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Foxconn to speed up robot deployment; 20,000 robots already in its factories
- adventured 13y agoI've yet to figure out how China's population numbers are not going to be a massive liability for them in the coming decades as robotics devalues their manufacturing labor. Not today mind you, as I'm fully aware of the arguments against robotic manufacturing versus human manufacturing right now. At the extreme rate of improvement that robotics is moving at, within a few decades, large, cheap human labor pools will be a huge liability for social stability. Foxconn mentions turning their workers into robotic technicians; a million robots will not need a million technicians, the ratio will be a small fraction of 1:1. It's not going to be: where is the cheap labor, but rather, where are the robotic factories and the resources to feed them. Small, well run nations will be able to punch increasingly far above their weight through the substantial multiplication of effort that robotics is going to enable.