way forever, due to it increasing both the environmental impacts and wealth disparity. That said, information economies can grow much more aggressively without the negative impacts- but we don't have a system for adequately valuing information GDP, i.e. rewarding people for creating content. If our society is becoming entertainment-centric (which is great, and inevitable) then we need to figure out how every person can ascertain a quality-of-life standard through providing entertainment. Eventually natural resources and industrial production will be completely automated. Obviously the trickle-down economic theory does not hold up in that situation.
  • studentrob 10y ago
    > Can we all agree that ever-increasing industrial GDP, inflation notwithstanding, will ultimately be problematic? I'd agree that ever-increasing GDP is not reality. The thing we all disagree about is when a downturn will occur, and to what degree. When you talk about a forthcoming downturn, it sounds like you think it'll happen this year. It's natural that some people will disagree.
• Animats 10y ago
  Foxconn has finally been able to achieve the tolerances they need with their robots. They've been trying to do this for a few years now, but the positioning precision wasn't good enough.[1][2] Their FoxBot robots are conventional robot arms on fixed bases. There are four standard models, differing in size and precision. Foxconn is making them in-house, for about $20,000 to $25,000. Not clear what sensing they have; the ones they've shown in public just had simple suction end effectors. There's nothing exotic here except the scale on which Foxconn is operating. [1] http://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/1829834/foxconns-foxbot-army-close-hitting-chinese-market-track-meet-30-cent http://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/1829834/foxconns... [2] http://www.4erevolution.com/en/foxconn-foxbot-apple/ http://www.4erevolution.com/en/foxconn-foxbot-apple/
• anonbanker 10y ago
  and still probably a good 295 years until the these machines receive basic rights.
• codecamper 10y ago
  So if it's just robots building the phones, then why build the phones in China? Maybe some tax breaks?
• techlover14159 10y ago
  I believe what makes the current iteration of technology making jobs redundant unique is the speed/frequency with which this is happening. In the past the process was slow enough for the next generation to train for the next set of skills that were required in the economy. It is very hard for a mature professional to change job tracks and certainly almost impossible for a whole society to do so several times in the typical lifespan of a person. This is what is happening with the pace of change/redundancy today and the effect that I foresee is revolt like conditions in many societies. We are already witnessing this revolt/discontent in the US in this presidential cycle in my view. People are very angry and I fear it will only become worse in the coming years/decades as promised solutions by the new crop of leaders elected by angry people don't work out as expected.