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Foxconn's 'Foxbot' Robots to Play Supporting Role in Factories
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Bender is that you? Pretty cool you found a time machine that travels backwards.
Seriously -- if you were serious -- could be joking, but not sure -- robots are machines without souls or emotions. The concept of "robot rights" is comical and suitable only for parodies and sci-fi. No, I do not cry at night because I force my backup drive to spin for hours capturing my day's work. Put fake appendages on it, a couple of blue eyes and a smile. It's still not a living creature much less human.
Yeah, except the cost. Few people can afford exotic cars or ultra high end appliances. Those are 1%ers. The whole point of using robotics is to keep costs down to make mass market products more affordable so the 99% can have good products too, just not on the same level of luxury.
"Best" is a subjective word. I'd prefer a car/appliance I can afford, was built using processes that ensured it was done to the manufacturer's specifications and I don't want to be on a long waiting list to receive one.
Automation enables the scale to give me all of those things, not to mention allowing the humans to do jobs that are more important/rewarding.
Congrats, you're the 31,239th person to work "double down on secrecy" into a sentence.
Well, number of Foxconn suicides in the last two years is much lower than leukaemia deaths at Samsung (guess what: Suicide nets actually work. San Francisco thinks they are too expensive, after more than 2000 deaths). Foxconn pays about the highest wages that you can get for factory jobs in China. Apple has released lots of information what they do about human rights in China since 2007, like forcing employment agencies to pay back millions of dollars to workers, making companies pay for underaged workers to go back to school, and so on.
Your question is confusing to me. Not sure what you mean. But your point about cultural ethos is correct, IMO.
The point of my post, however was that pure employee labor costs is not the main reason US companies manufacture in China, or Asia at large. The real reason is the adaptability of Asian manufacturing companies. They can, and will retool on a moment's notice, and have a new manufacturing process on line much faster and cheaper than any US manufacturer is able (willing?) to do. And they also have a ready workforce that can be expanded and contracted quickly and efficiently.
You seem to have absolutely no idea what industrial robots are. Industrial robots will never be 'self aware'. Even if we, someday, build 'general purpose' robots, industrial robots will never be designed to 'think' or to be 'self aware'.
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Cars have steadily become more reliable with much lower cost of ownership and this is due almost entirely to the use of industrial robots in their assembly.
I bet when Apple starts firing their millions of Chinese employees China throws them out of the country.
Not to defend either company, but in the last two years, I think it's three Foxconn suicides to zero Samsung leukemia deaths.
Longer term, over the past eleven years it's been about 21 Foxconn suicides, to 2 Samsung leukemia related deaths so far.
Corrections welcome.
San Francisco recently decided to put up a suicide net at the Golden Gate Bridge.
(One of the programmers I used to work with, died jumping from it, after he was caught using a backdoor option to win more money with electronic games.)
So they spend 25K x 10,000 -
Yes but even China is running out of workers. So they have to spend 1/4 billion dollars on robots. Actually the over all effect is to raise the productivity of their workforce. They have to because the cost of workers is going up so they make capital investments to increase productivity.
When you compare the number of new hires to the cost of the robots the cost per employees is only $2,500. That is very low for any kind of business.
Sure, go on believing that if you want to. But don't come crying to me when the revolution begins.
The issue of fundamental rights and liberties for non-organic workers needs to be addressed sooner, rather than later.
Before its too late.
I'm sure the carpenter's nail gun is going to be demanding coffee breaks and health care.
You're right, thank you for the clarification.
I'm happy, employees are being protected.
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It will probably impact on Australia, who economy is held up by the strength of China. Chain's unemployment rates go up, economy tanks, so on and so forth.....
Robots will have to be paid, and taxed. The proceeds will be needed to make up for taxes not paid by unemployed people. The beauty of this is that the robots can be taxed 100%. They don't care. We won't have to work at all, supported by robots working for us 24/7.
True. So robots are replacing the worker. Crap...
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They go hand-in-hand. The ethos, and the flexible manufacturing. American companies have tried to do 'flexible', but their idea usually ends up being slapping a different sticker on the side, or having more than one line and having one sit idle.
If anything, it's the management ethos of American business schools that has hobbled the American worker. And as long as those management teams have the ear of the monied lobbyists and politicians, nothing will change.
I just remember the first time that a company announced a massive layoff and their stock surged.
We do live in interesting times...