Foxconn is an interesting mega-beast. It has a campus that houses 500k people and employees 1 million.<p>Just think about that... when was the last time you heard of a company employing more than like 200k people <i>world wide</i> and this company employees 1 million at it's production facility in China.<p>Apparently living and working conditions aren't great, we all read the followups to the original suicides. From what I gathered they were extremely barren, but better than the alternative of sleeping on the street in that city. They made it sound like if you try and get by in the city on your own, and you are low-income, it is incredibly vicious (mugging, etc.)<p>What I find interesting is that as these people fight for better conditions and increased wages, Foxconn's reply is "Whatevs, we are getting robots to replace you".<p>In the next 3 years they are looking at rolling out 1 million robots to replace workers, I imagine slowly firing 50-70% of their workforce. The only way I see these people not getting fired is the Chinese govt, in an attempt to stem riots[1], requires Foxconn to keep most of them employed.<p>This is an interesting twist of the future... I suppose some part of me assumed that by 2020+ machines would be making most of what I use, but when I look at the scale of jobless people as a result of it, it really makes me scratch my head to figure out where we fit in the future.<p>Our only salvation seems, at least for now, to expand ourselves in creative professions that cannot be performed by machines (yet).<p>When AI finally becomes mature enough to model a human (I don't really expect that to be very far off. Our compute power is getting ridiculous) I imagine that won't be off-limits for robots either and our job as humans will be just to exist and experience... nothing more.<p>tl;dr - assume robots and AI get sufficiently advanced to do most everything physical and most things that are deemed creative... what IS our purpose here then?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E</a>
If USA wants to become a strong "manufacturing" country again, it needs to become a leader in the robot workforce revolution, too. This is disruption. It will happen either way, and it's a net benefit for human kind.<p>It doesn't mean it will replace humans, but it does mean it will kill a lot of current jobs, just like the Internet is killing many jobs now, but creating 3x more in return. Having a robot powered economy means consumerism will explode and there will be a lot of <i>new</i> jobs being created.<p>Obviously this will upset a lot of things and people in the short term as they need to change jobs, but I think most people are already starting to get used to switching jobs often. The country leaders will need to think long-term here, but seeing how US thinks about "saving jobs" right now, I wouldn't be surprised if they introduce some laws <i>against</i> robot manufacturing in the next few years, but hopefully they won't.<p>If they push this, it could create a new golden era of growth for USA. If they don't act fast, the Asians will do it first, and they'll continue to remain the leaders in manufacturing (which will probably end up happening).
This is the robot they plan on using:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjo4AsTVh0s" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjo4AsTVh0s</a><p><a href="http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/8657F5E05EDE6AC5C1257861002C8ED2.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/8657F5E05EDE6AC5C1257861002...</a><p><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/13/frida-concept-robot-will-solve-all-of-foxconns-problems-by-re/" rel="nofollow">http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/13/frida-concept-robot-will-...</a>
I don't see how this will work in 3 years time. Cheap robots today (<100K) suck at manual dexterity tasks. It took quite a lot of work to get a PR2 to fold laundry (and some of the best robotics people in the world worked on this). The kinds of tasks I imagined Foxconn workers performed all require significant manual dexterity.<p>For an amazing use of robots in a factory environment, I would suggest a tour of BMW's Munich factory. They have a whole bunch of specialized robotic arms that do things like welding, lifting, painting, etc. Their factory still employs humans (albeit fewer humans). In BMW's case, their use of robotics makes sense. Foxconn, not so much.<p>Finally, there are some completely automated car factories. I thought Hyundai's US factory manufactured cars solely with robots. However, I believe they have a higher defect rate (partially due to this process).<p>Edit: Link to the PR2 laundry folding robot - <a href="http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/04/02/towels-uc-berkeley" rel="nofollow">http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/04/02/towels-uc-berkel...</a>
Promotional videos from a company involved with Foxconn robots:<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa8qCj1oQn0" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa8qCj1oQn0</a><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTpvIc0Zd2E" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTpvIc0Zd2E</a><p>And another asking if they'll still need humans (spoiler: no):<p><a href="http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjMyMTMzMzk2.html" rel="nofollow">http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjMyMTMzMzk2.html</a><p>One more blurry one:<p><a href="http://video.sina.com.cn/v/b/51887552-1635296834.html" rel="nofollow">http://video.sina.com.cn/v/b/51887552-1635296834.html</a>
From a social perspective, isn't this counter productive? China has a ton of people they need to transition from rural economies into urban employement - building robot factories does nothing to address this issue, which is a big deal in a country with compulsory military service (youth unemployment -> civil unrest).<p>For a competitive perspective, if the labor component is being automated - why should it be cheaper to run a robot factory in China vs. the US? Sounds like you a difference in legal climate...that need to be evened up.
Just a logical step in the development of countries/industries. First human labour is cheaper, then it becomes more expensive and robots become cheaper too making them a good alternative. As a plus, humans dont have to do the dangerous jobs anymore. This very cheap labour will now also move to other countries, making them richer in turn until they will also move to robots. This is the good side of globalization and should be applauded, provided that people who are fired have a chance to move to other jobs and get supported by training and education if necessary.
There are two stories on this currently posted to HN, this one, and the one at <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2827861" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2827861</a><p>I have no idea which will get the discussion, if either, but it might be worth trying to make sure any discussion doesn't get unnecessarily split.
Somebody is going to have to design, manufacture, and maintain the robots. Consumer goods will be cheaper. Robotic technology will make progress. A lot of people will benefit but we must also think about the people who will loose their jobs. I don`t have an answer but I hope there is a plan for them.
Was at the Microsoft campus bus stop in Redmond recently and it was plastered (and I mean plastered) w/ posters for Mike Daisey's spoken word piece:<p><a href="http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/</a>
This is the real challenge. In 1995-2002 the us lost something around 2 million jobs to Chinese manufacturing.'the chinese lost 15 million jobs to the robots.
"...which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou <i>at a workers' dance party</i> Friday night."<p>Wow, talk about a dick move. I wonder how he spun that.
You couldn't get away with this politically in the Western world without a huge stink, although from a capitalistic point of view, it's the right thing to happen.<p>China in capitalist trail blazing shocker? ;-)