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My experience is primarily in manufacturing. I work with the people who make the decisions to purchase the robot arms you mentioned at a large number of compani

My experience is primarily in manufacturing. I work with the people who make the decisions to purchase the robot arms you mentioned at a large number of companies as an outside vendor. As the article specifically mentioned the US being hit by manufacturing automation, that's what I'm weighing in on. The US was already hit by manufacturing automation. Additional automation won't hit US manufacturing nearly as hard as the first wave (until AGI, if we get there). There are a large number of decisions to weigh when automating. Wages are only a piece of this, and 24/7 operation isn't useful in all scenarios. Again, it depends on what you're making and how much of it. Each facility is limited by its own constraints on production. Lately, at most companies I work with this has been a shortage of skilled labor. They want more smart humans right now, not more robot arms. You need even more skilled and expensive employees to set up a robotics cell than to run a typical automated facility. When your robot guy leaves and you lose all ability to adjust how the cell works, you end up in trouble. I've seen this happen, and it's an example of over-automating. My knowledge of India is basically non-existent, but I've heard (on HN) that companies will make up for a lack of skilled labor by hiring a large number of unskilled workers. I don't know if this is actually true. As per capita income appears to be rising there, my theory was that this is an environment ready to be hit by the same wave of automation the US has already seen. While my guess on India and similar countries may be way off base, my opinions on the US come from direct experience and I would stand by those.

contingencies 8y ago
You made your point that the US has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs. However, that's not really relevant to other countries or new entrants, who don't care and are not following an industrial revolution inertial development path and may go straight from manual work to total automation. Fundamentally, automation is becoming cheaper, more generally applicable, more accessible, more manageable, more adaptable, and is available from more and more fiercely competitive suppliers. The large margins once commanded by leading suppliers are under threat. Huge factories may now be completely automated and are staffed by as little as three or four people to provide high-level supervision, security and anomalous event handling only. I suppose it is also probably true to generalize that the single line / critical-path flow of traditional facilities is being replaced by parallel, redundant lines which are explicitly designed to ensure graceful degradation instead of absolute failure. Future factories will self-assemble.

contingencies 8y ago

You made your point that the US has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs. However, that's not really relevant to other countries or new entrants, who don't care and are not following an industrial revolution inertial development path and may go straight from manual work to total automation. Fundamentally, automation is becoming cheaper, more generally applicable, more accessible, more manageable, more adaptable, and is available from more and more fiercely competitive suppliers. The large margins once commanded by leading suppliers are under threat. Huge factories may now be completely automated and are staffed by as little as three or four people to provide high-level supervision, security and anomalous event handling only. I suppose it is also probably true to generalize that the single line / critical-path flow of traditional facilities is being replaced by parallel, redundant lines which are explicitly designed to ensure graceful degradation instead of absolute failure. Future factories will self-assemble.