6 ms·

Having recently spent some time in India where labor is absurdly cheap I do not believe the incentive to automate exists in most places. At least... not yet. I

by ranman 10y ago

Having recently spent some time in India where labor is absurdly cheap I do not believe the incentive to automate exists in most places. At least... not yet. I believe automation will eventually take place at a large scale but I don't believe it will happen in the next 5-10 years in India.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Arizhel 10y ago
The problem with that idea is that even if the human labor is absurdly cheap, that doesn't make it good. Would you want a car built by hand, or a car built by robots? The latter is going to be better built and have fewer defects. Many jobs can't even be done decently by humans (think of modern cellphone circuitry assembly).
- MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
  And yet Toyota relies on people more than any other car maker and at the same time leads the reliability statistics.
  - prvnsmpth 10y ago
    That might be the case now, but who's to say that won't change in the future? What will happen when robotics and computer vision advances to a point where employing a human on an assembly line doesn't make economic sense?
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Relies on people how? Citation? Any modern car is going to have an enormous amount of robotic assembly involved. Having humans can give you more flexibility (robots take time to set up), but expose you to more quality problems because they're inconsistent. But many things just can't be done that well by humans.
- visarga 10y ago
  > Would you want a car built by hand, or a car built by robots? The latter is going to be better built and have fewer defects My first two cars, bought in 1997 and 1999 were pretty prone to breaking and costing a lot of money and time to fix. But the car I bought in 2005 was different. I checked around, and it would seem all brands have suddenly become very fiable. I suppose the factory switched from manual to automated production.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    No, I don't think so. Somewhere else in this discussion, someone posted a picture of a modern car factory: https://outline-prod.imgix.net/20170323-c86vRGKVPsbek3PZXpVw?auto=format&q=60&w=2000&s=7fa68cbcc86ded1ab56b65ad74700aa9 https://outline-prod.imgix.net/20170323-c86vRGKVPsbek3PZXpVw... Someone else responded with a picture of a car factory in 1984: https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--OKTGFiUc--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/18to91b6najv6jpg.jpg https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--OKTGFiU... They've had automated production in car factories for a long time. And it's not an either-or thing; just like robots were only used for certain jobs back in 1984, and other stuff was done by humans, it's still like that (though probably more stuff is done robotically). Some tasks are just easier to have humans do, or not worth the expense of a robot (and the set-up, jigs, etc. needed for the robot). Did you buy a different brand car in 2005 than the 97 and 99 cars? Different brands are different. Even within the same brand, there have been improvements over time (and also regressions). Designs have changed; maybe that company focused more on designing for serviceability between those times. Design has little to do with automated vs. manual production. There's nothing stopping you from designing a car to be assembled by hand (like a small production-run handbuilt exotic), and designing it to be easy to change the oil on.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Bingo, this. It also depends on what exactly it is that a given country is arbitraging. I've been considering China for a few years as not selling its labour or resources but its sinks: the willingness of the country to pollute its air, water, and land, in building up wealth and/or capital. Other opportunities might be space, shipping access, or the ability to bulldoze through any competing property claims. In that case, say, bulldozing a slum in Mumbai to throw up a frabrication plant that can import raw materials and export finished goods from a factory with a very low labour footprint ... could make sense. I'm not saying it does, but if you're going to bring automation to a place such as India, then you'd look for a dynamic like that: high-quality or low-tolerance manufacturing, probably dirty, with a high transport need, for which the ability to secure seaport-adjacent property with minimal fuss would be expedient.
marcosdumay 10y ago
This. Developing countries are capital-poor and labor-rich. It makes no sense for automation to get here before it gets into the developed world. It never worked this way (except when unions made it so) and there's no reason presented for anything to change. Besides the article spends some time arguing why a level of automation would have a larger impact on developing countries because we rely more on industries and less on services. I think that is too big a focus on the past - we have reasons to think future automation will have a larger impact on services than in the past. I think the article is interesting, but the conclusions are flawed.
- aaron695 10y ago
  Why ship cotton from the US to a developing country when you can do it at home for a similar price? I think you are right, automation will get to the developed world first, but I think in part to automate the developing world remotely.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Yes, that's relevant. Automation will hurt the capital transfer from developed into developing countries. It is already doing so.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
erikig 10y ago
You'd be surprised how quickly this can change. I'm actually more worried about workers in developed countries where the costs and ongoing benefits are higher. As the expertise spreads across the globe faster than ever, why build these agents of automation (robots, self driving cars etc) in an economy where the costs are so high?
- evgen 10y ago
  You would build them in a developed country because cheap labour has no real impact on your cost of goods when dealing with this level of automation. A developed country gets you better infrastructure, access to the educated workforce needed to maintain and adapt your automation, and you are closer to your market.
  - mattnewton 10y ago
    I would think you would build them as close to your main markets as real estate and electricity costs will let you, to lower transportation costs and to allow you to be sloppier when predicting demand (no longer thinking in terms of shipping containers arriving at the warehouse next month). Which probably means developed countries like you suggest.
prodmerc 10y ago
I grew up in a country where Internet wasn't a priority by any means and still isn't. Yet it went from dialup to gigabit fiber and worst case scenario DSL in less than a decade, along with GPRS/EDGE and soon afterwards 3G and 4G. If you build from scratch, adopting the latest technologies makes sense. If automation technology becomes mature, any new factory will likely use it from the get-go...
sharun 10y ago
One of the first industries to see automation happen was the textile industry with the invention of the punch card and eventually the power loom. A hundred fifty years later the (manual) handloom textile industry is still the second largest source of employment in Rural India after agriculture. So why has automation of the loom not displaced all these weavers? There are many factors and one of the big ones is - automation isn't magic. It doesn't self-fix flaws. It doesn't upgrade itself. Master weavers can.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >So why has automation of the loom not displaced all these weavers? There are many factors and one of the big ones is - automation isn't magic. It doesn't self-fix flaws. It doesn't upgrade itself. Master weavers can. The looms weren't AI -- just automation.
- taneq 10y ago
  Because they are literally dirt-poor and their labour time is worth less than the fuel required to transport machine-woven cloth to them. In any environment other than grinding poverty, automation is cheaper than human labour.

by ranman 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Arizhel 10y ago

The problem with that idea is that even if the human labor is absurdly cheap, that doesn't make it good. Would you want a car built by hand, or a car built by robots? The latter is going to be better built and have fewer defects. Many jobs can't even be done decently by humans (think of modern cellphone circuitry assembly).

MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
And yet Toyota relies on people more than any other car maker and at the same time leads the reliability statistics.
- prvnsmpth 10y ago
  That might be the case now, but who's to say that won't change in the future? What will happen when robotics and computer vision advances to a point where employing a human on an assembly line doesn't make economic sense?
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Relies on people how? Citation? Any modern car is going to have an enormous amount of robotic assembly involved. Having humans can give you more flexibility (robots take time to set up), but expose you to more quality problems because they're inconsistent. But many things just can't be done that well by humans.
visarga 10y ago
> Would you want a car built by hand, or a car built by robots? The latter is going to be better built and have fewer defects My first two cars, bought in 1997 and 1999 were pretty prone to breaking and costing a lot of money and time to fix. But the car I bought in 2005 was different. I checked around, and it would seem all brands have suddenly become very fiable. I suppose the factory switched from manual to automated production.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  No, I don't think so. Somewhere else in this discussion, someone posted a picture of a modern car factory: https://outline-prod.imgix.net/20170323-c86vRGKVPsbek3PZXpVw?auto=format&q=60&w=2000&s=7fa68cbcc86ded1ab56b65ad74700aa9 https://outline-prod.imgix.net/20170323-c86vRGKVPsbek3PZXpVw... Someone else responded with a picture of a car factory in 1984: https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--OKTGFiUc--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/18to91b6najv6jpg.jpg https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--OKTGFiU... They've had automated production in car factories for a long time. And it's not an either-or thing; just like robots were only used for certain jobs back in 1984, and other stuff was done by humans, it's still like that (though probably more stuff is done robotically). Some tasks are just easier to have humans do, or not worth the expense of a robot (and the set-up, jigs, etc. needed for the robot). Did you buy a different brand car in 2005 than the 97 and 99 cars? Different brands are different. Even within the same brand, there have been improvements over time (and also regressions). Designs have changed; maybe that company focused more on designing for serviceability between those times. Design has little to do with automated vs. manual production. There's nothing stopping you from designing a car to be assembled by hand (like a small production-run handbuilt exotic), and designing it to be easy to change the oil on.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Bingo, this. It also depends on what exactly it is that a given country is arbitraging. I've been considering China for a few years as not selling its labour or resources but its sinks: the willingness of the country to pollute its air, water, and land, in building up wealth and/or capital. Other opportunities might be space, shipping access, or the ability to bulldoze through any competing property claims. In that case, say, bulldozing a slum in Mumbai to throw up a frabrication plant that can import raw materials and export finished goods from a factory with a very low labour footprint ... could make sense. I'm not saying it does, but if you're going to bring automation to a place such as India, then you'd look for a dynamic like that: high-quality or low-tolerance manufacturing, probably dirty, with a high transport need, for which the ability to secure seaport-adjacent property with minimal fuss would be expedient.

marcosdumay 10y ago

This. Developing countries are capital-poor and labor-rich. It makes no sense for automation to get here before it gets into the developed world. It never worked this way (except when unions made it so) and there's no reason presented for anything to change. Besides the article spends some time arguing why a level of automation would have a larger impact on developing countries because we rely more on industries and less on services. I think that is too big a focus on the past - we have reasons to think future automation will have a larger impact on services than in the past. I think the article is interesting, but the conclusions are flawed.

aaron695 10y ago
Why ship cotton from the US to a developing country when you can do it at home for a similar price? I think you are right, automation will get to the developed world first, but I think in part to automate the developing world remotely.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  Yes, that's relevant. Automation will hurt the capital transfer from developed into developing countries. It is already doing so.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

erikig 10y ago

You'd be surprised how quickly this can change. I'm actually more worried about workers in developed countries where the costs and ongoing benefits are higher. As the expertise spreads across the globe faster than ever, why build these agents of automation (robots, self driving cars etc) in an economy where the costs are so high?

evgen 10y ago
You would build them in a developed country because cheap labour has no real impact on your cost of goods when dealing with this level of automation. A developed country gets you better infrastructure, access to the educated workforce needed to maintain and adapt your automation, and you are closer to your market.
- mattnewton 10y ago
  I would think you would build them as close to your main markets as real estate and electricity costs will let you, to lower transportation costs and to allow you to be sloppier when predicting demand (no longer thinking in terms of shipping containers arriving at the warehouse next month). Which probably means developed countries like you suggest.

prodmerc 10y ago

I grew up in a country where Internet wasn't a priority by any means and still isn't. Yet it went from dialup to gigabit fiber and worst case scenario DSL in less than a decade, along with GPRS/EDGE and soon afterwards 3G and 4G. If you build from scratch, adopting the latest technologies makes sense. If automation technology becomes mature, any new factory will likely use it from the get-go...

sharun 10y ago

One of the first industries to see automation happen was the textile industry with the invention of the punch card and eventually the power loom. A hundred fifty years later the (manual) handloom textile industry is still the second largest source of employment in Rural India after agriculture. So why has automation of the loom not displaced all these weavers? There are many factors and one of the big ones is - automation isn't magic. It doesn't self-fix flaws. It doesn't upgrade itself. Master weavers can.

coldtea 10y ago
>So why has automation of the loom not displaced all these weavers? There are many factors and one of the big ones is - automation isn't magic. It doesn't self-fix flaws. It doesn't upgrade itself. Master weavers can. The looms weren't AI -- just automation.
taneq 10y ago
Because they are literally dirt-poor and their labour time is worth less than the fuel required to transport machine-woven cloth to them. In any environment other than grinding poverty, automation is cheaper than human labour.