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Wait. What if the AI gold rush contributes to better industrial robotics and ushers in an AI industrial revolution? China already has dark factories with no hum

Wait. What if the AI gold rush contributes to better industrial robotics and ushers in an AI industrial revolution? China already has dark factories with no humans on the assembly line. Isn't that a possible outcome of the AI gold rush? (I mean omitting the fact that ChatGPT 5 Pro still says stuff like: "You’re right. I made a bad inference and defended it. That’s on me." We don't want that behavior on the assembly line.

Bratmon 1y ago
This is why I don't like the term "AI". Because it leads to people thinking that ChatGPT is somehow relevant to the field of robotics.
- JohnMakin 1y ago
  To some, this is a feature of the term, not a bug.
vkou 1y ago
What if it contributes to an evisceration of the middle class, instead? Hiring for new grads is already dead because of it, and it's not going to be coming back. It's having the same sort of impact as unlimited immigration, except that in this case, the workers don't need weekends, or pay taxes.
- smt88 1y ago
  Hiring new grads is dead because companies are cutting their spending while they wait to see how Trump's erratic behavior shakes out and for interest rates to drop. AI is making almost no difference in hiring at all.
  - ummonk 1y ago
    Decision makers are certainly quicker to opt for workforce reductions in response to tariff uncertainty / high interest rates, because they believe that LLMs can pick up the slack.
toomuchtodo 1y ago
China has been building robots and robotic manufacturing without AI. So why AI? Because the AI is a grift for those who can get exposure to its potential gains during the exuberance, while China builds actual capabilities. Profits and fiat are shared delusions, monetarily speaking, robots and factories are real, and will build real things. Western executives who visit China are coming back terrified - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45563018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45563018 - October 2025 Was Made in China 2025 Successful? [pdf] - https://www.uschamber.com/assets/documents/Was-Made-in-China-2025-Successful-Summary.pdf https://www.uschamber.com/assets/documents/Was-Made-in-China... - May 5th, 2025 ASPI’s two-decade Critical Technology Tracker: The rewards of long-term research investment - https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-technology-tracker/ https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-tec... - August 28th, 2024 > Now covering 64 critical technologies and crucial fields spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas, the Tech Tracker’s dataset has been expanded and updated from five years of data (previously, 2018–2022) to 21 years of data (2003–2023). These new results reveal the stunning shift in research leadership over the past two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific, led by China’s exceptional gains. The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–2007 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies.
- CuriouslyC 1y ago
  AI isn't directly a grift, however it's going to be backstopped by the president, and top investors know, so market discipline is out the window. Robotics is the thing that will let China dump money into AI sustainably (in addition to their energy supremacy). That was the point of AI is Too Big to Fail.
ReliantGuyZ 1y ago
I'm unclear on what people see in the current AI tech advancements that makes them think it will contribute to better manufacturing. The new feature of LLMs that makes them so interesting is their ability accept input and flexibly follow arbitrary instructions, meaning they're really good for varied work, especially when there are a wide range of acceptable answers ("creative work"). Everything I know about manufacturing at scale is that you want a person or machine that follows a tiny instruction set (at least in comparison to the potential flexibilities of an LLM) and nails the execution every time. This seems to me like the complete opposite of the strengths of an AI system like the ones that Wall Street are cheering.
- kasey_junk 1y ago
  I am not an expert in this, and don’t necessarily believe it. But the pitch is that existing manufacturing automation requires that specificity due to technical constraints. And that much of the factory automation that hasn’t happened is because it’s too costly to get to that level of specificity in that the existing automation requires higher scale to be cost effective. If you had more general purpose intelligence you could get around those constraints. The video models are the ones that seem to be attracting the most attention in this area as it seems do similar to sight recognition.
  - crote 1y ago
    > existing manufacturing automation requires that specificity due to technical constraints Rather the opposite, I'd say: existing manufacturing automation is built around repetitive motions because an assembly line is making multiples of the same product. Having AI reinvent the wheel for every individual item is completely pointless. One-off manufacturing can to a certain extent be automated. We're already seeing that with things like 3D printing and dirt-cheap basic PCB assembly. However, in most cases economies of scale prevent that from widespread generalization to entire products: ordering 100 or 1000 is always going to be have significantly lower per-unit costs than ordering 1, and if you're ordering 1000 you can probably afford a human spending some time on setting up robots or optimizing the design for existing setups. There are undoubtedly some areas where the current AI boom can provide helpful tooling, but I don't expect it to lead to a manufacturing revolution.
Lapel2742 1y ago
> factories with no humans on the assembly line. Not an American myself, but why should that be good for ordinary American citizens? Few people make loads of money, some Gen-Xer secure the value of their 401k and the younger ones are out of job?
- smileson2 1y ago
  we're talking about what really matters here, the investors
- bluGill 1y ago
  This is great for ordinary Americans. It means you don't have to do the boring assembly jobs, but you still get the benefits for vast amounts of mass produced goods. (some of it is junk, but that is a different topic). Those goods should be cheap as well because they are mass produced with little labor costs. The only ones who lose are those who are want to do boring work instead of something creative. (or those who are incapable of doing something else) There is the constant argument that what when machines do everything. We are not there yet, and so far there is no reason to think we will be anytime soon.
  - crote 1y ago
    > Those goods should be cheap as well because they are mass produced with little labor costs. If only. In reality they'll be as expensive as they can make them without completely killing sales, just like they are right now.
  - scared_together 1y ago
    > The only ones who lose are those who are want to do boring work instead of something creative. Aren’t the creative jobs also being taken by LLMs and image generators?
  - vkou 1y ago
    > This is great for ordinary Americans. If that's true, why isn't unrestricted immigration[1] good for them? It means that the citizens don't have to do the boring immigrant jobs, but still get the benefits for vast amounts of immigrant-produced goods and services. The only ones who will lose out are ones who 'want to'[2] do the boring immigrant jobs. AI can't just handwave all this shit away because 'technology good'. Whether or you agree with these concerns or not, there's a massive backlash from various flavors of nativists about jobs. Why isn't it directed at all of these pie in the sky AI promises? --- [1] Or, you know, just buying imports from China. What difference does it make to me where a factory is located, when that factory doesn't employ me or my neighbours? The people collecting profits from it aren't going to share them with us. [2] What does it mean to 'want to' do a 'boring' job? Rent's due in two weeks, 'wants' don't enter into it much.
1970-01-01 1y ago
Journalists keep conflating LLMs with AI. You don't use an entire DC with its own power plant to keep a line of robotic welders online and working.
- 0xcafefood 1y ago
  FWIW journalists are just following the lead of tech executives and others hyping LLMs as "AI" so it's hard to fault the journalists specifically.
  - InitialLastName 1y ago
    They've been trained by a decade of referring to advanced cruise control as "full self-driving".
  - GOD_Over_Djinn 1y ago
    I beg to differ. Journalists are supposed to do their own investigation and analysis of the people, institutions, and events that they report on. If they just parrot the talking points of executives, then they’re producing advertisements, not journalism.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      Fair, but there have never been very many journalists in the world. Between lazy fact checkers and there being more money in sensationalist reporting (My American history classes covered this back in the 1800s, and I have no doubt other history classes of earlier times will as well) there has never been much.
seydor 1y ago
Someone has to run the robots. And i bet it's not going to be the educated but spoiled workforce of the developed western world, but that will be outsourced to offshore destinations. I think there's something cultural about wanting office jobs related to power over people, where you can always slack instead of waking up every day at 8 to go to the factory
- jerlam 1y ago
  Right. There is no reason why "AI-enabled" factories would be built in countries that struggle to build and run normal factories, and where the cost of materials is high.
nakamoto_damacy 1y ago
EDIT: To the idiots downvoting: Why?
starky 1y ago
This is assuming that "AI" isn't already being used extensively on manufacturing lines. Computer Vision has used "AI" neural networks for years for various tasks. The issue is that it is a lot of investment to implement automated assembly and there are still enough places in the world where labour is cheap enough to make it not worth it. As I said to one of my suppliers recently when they asked how their factory compared to others, "Automation is nice to have, but at the end of the day I'm choosing a vendor based on who can get me the product cheapest, quickest, and with high quality."

Bratmon 1y ago

This is why I don't like the term "AI". Because it leads to people thinking that ChatGPT is somehow relevant to the field of robotics.

JohnMakin 1y ago
To some, this is a feature of the term, not a bug.

vkou 1y ago

What if it contributes to an evisceration of the middle class, instead? Hiring for new grads is already dead because of it, and it's not going to be coming back. It's having the same sort of impact as unlimited immigration, except that in this case, the workers don't need weekends, or pay taxes.

smt88 1y ago
Hiring new grads is dead because companies are cutting their spending while they wait to see how Trump's erratic behavior shakes out and for interest rates to drop. AI is making almost no difference in hiring at all.
- ummonk 1y ago
  Decision makers are certainly quicker to opt for workforce reductions in response to tariff uncertainty / high interest rates, because they believe that LLMs can pick up the slack.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

China has been building robots and robotic manufacturing without AI. So why AI? Because the AI is a grift for those who can get exposure to its potential gains during the exuberance, while China builds actual capabilities. Profits and fiat are shared delusions, monetarily speaking, robots and factories are real, and will build real things. Western executives who visit China are coming back terrified - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45563018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45563018 - October 2025 Was Made in China 2025 Successful? [pdf] - https://www.uschamber.com/assets/documents/Was-Made-in-China-2025-Successful-Summary.pdf https://www.uschamber.com/assets/documents/Was-Made-in-China... - May 5th, 2025 ASPI’s two-decade Critical Technology Tracker: The rewards of long-term research investment - https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-technology-tracker/ https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-tec... - August 28th, 2024 > Now covering 64 critical technologies and crucial fields spanning defence, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas, the Tech Tracker’s dataset has been expanded and updated from five years of data (previously, 2018–2022) to 21 years of data (2003–2023). These new results reveal the stunning shift in research leadership over the past two decades towards large economies in the Indo-Pacific, led by China’s exceptional gains. The US led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–2007 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies.

CuriouslyC 1y ago
AI isn't directly a grift, however it's going to be backstopped by the president, and top investors know, so market discipline is out the window. Robotics is the thing that will let China dump money into AI sustainably (in addition to their energy supremacy). That was the point of AI is Too Big to Fail.

ReliantGuyZ 1y ago

I'm unclear on what people see in the current AI tech advancements that makes them think it will contribute to better manufacturing. The new feature of LLMs that makes them so interesting is their ability accept input and flexibly follow arbitrary instructions, meaning they're really good for varied work, especially when there are a wide range of acceptable answers ("creative work"). Everything I know about manufacturing at scale is that you want a person or machine that follows a tiny instruction set (at least in comparison to the potential flexibilities of an LLM) and nails the execution every time. This seems to me like the complete opposite of the strengths of an AI system like the ones that Wall Street are cheering.

kasey_junk 1y ago
I am not an expert in this, and don’t necessarily believe it. But the pitch is that existing manufacturing automation requires that specificity due to technical constraints. And that much of the factory automation that hasn’t happened is because it’s too costly to get to that level of specificity in that the existing automation requires higher scale to be cost effective. If you had more general purpose intelligence you could get around those constraints. The video models are the ones that seem to be attracting the most attention in this area as it seems do similar to sight recognition.
- crote 1y ago
  > existing manufacturing automation requires that specificity due to technical constraints Rather the opposite, I'd say: existing manufacturing automation is built around repetitive motions because an assembly line is making multiples of the same product. Having AI reinvent the wheel for every individual item is completely pointless. One-off manufacturing can to a certain extent be automated. We're already seeing that with things like 3D printing and dirt-cheap basic PCB assembly. However, in most cases economies of scale prevent that from widespread generalization to entire products: ordering 100 or 1000 is always going to be have significantly lower per-unit costs than ordering 1, and if you're ordering 1000 you can probably afford a human spending some time on setting up robots or optimizing the design for existing setups. There are undoubtedly some areas where the current AI boom can provide helpful tooling, but I don't expect it to lead to a manufacturing revolution.

Lapel2742 1y ago

> factories with no humans on the assembly line. Not an American myself, but why should that be good for ordinary American citizens? Few people make loads of money, some Gen-Xer secure the value of their 401k and the younger ones are out of job?

smileson2 1y ago
we're talking about what really matters here, the investors
bluGill 1y ago
This is great for ordinary Americans. It means you don't have to do the boring assembly jobs, but you still get the benefits for vast amounts of mass produced goods. (some of it is junk, but that is a different topic). Those goods should be cheap as well because they are mass produced with little labor costs. The only ones who lose are those who are want to do boring work instead of something creative. (or those who are incapable of doing something else) There is the constant argument that what when machines do everything. We are not there yet, and so far there is no reason to think we will be anytime soon.
- crote 1y ago
  > Those goods should be cheap as well because they are mass produced with little labor costs. If only. In reality they'll be as expensive as they can make them without completely killing sales, just like they are right now.
- scared_together 1y ago
  > The only ones who lose are those who are want to do boring work instead of something creative. Aren’t the creative jobs also being taken by LLMs and image generators?
- vkou 1y ago
  > This is great for ordinary Americans. If that's true, why isn't unrestricted immigration[1] good for them? It means that the citizens don't have to do the boring immigrant jobs, but still get the benefits for vast amounts of immigrant-produced goods and services. The only ones who will lose out are ones who 'want to'[2] do the boring immigrant jobs. AI can't just handwave all this shit away because 'technology good'. Whether or you agree with these concerns or not, there's a massive backlash from various flavors of nativists about jobs. Why isn't it directed at all of these pie in the sky AI promises? --- [1] Or, you know, just buying imports from China. What difference does it make to me where a factory is located, when that factory doesn't employ me or my neighbours? The people collecting profits from it aren't going to share them with us. [2] What does it mean to 'want to' do a 'boring' job? Rent's due in two weeks, 'wants' don't enter into it much.

1970-01-01 1y ago

Journalists keep conflating LLMs with AI. You don't use an entire DC with its own power plant to keep a line of robotic welders online and working.

0xcafefood 1y ago
FWIW journalists are just following the lead of tech executives and others hyping LLMs as "AI" so it's hard to fault the journalists specifically.
- InitialLastName 1y ago
  They've been trained by a decade of referring to advanced cruise control as "full self-driving".
- GOD_Over_Djinn 1y ago
  I beg to differ. Journalists are supposed to do their own investigation and analysis of the people, institutions, and events that they report on. If they just parrot the talking points of executives, then they’re producing advertisements, not journalism.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Fair, but there have never been very many journalists in the world. Between lazy fact checkers and there being more money in sensationalist reporting (My American history classes covered this back in the 1800s, and I have no doubt other history classes of earlier times will as well) there has never been much.

seydor 1y ago

Someone has to run the robots. And i bet it's not going to be the educated but spoiled workforce of the developed western world, but that will be outsourced to offshore destinations. I think there's something cultural about wanting office jobs related to power over people, where you can always slack instead of waking up every day at 8 to go to the factory

jerlam 1y ago
Right. There is no reason why "AI-enabled" factories would be built in countries that struggle to build and run normal factories, and where the cost of materials is high.

nakamoto_damacy 1y ago

EDIT: To the idiots downvoting: Why?

starky 1y ago

This is assuming that "AI" isn't already being used extensively on manufacturing lines. Computer Vision has used "AI" neural networks for years for various tasks. The issue is that it is a lot of investment to implement automated assembly and there are still enough places in the world where labour is cheap enough to make it not worth it. As I said to one of my suppliers recently when they asked how their factory compared to others, "Automation is nice to have, but at the end of the day I'm choosing a vendor based on who can get me the product cheapest, quickest, and with high quality."