Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Call me Lenin...but this push to automation is going to be the cause of much civil discomfort; all while prices still rise and corporate profits soar.

Apple is one of the worst in this regard. 70B+ in liquid assets, incredible market shares...and laughable philanthropic "efforts". What a joke.
Apple is not a charity. They exist to make money. That's it. And as a side their products are pretty green. That's better then a lot of other companies who pollute the world and can't make a profit.

What to you expect? A business to give all it's money away? Maybe on your planet they do. But on Earth does not work that way.
 
If we're going to use robots more often, then why are we assembling things in China. Bring them back to NA.

Taking a stand for American robot employment is noble, but 'we' are not assembling the products at the heart of this discussion - Foxconn is. If there existed an American plant that could compete with Foxconn's scale and efficiency, then by all means those automated jobs would be flowing stateside.

Americans take umbrage with awful, tedious, low-paying jobs leaving our shores when in fact, these aren't jobs anybody gen-x or younger would accept - unless said Americans are immigrants... Which is another can of worms.

Thanks to our dysfunctional 'college bound' education system, there is - believe it or not - a shortage of skilled manufacturing labor in the US. And we still make lots of stuff in this country. It's just not stuff you find on the shelf at Target.
 
HAHAHAHA SUCKS DOESNT IT CHINA?

NOW YOU KNOW HOW SO MANY FELT WHEN THEIR JOBS WENT TO CHINA.

PAYBACK A BITCH :)

See you down the dole office :p
 
not sure about the 1.2m employee figure

according to their latest financial report it is 126,687 employees, not 1.2 million - there maybe 1.2m employed indirectly but I cant see how that can be linked to replacing robots
 
What do you think is working on vehicles during 98% of the process? You act like this is just happening, robots have been working in factories for decades...

This is not a revolutionary development. People were complaining when Colt decided to introduce interchangeable parts, because it took away the element of craftsmanship, which was a hallmark of their weaponry. Workers b**ched about Ford's assembly line and then later about the robots that replaced them. Of course it isn't new. It's just a bit disheartening, because we continue the trend of overpopulating the world with people who are less and less productive. Automation doesn't help in the process of finding things for billions of people to do. So, we either need to take a step back and let people suffer from repetitive stress injuries or allow them to go unemployed and be in what is quite possibly a worse situation. We all sit with the fear of unemployment looming over our heads. I wouldn't want to wish that on someone else. That's all I'm saying.
 
Most of you are not well informed at all.

Yes machines are taking over many jobs.. THATS A GOOD THING
Yes people will lose many jobs.... AGAIN A GOOD THING

Why should people do this stupid work when machines can do the job better and faster. Not having a job isn't a bad thing.

The only thing thats bad is the monetary system which forces people to work for 3/4 of their lives (some cases longer)
All we need is a system that is not corrupt but benefits everybody on this planet. ;)

If you wan't to know more about what I'm saying: http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
 
seriously, all this paranoid talk always pisses me off. Mere job preservation should never stand in the way of progress. Technological progress leads to societal progress.

I agree. The biggest opposition to automation in the USA has been, as usual, labor unions. I'm surprised how anthropomorphic these robots are. I was in the robotic business years ago and programed a few work-cells.

Union workers physically destroyed installations where we have full anthropomorphic arms installed on a trail basis doing assembly work at one installation in New Jersey. They tried to write it up as an accident and even tried to pin the blame on the designers. One VP called it "robophobia."

If you treat your employee's like robots, that is how they are replaced. Thus don't act like a robot at work and question your boss or better, get rid of your boss and be come the boss.
 
Automation doesn't help in the process of finding things for billions of people to do. So, we either need to take a step back and let people suffer from repetitive stress injuries or allow them to go unemployed and be in what is quite possibly a worse situation. We all sit with the fear of unemployment looming over our heads. I wouldn't want to wish that on someone else. That's all I'm saying.

Actually it would help and continues to do so as more tedious jobs are automated with the result being better products, longer life span and new types of jobs that are much more comfortable. Technology always improves our lives in the end, even if it in the very short term costs jobs. If it did not, we would still be living in caves and be afraid of fire.

The problem is that many people don't understand the concept of doing something more meaningful with their lives, because they consider themselves "out of a job" rather than "liberated from dirty work".

We are not born like this; It comes by indoctrination when we grow up, that we must work in factories for a crappy wage and spend 95% of our waking lives thinking about how to make money enough for housing and food, when in fact there are plenty of resources to go around, if those with money aren't sitting on it and forcing you to earn it.

Consider that house building can be automated in the next 25 years. The machines are being developed to build an entire house in 24 hours just for the cost of the materials, rent of the machine and one operator. You can build a house without worrying about build quality and very quickly establish new housing after a natural disaster, like an earthquake and reduce deaths, illness and long-term economic instability.

Construction workers might be out of a job, temporarily, but new jobs and new ways of supporting ourselves continue to emerge and there will be no excuse to be homeless, at least based on what resources and materials are available.

Having money is something else, which prevents many people from moving on (therefore I agree with the Zeitgeist post), but the fact that technology and automated manufacturing creates wealth is hard to dispute.
 
cameronjpu's point of view strikes me as capitalist Panglossianism. It's like saying that there is no need for governments to have military and police forces, because people can arm themselves or hire guards.

As to employees being lazy bums, why not use access to sites like Facebook as a reward for doing their work? :D

On employment, I'd be happy to be self-employed or part of a cooperative. I've never had much taste for Randroid hero-worship of business leaders. It's like worshipping politicians or military leaders.


We are still some way to go before employment Götterdämmerung, because artificial intelligence is not good enough. It's one of the great disappointments of my life; I remember being very interested in it in earlier years. But artificial intelligence is nevertheless advancing; I found some companies that advertise artificial-vision inspection services -- you put a video camera on the production line and it sends its images to a computer that runs some software to check on whether the items look right. There's also work in warehouse robots and even crop-picking robots. You need artificial vision to recognize a fruit that's ready to be picked, and you need to move the arm to the fruit, which is why that technology has not gotten much notice. These actions may be trivial for us, but not for a robot.

But as AI advances, I think that employment Götterdämmerung is a real possibility, because for the large majority of (human) workers, it will be VERY hard to compete with robotized factories with good AI.

Huh?!
 
I also work in a VERY high tolerance engineering company, so like you I'm aware of the real world when it comes to physical objects.
Robots, well, I'd not really call them that, are great when it comes to putting items fed to them in a cartridge or a strip of components and inserting things into pre make locations, or picking things up from one tray and putting them onto bits from another tray.
The problem is, unlike humans, it all has to be set up perfectly for them to perform a dumb task as they are totally dumb machines.
Some people seem to think we are living in Star Trek land where we can build "Data" who things and acts better than a human being.

If you want something the repeat the same operation millions of times, from perfectly pre arranged items, then sure, pick a machine to do it. But if there is any decision making or judgement to be used, it's going to be well into the future to find anything better than a human.

Remember when a cheap human breaks down or stops, you just get another one to replace them. You don't have to call in the service engineer.

Have you or DrDom ever even touched a robot? They have vision systems, sensors, and tons of other things that constantly report back to the controller.

A monkey can weld, a human can think...a robot can weld and then scan the weld to check for cracks and decide what to do. The technology is there, the robot you interacted with may not have had it because it was un-needed for its task and all of these intelligence options add up.

You may work in a HIGH tolerance shop, but YOU are not the one performing the job. The CNC is holding the tolerance, you are simply loading machine and checking the part, all things a robot can do.
 
The Future?

I can see Steve Jobs in the future become part iRobot part man to prolong his life and bear the mark of the Apple Logo upon his forehead. He will run modfieid version of OSX and airdrop users will be able to directly interact with by his airdrop name iJob.
 
automateIt

Look folks, if you can automate it automateIt! There are only certain things that a robot can do.

These robots are fancy six-axis dual-articulated arm robs that have a humanoid form factor so that they can be deployed in a manufacturing environment that has beed designed around certain human proportions. They don't need breaks, vacation(although this is probably not applicable at FoxConn), don't get sloppy, don't have problems doing repetitive tasks, don't goldbrick, and can do things at much faster rates without sacrificing quality.

But they don't know how to do anything unless they are taught the task by ... wait for it... a human. Basically, if Foxconn deploys x number of robs in a facility, they will need x/50 (or some similar ratio) new technicians, programmers, and integrators on staff. This is technically a reduction in work force, as x/50 is less than x. However, it is not a complete layoff of every personell who is replaced by a rob. Adding these robs will change the level of technology at FoxConn. There will be more people with higher education and greater skill levels roaming the plant.

Add to this the fact that there are some manufacturing positions that are impossible to replace with a rob or at least impracticable.

Face it folks, if a rob can do your job do you really want to be doing it all day???
 
reports that Foxconn will be replacing some of its workers with 1 million robots in the next three years to cut rising labor costs and improve efficiency. The company currently has 10,000 robots and employs 1.2 million people.

I see....

"It's not clear how many jobs will be replaced by the robots."

>_> I think it might be.

I love how Apple was "extending their sympathies" to the families of those injured or killed... I wonder if they'll be doing the same to the scores of thousands who now find themselves without a job. :/

Lesson learned go to college

You're joking, right?
 
Look folks, if you can automate it automateIt! There are only certain things that a robot can do.

They don't need breaks, vacation (although this is probably not applicable at FoxConn), don't get sloppy, don't have problems doing repetitive tasks, don't goldbrick, and can do things at much faster rates without sacrificing quality.

You're such a humanitarian :)

By the way, Robots DO get sloppy; they don't make adjustments for anything out of the ordinary (accidentally misplaced parts, obvious defects, etc). They have no way of correcting things.

But they don't know how to do anything unless they are taught the task by ... wait for it... a human.

Right. And basically there is no theoretical limit to what they can accomplish. Eventually, they could automate YOUR job, whatever it may be.

Adding these robs will change the level of technology at FoxConn. There will be more people with higher education and greater skill levels roaming the plant.

Right.... your logic leaves much to be desired.

Add to this the fact that there are some manufacturing positions that are impossible to replace with a rob or at least impracticable.

At the moment. This could have been said about what's happening now, were we 15 years in the past.

Face it folks, if a rob can do your job do you really want to be doing it all day???

Again, given time, "robots" will be capable of anything, save perhaps therapy and social working jobs. Anything else is up for grabs. Hope your job doesn't get liquidated too soon ;)
 
You're such a humanitarian :)

By the way, Robots DO get sloppy; they don't make adjustments for anything out of the ordinary (accidentally misplaced parts, obvious defects, etc). They have no way of correcting things.

Please do not speak of something you know nothing about... They can correct and make adjustments. They are not toys, a PLC and a few sensors and you can do a lot. All you have to do is tell the program to watch for an input, when that input is triggered it can take numbers and adjust the tool center point of the end effector or even load an entirely different program to fix/compensate.
 
i work with multi billion dollar robots on a daily basis. believe me when i say that they dont just run themselves. hell, the toolset i am currently running spends equal time sitting with engineers and maintainence trying to figure out whats wrong with it, as it does actually producing wafers. the last toolset i was on would go down once a SHIFT (24 hour operation, 4 12 hour shifts). i dont like the fact that people are being replaced by robots, but it will take A LOT of people to maintain those robots
 
i work with multi billion dollar robots on a daily basis. believe me when i say that they dont just run themselves. hell, the toolset i am currently running spends equal time sitting with engineers and maintainence trying to figure out whats wrong with it, as it does actually producing wafers. the last toolset i was on would go down once a SHIFT (24 hour operation, 4 12 hour shifts). i dont like the fact that people are being replaced by robots, but it will take A LOT of people to maintain those robots

Toolset failure is poor engineering, nothing to do with the robot...
 
i work with multi billion dollar robots on a daily basis. believe me when i say that they dont just run themselves. hell, the toolset i am currently running spends equal time sitting with engineers and maintainence trying to figure out whats wrong with it, as it does actually producing wafers. the last toolset i was on would go down once a SHIFT (24 hour operation, 4 12 hour shifts). i dont like the fact that people are being replaced by robots, but it will take A LOT of people to maintain those robots

Is that many, billion dollar robots, or many-billion-dollar robots?

Either way, I call bs ;)
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.