Slashdot Mirror
Toyota to Employ Advanced Robots
olegalexandrov writes "Toyota Motor will introduce robots which can work as well or better than humans at all 12 of its factories in Japan to cut costs and deal with a looming labor shortage. The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms, achieving efficiency unseen in human workers and matching the cheap wages of Chinese laborers, a report said on Thursday." The Motley Fool has a humorous take, and Toyota emphasizes that goodlife, err, humans will continue to have a place in Toyota factories.
Automation will free us from mindless, boring, and/or dangerous work, permitting us more leisure time to devote to more interesting pursuits. Aren't we all so fortunate to be alive now?
a looming labor shortage
The population is always decreasing. I want some of this stuff the execs are smoking.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms
So? I can operate a mouse with one hand and...
erm, nevermind.
I think that just for my sake, and for the sake of all my fellow Star Wars fans, we should just start calling them Droids.
The robots will be commenting on Slashdot too! Maybe then the editing will be consistant...
This is another way of starting a sig with this and ending it with that.
Pushing AND shoving are the answer. Toyota will protect you from the terrible secret of space.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
So to compete, the Chinese just have to lower the wages that they pay their laborers. They've done it before.
Labor shortage? How about outsourcing (insourcing?) some of those jobs to Detroit where there are surplus autoworkers?
When I read the article, I wasn't thinking berserker, I was thinking Skynet
See what I've been reading.
It may hurt the few it puts out of jobs in the short term, but IMO it more than makes up for it in long term gains in effeciency & technology advancement.
Wanna get nasty? - DaNasty
now we know where Bender went after Futurama was canceled...
Keep your eye on that one robot near the corner... he keeps mumbling something about Sarah Conner.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Can't you see it all not, the new robosapian, the new robots in the factories. Soon they will start working together to take over this world. I for one welcome our new "banafacotrs"
TEHY TOOK OUR JOBS!!1111111
I tell you that would be a hot toy for Christmas
"...with humanoid robots jamming in a brass ensemble and performing hip-hop."
robot1: "you got e-served"
robot2: "oh, it's (ON)/OFF"
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
Are they going to have laser/radar eyes? They'd better!
-- sometimes AND gates turn me on.
It'll be difficult for a labor organizers to organize these robots. But I'll bet it'll also be difficult to get them to act as good consumers.
If by looming labor shortage they mean layoffs, then yes a looming labor shortage will come. Good thing these robots are around. I mean how is a company supposed to layoff workers and get work done at the same stuff. Trully inovative on their part. I for one salute our new robot overlords, while the people in Russia have a robot shortage.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I for one welcome our new robotic overlords...
Jeez, don't *do* that! For a couple of seconds there I thought they meant "employ" as in "pay" and not "employ" as in "use". I know Japan has some pretty advanced robot technology, but they're not *that* advanced are they? ARE they? If they start talking about forming a union, it's time to get worried...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I for one, welcome our new two-armed manufacturing robotic friends.
All kidding aside, technological advancements not only displace jobs, but also create them as well. There is a small difference between paying 20 robotics engineers to develop, create, and maintain the robots exorbitant salaries as much as hiring 150 "guys off the street" to do the same stuff.
Yes, after the initial development, the costs go down, but not a whole lot. Someone needs to make sure the robots keep doing their jobs.
From TFA:
Japan has so far rejected calls to open up to large numbers of unskilled immigrants, fearing the effects on the country's social framework.
So instead of using "outsourced" labor, they remove jobs by having robots do them.... almost as bad.
http://www.fsckin.com/
er took er jhobs!
No matter what we think of Adolf Hitler personally, he is a major figure in world history.
Michael Sims is nothing more than a pissy little dickhead who had a tantrum over a perceived slight by a fellow volunteer and so closed down a worthy project when he had absolutely no right to do so.
I detest Michael Sims as much as anybody who's ever heard of him, but you give him a shitload of a credit he doesn't deserve.
But it is a crying shame that the guys who worked so hard to develop Slashdot don't seem to realise that Sims is killing it.
I don't think anyone will pay you for that skill.
that's right, you're nobody's fuel?
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. restoring civilization(s) since/until forever. see you there?
Does anyone get the feeling that China may be the cause of a new, strange war? Not shooting, but economic, robotic, worker-ethic, or something even stranger?
We already hear complaints that everything is "Made in China" (or Taiwan, but we shall ignore for this discussion). Ok, shoes, T-shirts, etc.,... but now cars?!?
Can China's cheap labor outdo even "Western Civilization's" tech by just throwing enough bodies at it? Toyota is scared that their non-smart bots are non-competitive against China's workforce? What next, Oracle is competing against a billion data enterers? (OK, a bit jokey).\
It just seems that a lot of stuff points back to China as a problem for many countries. [Put on tin foil hat now]
I am just wondering if there will be in the near future (or whatever future in the US's case; and yes I am American) some kind of trade war, social war (China being bad on human rights), maybe terroristic war by who knows who, or just straight out weirdness because China is becoming so powerfull by utilizing a labor method outgrown by pretty much every other world power a long time ago (ie, something akin to slavery- I know this is a powerful and loaded term, and correct, but I could not think of another suitable term that would describe some of the conditions that China lives under.
Sorry for rambling so much.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Come on! Someone had to say that...
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
This is surely the beginning of the end for jobs as we know them.
I think a better solution would be able to easily add or remove things like arms as needed, depending on the job.
And then there's the whole socioeconomic issues of replacing mass numbers of jobs with robots. Eventually robots will be better at most things, though not in our lifetime. Huge political and economic issues loom overhead.
Seastead this.
So the same robot could be the pusher robot and the shover robot at the same time, doubling their protection of us from the terrible secret of space.
"Toyota to Employ Advanced Robots"
Will they be required to pay them minimum wage?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Is this article implying that the cars used to build by hand, or by stupid robots? I'm confused.
*posts as AC because he didn't RTA*
Who else is going to sweep the floors? Not robots they are too busy making cars.
Why do we correct our criminals but punish our children?
And of course the "smart" folks will put some of their pay into upgrading their robot to allow it to do higher-paying work or to get more robots to rent out to other companies.
---
Crazy ideas detailed here daily ;-)
I read a few years ago about Japanese car makers investing heavily in robotics, but then didn't hear much more about it. I assumed that with the opening up of markets like China and India research had dwindled due to such low labour costs. This will require jobs to maintain and of course develop the robots. Which really are going to be mechanical arms with some basic AI thrown in.
...I'm waiting for the 'our new robotic overlords' jokes to start flooding in.
Toyota can spend more on design and less on the actuall production of vehicles, which will likely improve safety and performance of the vehicles. I hope over manufacturers follow suit. This should funnel more money into R&D for AI.
Sorry, I just rambled on with thoughts there. hmmm...
The US, Europe and others trade with China because they are able to produce goods so inexpensively, but we never think of the costs to our societies. They are doing to us, in many ways, what the Brits did to them with the Opium Wars. We are addicted to cheap products and so many aren't willing to give them up to compensate for the human casualties of the commerce: the millions of Chinese who work for basically nothing, especially in prison labor camps.
It wasn't until I became a Christian that I realized that trading with countries like China isn't going to tear down their bad governments. The Chinese government is only going to get empowered because most of the Chinese "capitalists" are actually Communist Party or PLA stooges. You buy Chinese, often you are buying from a company that is tied directly or indirectly to their military, no matter what industry. Their "capitalism" is a facade put up for our deception.
If we trade with China, we are effectively legitimizing what they do to their people. If you do not believe that there is a true, firm right and wrong that transcends cultural differences then your objections to their bad treatment mean nothing. The first world nations desparately need to stop granting them pseudo legitimacy by being a PRC trading partner.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
On the plus side this will put an end to cheap labour and bad working conditions. On the other hand eventually those millions of people who make your clothes and mp3 players for 50p will now starve to death and Topshop will still charge £80. Ok so this is nothing new, robots have been taking over jobs since the loom (spelling?) but its pretty obvious that the time will come when robots will be advanced enough to take over jobs that previously only a 12 year old could do. Im just interested to understand the new economics that will come into play here? Eventually computers are going to take most jobs, one by one going up the scale of complexity, physical labour and ingenuity and if true AI is ever created then humans won't need to do anything, robot slaves would serve everyone even producing our art and entertainment and we would melt into some sort of communist utopia? (assuming the tacky robots-tacking-over cliché never happens). But before that the very real scenario of millions more jobs vanishing will come, so what will happen?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
so, if you reduce the situation to its inevitable end, the citizens of this country will have nothing to do? What about the return on our nationbuilding investment?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
why Toyota is building robots in Japan and plans to replicate it elsewhere.
Its a link for non-subscribers(took some digging to find this article but thanks to copernic.)
WSJ.com - As Toyota Closes In on GM, Quality Concerns Also Grow
Another bit: For Canada, though being one of the so called G7, only the Russian built Antonov-124 http://dptscargo.homestead.com/antonov124.html could transport the enormous amounts of aid to the tsunami victims. The Canadians have nothing to rival this giant plane! We Americans are not any better because our even smaller cargo planes are more expensive to operate and require better and longer runways, and cannot self-handle! Airport workers gaped as they had never seen a plane as big with all the independence it has. I was also amazed.
I leased the new Toyota Sienna, and you know what, it's a pleasure to drive not to mention the quiet engine. When I look arround my house, almost everything I use daily is Asian made...from the cell phone to the rice cooker.
As Americans, we must wake up before it's too late.
and in Russia....uhm well you know the rest
Come on! Someone had to say that...
What did becoming Christian have to do with it? I'm not Christian and I came to the same conclusion.
One thing people have to realize is that a Price based economy doesn't deal well with replacing people with automation. Since the bottom line is making money, not making sure people have jobs.
savethedollhouse.com
cos you know he ruins it by being in the commercials
Although I think it's hardly fair to compare Hitler to Michael. Hitler is a Catholic nun compared to Michael.
We will have all this free time, just no where to spend it since we will have no income..
Ya.. great to be alive today.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Oh, please. If he can imagine a Butlerian Jihad, you can imagine not dying!
not true that clinic down the street gives me $50 for that skill!
The world already has robots, unfortunately they are human.
Something in the Chinese culture produces people who are too willing to accept this.
"We aim to reduce production costs to the levels in China," the daily quoted an unnamed company official as saying.
That cheap? Are the robots being made in China?
The ______ Agenda
The non-specialized robot worker will usher new era upon mankind. The think is, in couple of decades we are running out of work for people without college decree. The robots will remove manufacturing jobs and ever expanding self-service industry will cut out jobs from the service sector. This means that societies must adopt to new situation as the current social agreement is based on the assumption that there is jobs for everyone.
It's true that these innovations and changes will create new jobs, but the new jobs are created for the educated people not for the people whose jobs are disappearing.
A world where there are no jobs for everyone isn't necessarily a bad thing, if societies are rearranged so that a decent living is provided for everyone and people start defining themselves not by their profession but by some other attributes.
Mexifornia and Frurkey.
It is not a case of being smart. It is a case of being so mono-cultural that they cannot accept anything else. Japanese even have difficulty accepting ethnic Japanese who have lived in the U.S. for two years.
Gai-jin are people who are not like them, and the word has very negative connotations.
Why are companies outsourcing? Because others do it cheaper than we do. If we want to keep our fat salaries, we have to become far more productive than our foreign counterparts.
In the computer world, that means using processes and tools that make us vastly superior programmers. In the manufacturing world, that means using robots and devices to make one person able to do the work of hundreds.
Those who are losing their jobs to these machines only have themselves to blame. If you want a fat salary, you have to be that much more productive than the next guy. They should've been spending some time figuring out how to be more productive rather than wasting their time away working in routine jobs.
Now, I feel sorry for these guys. They weren't educated enough to see the future staring down at them. I am willing to help them get off their butts, get a better education, or figure out things they can do productively that machines can't do (yet). But they must do so with the understanding that they must be productive or they won't get paid.
Another option is to get into the machine building business. Learn how to build and run and repair these machines, and you'll be employed as long as people need machines. As for me, I write programs that allow people to access machines and I figure as long as people want to access machines, I'll have a job.
Or they can decide to drop out of modern life, go get a patch of land and raise their own food and live a simple lifestyle without modern trappings. There are still areas of the US and world where land is dirt cheap and arable. I am more and more inclined to this lifestyle as time goes on. I hear a lot of people are doing it already. Sure, it's back-breaking work just to stay even, but you'll never get fired.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Bender takes someone's job. Slashdot crowd: Yay!!!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"These bubbles are good for the massage effect."
Engineer #1: We didnt build bubbles into our bath, did we?
Engineer #2: I dont believe we did...
Engineer #1: (to robot bathtub:) Did you cut the cheese?
Robot Bath: ****
To expand a bit on the parent post (RealAlaskan)
Many people seem to be under the impression that there is some sort of "magic wand" for currency.
There isn't.
If large amounts of Yen flowed out of Japan (sent home by immigrant workers?) it all has to come back. You can't spend Yen in Korea, and you can't transmute Yen into Wons. You can buy Wons with Yen, and that bank could buy American Dollars with the Yen they bought, but the Yen can only be spent in Japan. It will, it must eventually be spent in Japan.
The reason that our standard of living increased during the twentieth century was increased productivity. Machines made it possible for each worker to produce more wealth. If it was truly a zero sum game, then the machines would have created more unemployed people. That, of course, is not what happened. Instead, we were able to pay workers a decent wage and create the consumer society. When I look at how my ancestors lived, I think I would rather be living now than then. I would far rather do electronics than try to make my living as a hand weaver. If they use Japanese robots, the money will stay in Japan and keep the Japanese economy healthy. It beats outsourcing.
Here I am, with a brain the size of the universe, and they've got me welding cars together. Don't mind me, I'll just stand here in a corner and rust for the next ten million years. Should I pick up that piece of paper, first?...
TIA.
China lost more manufacturing jobs than the US in the past decade. Face it, using people for manufacturing jobs are as obsolete as using people for farming jobs. All military jobs will be next - robots have huge advantages there - and the only job left for us humans will be selling Everquest crap on ebay.
I am a Chinese but I live in New York. The biggest problem is people read a few sensational reports and make it as if the entire Chinese population of 1.3 billions are living like slaves. We have sweat shops in U.S. too BTW. My brother works in China as an engineer. The wages of the production workers are low compared to your minimum wage but I can assure you they are very well paid compared to their countryside folks. There are instances of exploitation but a big % of such employment have significantly improve the life of the Chinese. The US has to keep improving its technology offering to be competitive with the rest of the world. Being a major economic superpower is not a given rights to you. It has to be earned and maintained.
The conclusion was that if the United States funded the Soviet Union to the degree that we fund the Chinese government, the Soviet Union would be alive and well today, and it wouldn't be far fetched for the Soviet Union to be the dominant force in the world. We defeated the Soviets by economically isolating them. A significant portion of the Chinese government's power base is directly tied to trade with America (and I imagine to some extent the rest of the western world, although this wasn't addressed and I really don't have any idea who trades with China or to what extent.)
I'm a little sloshed and tired at the moment (and that's my excuse for laziness here) but if you Google for something along the lines of oppression of the Jews in the Soviet Union and US legislation (I believe in the 1980s) you might find what I'm blathering about.
But first, Detroit needs to start making cars that people want to buy.
In the UK and mainland Europe the $ rate ought to make cars made in the US very attractive. They aren't, because in many cases they aren't, if you see what I mean.
Very few US-built cars have succeeded in the UK for the last 40 years - recently the exceptions have been BMW (X3) Ford/Mazda (Probe/MX6) and Chrysler (who, even before the Daimler merger/takeover, were the only volume producer to have a stab at selling most of their range over here).
It wasn't always this way. Go back 50-70 years and US-built cars and trucks were probably more common than those from some mainland European countries.
Innovation happens when it's needed. The Japanese have a need for robots because they are in the process of reducing their population to appropriate levels.
Japan is small country that is very mountainous. There is not a lot of good land available. Everything is very crowded. There are too many people. Two hundred years ago, the samurai would keep the population at good levels by simply killing anyone and everyone they felt like killing. Didn't bow low enough? Zip... You too ugly? zip...
Japan was also closed. No non-Japanese in Japan from the late 1600s until the early 1850s. You leave Japan, you didn't go back. If you did you were killed by the samurai. If you went there, you were killed. This long period created a society that became insular and guarded to foreigners.
Then there was that misguided empire of the 1920s to 1940, followed by the unfortunate decisions and events of 1942 to 1945. The boom years after the occupation ended led to prosperity and population growth.
Now there are too many people. The robots are necessary for the transistion of the Japanese population from the current 100 million to a comfortable 40 to 50 million.
I don't see that this is anything for non-Japanese to be concerned about. Europe is going through the same process but it is bringing in millions of Muslims instead of using robots for its transition. Which doesn't really reduce the population. It just sets the stage for conflict in fifty years between the backward Muslim countries of the middle east and the progressive Muslim-Christian-Humanist hybrid countries of the European Union.
The North Americans are solving their population transformation by allowing the migration of millions of Mexicans and Central Americans to the USA. Americans have always been able to adapt to mass migrations of immigrants better than any other people in the world. They think, if it worked before, do it again.
Robots will eventually pay for themselves if they can be made flexible, reliable, and cheap enough. They will make great killing machines for when it becomes necessary to begin systematically depopulating the third world of surplus young males. Plus they can do the 'shitwork' that no one else wants to do. Or clean up areas that have become unsafe for humans due to use of toxic chemicals, genetically-engineered diseases, ultra-intelligent landmines, or low level radiation from depleted uranium or dirty bombs.
They have unique customs, language, poetry, etc. Fine. Diversity is great.
But really, this resistance to foreign immigration isn't about preserving "culture" (they have no problem eating at McDonalds and importing our crappy music and movies). This is simple racism. There are generations of ethnic Koreans working in Japan who are not permitted citizenship and have been badly discriminated against in work environments. There are Japanese families who would be scandalized at the idea of their children marrying foreigners primarily because they're prejudiced towards and distrustful of other races. It's not a universal sentiment, but it is there.
Would you celebrate racism on the grounds of diversity? What about slavery? Personally, I wouldn't mind a world that was a little more monotonous on topics like permitting religious freedom, the equal treatment of women, racial equality, and the like.
I give 'em 2 years till they get outsourced to lower cost Indian advanced robots.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
I don't know about the cost of operating the C-130, however I do know that it can land on short, rough dirt runways. I'm not sure what you mean by 'self-handle', but I'm sure you had an excellent point. It seems like since the design flaws of the C5 Galaxy were found, the US has given up on building massive wide-body cargolifters. Also, the site you linked to did not have the Antonov An-225 listed, which was a surprize to me. http://members.lycos.co.uk/aerospace21/antonov/an
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
If it weren't for "the Great Communicator", who sold America on "greed is good, greed works", the US would be pushing automation harder and importing less.
...I will help breed the population like rabbits. With my help of course. ;)
Life is not for the lazy.
Although after seeing was a typical Tokyo apartment looks like I can understand why they'd not want more people there...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
This sounds pretty Xenophobic, especially for a Christian (brotherly love?).
China has lots of bad stuff happening, no question, but none of it accounts for the difference in living costs and/or wages between China and the west.
[This should be obvious, but...]
As long as Chinese are 100x "poorer" than westerners, they are going to be able to produce stuff 100x cheaper. No matter what the government.
China's advantage over other poor countries (Africa comes to mind) is it's ability to unite and focus its resources, rather than wasting everything on civil wars / internal strife. China's government probably would be ruthless enough to employ slave labor. But they don't have to. There are plenty of poor who are happy to work for a dollar...
...welcome our new advanced job-stealing overlords. Come on in, make yourself comfortable. (said while offering items in shallow, round, plastic tupperware(tm) style tray) Have a nut?
Somewhere in the middle we have rational Americans. Moderates on both sides that are tired of being sold out by a government that just doesn't get it. And it has not a damn thing to do about being racist. The largest block of unemployed (by skill) are technology workers, and yet there are more h1b visas being requested than ever. Jobs traditionally held by black have being completely replaced by immigrants, most of which are undocs (read as criminals, entering the us without a visa is still a crime last I checked). The leftist elites are alienating their own black constiuency in the name of diversity.
We are pushing our city infrastructures far beyond their reasonable capacities, because it's too many too fast. Urban sprawl, public services pushed to the breaking point by non tax paying illegals that are here because we'll obviously give them an amnesty if they stay in this country long enough without being caught. Hospitals in Arizona and New Mexico are going bankrupt because they have an obligation to assist those that come through the door, but the federal government won't fund them for the services they provide to anyone but legal residents.
Our government has no concept of middle ground. We want free range libertarianism, with no borders; because of it we have things like the patriot act, attempting to fix a problem of our doing.
Below is a comment by Roy Beck, one of the leading voices for reduced immigration (not anti immigration).
I stole this
Don't forget that there's an entirely different category of qualified work that (usually) doesn't involve or require a degree, but is still more complex than unqualified. I can't speak for the USA, but in New Zealand we currently have a serious shortage of tradespeople, who generally have non-university qualifications or have simply learned through apprenticeships. (College is mostly referred to as university in NZ.)
It's not unqualified work that we have a shortage of, but it's certainly all the sorts of practical skill types of work that universities don't teach. For instance, builders, plumbers, electricians, general home maintenance, and so on, are all very understaffed. It'll be a long time before robots could hope to fill any of those roles. The existing tradespeople can't find enough apprentices to fill the gaps, and hiring them is becoming more and more expensive because there aren't enough to go around.
This is almost certainly a direct result of the local government and others in society, in the last couple of decades, having encouraged everyone to get a degree. School children were brain-fed that if they didn't go to university and get a degree after school, it'd be very difficult to find a decent job. Local universities have been flooded with students who would probably do better somewhere else. My local university in particular seems to have turned its commerce faculty into a revolving door graduate production line, and it's as hard as ever to get most degree-qualified jobs because there are so many applicants.
It's probably always going to be difficult these days for anyone with no expertise in anything to find decent work in an industrial or information age society. This doesn't necessarily imply the need for university qualification, or for any formal training, though.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Are you implying that the waves of successive social rearrangement have made things worse for the underclass? The underclass in medieval European societies were essentially owned by the lords. The underclass during the Industrial Revolution were essentially indentured to their employers. The underclass now are still the underclass, but would you argue that their situation is worse than that of the underclass from ages past?
The global economy abstracts the whole capitalist marketplace into two camps: producers and consumers. As long there is some population somewhere that can buy your product (maybe a tiny western European nation with a small, rich population) the rest of the world can go get bent. Crank out your product with robots or slaves or serfs or peasants and make a profit.
You're radically simplifying to the point of distortion. First, producers don't operate solely within a given nation. Second, nations can be both producers and consumers in the same market.
Internal markets are where it's at in the rapidly developing economies that used to be beholden to the industrial leaders. Take a look at the computer technology and automotive markets in China. Not only are foreign companies entering China, home-grown companies are serving the increasing demands of the Chinese themselves. Would they have been able to build up internal demand without the wealth generated by exports?
Rampant capitalism is known as the black market and it doesn't work very well in the long run. The global economy isn't far from rampant capitalism, but it will work to some extent right up until the point where everybody's job has been replaced by a robot. Then nobody will be able to afford a new television, and the system will be in trouble.
Black markets are present in all economies, but large black markets are the product of restrictive state controls on commerce. People want something that the state doesn't want them to have, so people steal from the state and sell the goods on the black market. The rest of your statement comparing capitalism as a whole to the black market is strange, given that the freer the market, the less likely it is to have a black market.
A little international labor law and careful import/export management would be help, but one thing is for certain - this is not the path to utopia where "societies are rearranged so that a decent living is provided for everyone". This is the path to peasantry, serfdom, servitude, and slavery through debt. This is the road to a life where a communist revolution starts to sound like a good idea.
You mentioned the terms peasant, serf, and Comrade interchangeably in the first paragraph, but now you're saying that a Communist revolution sounds like a good idea. Given the historical failures of Communism (including the liquidation of, rather than marginalization of undesirables), it doesn't sound like such a great idea to me.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I wonder how the build quality of the cars will be affected here. I think in terms of the cars, this will probably be a pretty significant improvement.
I'm sure we'd have less lemons and perhaps smaller gaps between components of the car. Imagine interiors with detail and quality rivaling those of hand made cars. I think this can really give Lexus a reputation for being the "high tech" luxury car.
I'd also think that this might revolutionize the mechanics of the car as well where these robots may be able to assemble things like more complex suspension systems that give better comfort or simply how the engine is put together.
I think you meant "deploy" --unless there's a new robot union that worked out frequent recharge breaks and a retirement plan.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Oh noooo, mindless tasks are being stolen from us! How will we be able to afford TV, an some ppl have families how will we tolerate /that/ 12hrs a day?
You forget about the unions. Almost twenty years ago when I worked for GM, we spent $38 per hour for our cheapest employees. I don't know how much the unions shake-down the two remaining car makers in the US, but I know it's increased greatly since then. When you have to pay someone that amount of money to just sweep the floors, there is no way you can compete.
In an unprecidented move, ordinary robots are being forced out of their factory working jobs to live in trailer shipping containers around the shores of Japan.
Rumors are circulating that some have resorted to join the porn industry - offshore.
Building anthropomorphic robots for an assembly line is (in this engineers opinion) inefficient. The tool should be matched to do the job specifically at had. Hell, Toyota was one of the companies that started the buzz in Lean Manufacturing.
I work with robots. Robots are my friends. You, sir, are no robot. Wait, I mean you, sir, are not thinking of the right robot.
"Uh... yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?" --Pinky
While the demographic crisis is a problem, it's one that must be faced. Despite being smaller than California, Japan has over 127 million people, making it one of the top 10 largest countries in the world by population, with a population near that of Russia. If the USA had the same population density as Japan, its population would be 3.1 billion, half that of the entire world or over 10X the current approximately 295 million.
Many people believe that the build quality is directly related to the people who assemble the cars. But maybe it is because the architects of the cars have created an idiot proof system to assemble them. So reguardless of who puts them together, it is done more or less correctly.
Going a little further, they have optimized the process so well, a robot can do it.
I have an uncanny nack at predicting what the money-mongering elites will do to further their over-bearing control of everything.
here is my predicition (and I hope to God it doesn't come true):
The US money mongers will create a situation with China so that we have to cut off trade with the Chinese.
This will create a whole new boom in venture capital , which is the only way that these people make money by bleeding of 30% of all IPO money into their pockets. All of the manufacturing and engineering will come back to the US, and they will even be even more super and more wealthy than they are now.
This is not what I want to happen. Also, isn't it very paranoid of me to even think that the venture moneyed class is that currupt? And I want to make a smarmy joke like: And they are always wave so nice at me when they go by me in their yaughts
1. They just can't be that evil.
2. They just can't be that organizied.
Is it paranoid of me to think that they did everything that they could to sell me out to the Chinese and the Indians? Just a little paranoid.
There are good and bad in all groups. I really want to shoot my paranoia in the head.
I will end with a little prayer:
St. Micheal, please slay this evil dragon of my paranoia and make me a more loving person.
And bring peace to all
I feel so much better now.
Robots have been replacing humans for menial and dangerous jobs for a long time.
It frees the humans to do something that isn't so dangerous and may be even more humanizing.
IE: In the plastics industry robots are used to very quickly and efficiently pull the parts from the molding machines.
The parts are too hot for human hands to touch.
You all have the things that these robots helped produce: anything plastic
And this greatly reduces cost.
And this makes for much more efficient and accurate sorting and product quality control.
No big deal.
Robots, programmed by humans, do this.
Now when the robots start to do their own programming, then we might start to worry.
Anyone ever read the Foundation Trilogy? I know that you have.
This is the beginning of every Robot vs. Scifi movie out. I Robot, Terminator, The Matrix, and so on and so on. Think of the loss of jobs. Also, another complaint. Where are my American made robots? Chevy? I want a V8! Not some 4 banger :-)
ModLife.Net - If it ain't modded, what's the point?
Clinton, MA makes kick ass robotics for the plastics industry.
So which of my arguments fell apart exactly?
I always figured I was moderate and all, but I suppose everyone does.
I'm not talking about the United States's labor situation. A fundamental difference here is that the population is actually going to start shrinking in Japan soon. More and more of the population are elderly and retired, and there are less and less young workers to make money and pay the taxes to take care of the medical expenses of the elderly. It's not a matter of saving jobs for the people who are remaining, it's about a lower standard of living for everyone because you have a shrinking fraction of productive people trying to support a growing fraction of elderly.
And when I talk about racism in granting citizenship, I'm not saying the process is racist just because they refuse to open their borders to mass immigration. I think their system is racist because there are families that have been living in Japan for over fifty years and are inelligible for citizenship because they are not ethnically Japanese. They were born in Japan, their parents were born in Japan, they speak Japanese, and they work in Japanese companies. But hundreds of thousands of these people are not permitted citizenship in their land of birth and residency because they lack Japanese blood. Meanwhile an ethnically Japanese authoritarian leader wanted for murder and human rights violations is granted citizenship and shelter even though he never lived in Japan.
I'm not playing the "racism card" any more than you're trying to play the "leftist hippy card".
Is if robots are able to finally replace all labor work, then what happens to the workforce that is derived from teenagers? Fast food joints, gas-stations, assembly lines, customer service... If robots were to completly remove all labor jobs, then this would leave teenagers and others to do what? And eventually robots would be able to repair robots, meaning humans would'nt be needed at all. The problem, people without 'specialization skills' are completely unproductive to our encomony, they can't even be a consumer, because they have no income, because robots can do everything they can do. This would mean until they achieve a skill, that is usefull in the workforce, they will be completely dependent on their parents, who hopefully, won't get replaced by a robot. Jump into the future, robots designing, building, repairng robots, and programing the robots. Again, every step, completely removes the human. theoreaticly, if you had robots good enough, you could replace allmost all humans. Eventually all humans, wouldn't need to do any 'work' at all. It's all done for them. The food that needs to be made/cooked, all the products they use, all the health issues, and labor tasks, are taking care of. If this is the case, what would humans do? We all can't do one job, or just 5 jobs. There would be too many humans for the job. The idea behind robots, is to replace what humans do. What if the robots can do everything work related we can do. The problem with robots entering the work force, is that it is going to save them money, meaning, they profit. Does this help the economy? no, it makes it worse, as less jobs are available. As more and more jobs get replaced by robots, less money goes to society, and goes to the corporations (this is where greed is bad). If they do not lower their services or products (they just elimiate labor costs) The economy just gets hurt. The only solution to this, would be robot competition. But eventually, products and services would either have to become completely free, if the robots replaced all humans 100% in the work force. The end result is everything in life is free. Money is no longer needed. Welcome utopia. The problem is converging. How do you balance our economy, while you replace our workforce with robots, dumping less money back into the economy as more robots enter the economy. Robots can replace 1000's of jobs, but not 1000's of new jobs will be created with the era of robots in the workforce.
Black Sky
2D Elite Inspired Game
Watched a tv show where they had automated a toyota plant in the uk. One of the employees said...
"Well they are ok but they keep breaking down a lot"..
Sounds like the automation that happened at banks. Less tellers, but lots of people who ensure that the the systems are working ok.And then a ton of money on redundancy because computers fail over less easily than humans.
Q: Why do automotive companies outsource to China?
A: To save on labor costs.
Q: Why don't they move all their labor to China?
A: China allows rogue manufacturers to disregard the parent companies patents to create a nearly identical version of the parent companies product.
Q: Why is this bad?
A: The rogue manufactures keep all profit and if the parent company doesn't see any profit, they will not be able to incorporate new technologies and safety measures to their next generation of vehicles.
By avoiding China as much as possible it would avoid the theft of Toyota technologies. Why invest in a country that is going to allow the theft of your advancements?
Do you think that i'm joking about China copying cars like they do with playstations? They already have copied Honda's SUV and a GM car which they are selling for 1/3 the sticker price. China's official answer? The government closes their eyes to this and therefore the problem doesn't exist.
"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
Robotic Nation is the future.
Perhaps govts should force payroll taxes on companies that use robots, ie after all they are 'employed' but not paid, just slaves, but the country looses out on taxes which are there to support the unemployed and elderly.
Just wait till AI/voice recorgnition gets so advanced, even Indian call centres will be dead replaced by giant IBM servers doing 10000 calls per minute.
If no one has a job, who is going to earn money to pay for products made by robots? Other robots?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
No? So Nintendo isn't hiring any more?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If robot 173673 has a fault or error, another robot picks it up shoves it into the melting pit, and another robot is made that copies the dead robots 'brain' HD of memories. Bingo back to work in 5minutes, no humans needed if its a truly automated smartly made system.
Robots build robots build cars.
Maybe each robot should have its own bank account and get paid 50cents/hour, so that it can pay for its electricity/taxes.
I am sure 1 or 2 guys in a massive 500000 sqft warehouse can maintain 2000 robots.
Ever wondered why toyota/hyundai make those cool walking robots? its not just for fun, its for total human replacement in its factory plants.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Hate to say it but many conservative evangelical christians confuse socialism with communism when trying to destroy the democratic party by most of the preachers you see on TV>
You can be 100% capitalistic and 100% communistic at the same time. USSR was both socialistic and communist but lets not interwhine them.
China is less socialistic than the past but just as brutal today by facism since its just as much communistic so to speak.
Really you are right but those that believe in good godly capitalism think its a good thing since socialism must somehow equal oppression. IN reality we are funding their upcomming war agaisnt Taiwan and outsourcing jobs. We are providing the leaders for more nuclear weapons that we in return need more expensive star wars projects to defend ourselves from.
Its a mess.
http://saveie6.com/
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
From: a looming labor shortage you immediately derived The population is always decreasing.
And then proceed to whine about getting modded down. There are lots of factors that affect the labor pool... perhaps more people are now inclined toward desk jobs and are less and less interested in factory labor.
You my friend got modded down, and rightly so.
You take a short except from the article, reply with one line that has hardly any thought in it and then proceed with an ad-hominem attack on the toyota execs. If that's not trolling I don't know what is, and you're not even informative nor entertaining.
How the heck did this end up being +5 Insightful? Ah, perhaps it is because Slashdot lacks a -1 White Hood option.
How silly of me to forget that the ultimate goal of "diversity" is global uniformity--and monotony.
The idea that the invention of androids has been driven by xenophobia and racism, so the Japanese don't have to live with what they consider to be inferior races or to give them living wages, is disgusting.
We are supposed to celebrate the right kind of diversity--the kind where each country becomes so diverse in population, its culture so diluted by immigration, that all countries are eventually the same.
Oh, please. This is the same kind of pathological crap that comes from every racist. Racists lack the self-esteem to stand up as individuals, so they identify themselves with the collective culture in which they are embedded to dissociate themselves from their insecurity and self-loathing. When insiders come in and threaten to change the dynamic, they view it as a threat to the identity they adopted -- because they lack any identity of their own.
Individual creativity grows in direct proportion to the extent culture fades away as a social force. Hardly any of us could be doing what we are doing now, pursuing individual dreams, if our historical cultures had not been largely obliterated by successive waves of immigration. Each new arrival further weakens the hold that brainless tradition holds over each of us.
Fuck culture, nationality, race, and every other cowardly mob refuge for failed individuals. They're all imaginary constructs. People are real. People who can't get jobs because the xenophobes in Tokyo close the borders and replace them with robots suffer real hunger and privation. Cultures don't suffer, feel pain, go hungry, or do anything at all -- except exist in the imaginations of individual people.
My question: doesn't the uniqueness of Japanese culture add to the diversity of the world?
A culture that separates itself from the rest of humanity to engage in narcissistic self-admiration isn't contributing to the world.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The rise of the robotic executives...
/.work /.whip /.faster /.work /.jmp
Humans were cheaper to operate in the end...
Machines are too valuable to be damaged...
Its too late...
They are already at the top...
... but how much do they pay them? Poor abused robots!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm The (possible) robotic nation of the future. Also read the "Manna" short story. It will happen, probably sooner rather than later.
Its like Lichens... they grow together in a symbiotic relationsiop. We need their chips in our space shuttles. They need our space shuttles so we buy their chips. I am pretty sure you can draw this down to millions of relationships.
I do find it disturbing how poor the american car makers think of their consumers though. If you have driven an accord post 95 and then jumped into a post 95 american sedan it feels like someone is playing a practical joke on you. I haven't driven either of the new breeds that have popped up recently though; the Chrylser 300C (which is getting a lot of german help - its not really american anymore) or the Ford 500 (which is ugly as sin, as most american cars seem to be. How do these things pass by QC in the design studios?)
The reduction in expenditure due to less wages being paid will result in higher profit. Therefore, higher corporation tax will be paid. At least in the UK, corporation tax is at a higher rate than basic level income tax etc. Therefore, a net increase in tax revenues will be the result.
Hello, are you stupid?
Your country is only 300 years old. Nearly everyone there are immigrants within the last 6-9 generations, and some, like the Irish a lot earlier.
So now that you've made it, you want to slam the gates shut, to preserve you way of life, built up on the cheap labour of immigrants in the first place!
Of course its human nature to look after Number One, but dont think it makes you admirable in any way.
Surur
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
Er... what? Culturally isolationist, maybe. Racist, no. Japanese happily import all sorts of Western goods and pop culture, as does most of Asia. Why should they not be able to pick and choose what they want to allow into their country?
The reason for not importing immigrants is not racism. Look at the sad state of Europe's tolerance for intolerance - Holland, France, and Germany are being overrun by Muslims who don't respect the native culture. Japan doesn't want the same to happen to them.
I think you should get off your high horse and maybe see that things aren't so black and white.
Racists lack the self-esteem to stand up as individuals, so they identify themselves with the collective culture in which they are embedded to dissociate themselves from their insecurity and self-loathing.
I'm sure you could apply that to, say, white supremacists in the US. But to say that the entire country of Japan is racist because their economic policies don't agree with yours? That's just crap.
People who can't get jobs because the xenophobes in Tokyo close the borders and replace them with robots suffer real hunger and privation.
Japan has no obligation whatsoever to provide foreigners with jobs. Japan has its own people and economy to worry about. We don't live in a socialist world, grow up.
Disgusting to you, maybe. But that just reinforces their logic. They don't think like you. And they don't want to. Why do you begrudge them their own culture? And why do you consider them racist for wanting to speak Japanese and observe Japanese customs in Japan? Interfacing with new and strange cultures is new and exiting when you're twenty. It's a whole different matter when you're seventy.
Oh, please. This is the same kind of pathological crap that comes from every racist. Racists lack the self-esteem to stand up as individuals, so they identify themselves with the collective culture in which they are embedded to dissociate themselves from their insecurity and self-loathing. When insiders come in and threaten to change the dynamic, they view it as a threat to the identity they adopted -- because they lack any identity of their own.
Good God! Is this steaming dungheap what passes for logic at universities these days? Gee, Freud, did it ever occur to you they might be satisfying the basic human urge to associate with people like themselves?
Individual creativity grows in direct proportion to the extent culture fades away as a social force. Hardly any of us could be doing what we are doing now, pursuing individual dreams, if our historical cultures had not been largely obliterated by successive waves of immigration. Each new arrival further weakens the hold that brainless tradition holds over each of us.
That's a profoundly ignorant thing to say. In fact the freedoms we have in the US are fewer than our fathers', and their freedoms were based on cultural norms inherited from a group of Scottish philosophers, who were in turn building on their own traditions. You want to see what happens to freedom when one's own culture is discarded in the name of tolerance? Look no further than the UK at the present, with cameras on every streetcorner and laws prohibiting speech other people might find insulting. As George Mosse said "tolerance is its own tyrany." Your culture is what allows your society to function without devolving into a police state.
Fuck culture, nationality, race, and every other cowardly mob refuge for failed individuals. They're all imaginary constructs. People are real. People who can't get jobs because the xenophobes in Tokyo close the borders and replace them with robots suffer real hunger and privation. Cultures don't suffer, feel pain, go hungry, or do anything at all -- except exist in the imaginations of individual people.
You have to be from a wealthy country to even think like that. Poeple always exist in the context of a group whether they like it or not. Incidentally, people in Japan are under no legal or moral obligation to provide jobs or anything else to surrounding countries.
I've always had a great fondness for Japanese culture, and I'd hat to see it destroyed in the same way western European cultures are being destroyed - by unrestricted immigration. Twenty years ago France was worried about the declining numbers of French speakers throughout the world. In another fifty years French won't be spoken in France. Do you think that will make the elderly French of 2054 happy?
> Yet the machine doesn't seem to give the shivers to its users.
Instead of asking, why the Japanese people do accept machines so willingly, and easily making xenophobia the culprit, one can ask why do Westerners reject them?
Read the comments here on Slashdot and you will notice that many people will mourn the lost workplaces. And that in a rather technophile commmunity and despite the fact that automatisation has happened over centuries (weavers in the industrialisation, Ford T., robots 90s? or 80s?) which lead to the life-style we currently can afford and maybe even enjoy.
Think of the representation of machines and robots in Western culture. What picture do they paint? Starting with Lang's "Metropolis", over to Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times", Camerons "Terminator" or the more current "I, Robot", there are numerous films which are rather cautious, to say the least.
In contrast to, say, P.K. Dicks vision ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"), the stories of Asimov are one of the few which paint a rather positive few of robots.
On the other hand, in Japanese popular culture, robots are usually shown as in more positive way. (Starting with Astro Boy).
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Are you a troll, or are you a jerk?
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
buying cheap products from china isn't really a problem if you can sell something back to them. work on that.
and seriously, changing the political system to something different wouldn't probably do squat to their CULTURE(which has been kinda like it is now with regarding to human worker life for the past 1000+ years). as long as you have them deciding what's best for them they don't seem eager to change either.
the american 'capitalism' isn't much of a difference masquerade if you look at it like that.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Better not ship the blighters a Berserker, then!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Trust me, Japanese culture is racist. If you learn the language and live in Japan long enough among Japanese people, not fellow "gaijin." you'll easily see. On TV non-Japanese are mocked for being so; in all sorts of media (manga, TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, etc.) non-Japanese are marginalized, misrepresented and made the butt of jokes.
Television and radio, including the state run stations blatantly portray problems of crime as though much of it is attributable to non-Japanese people to the point where surveys show that "gaijin" crime is a major concern of a large percentage of citizens.
I could go on...for quite a bit, but if you're curious you can check this site for one snowflake in the tip of the iceburg.
By the way, what does socialism have to do with any of this? Japan's got plenty of socialism.
I for one welcome our new robotic overlords! still needs to rtfa.
I was able to find out you are most likely "Eric O'Dell" from the San Francisco area but you apparently slipped up. You are the person most fitting the description of someone concealing his identity while you participate in mob political correctness.
Seastead this.
Wow. The assembly line is one thing, but robots giving quotes to reporters too? Now we now humanity is really fucked! --M
Not if they automate.
Seastead this.
Simple enough. A Factory system requires, without modification, x number of workers. This is a factory for exporting product, so the demand is steady.
Japan is a big exporter of finished goods.
As Japan discourages immigration, their birth rate is about the only thing maintaining the population. So, since they're not having enough kids, the average population grows older. As the current generation of factory workers reaches retirement age, there's something like only 1 replacement available for every 2 that retire.
And that brings up another reason for the shortage: More manpower is going to be taken up in care for the elderly/retired, as the american baby boomer problem is nothing on the japanese one. Japan is actually looking at having > 50% of their population retired!
As the labor market grows tighter, you have options.
1. Pay more to draw workers from other areas to keep your production going (problem:Your goods are more expensive)
2. reduce production(problem:you make less money, the production lines are optimized for a certain number of workers, you loose efficiency.)
3. Automate more tasks (potential problem: capital costs of the equipment, require skilled workers to maintain them). Japan has lots of capital, skilled workers, and a looming labor reduction. They picked option 3.
I don't read AC A human right
Aside from the fact that the earliest settlers had a 25% chance of dying in the first year after "immigration" -- until 1965 the subsequent "waves" of immigration were from nearby nations where there had been a long history of coevolution. The sole exception was Chinese laborers who tended to form their own communities and thereby demonstrated their ability to have separatist enclaves coexist peacefully.
The treasonous betrayal of those people by the 1965 immigration expansion to all nations of the world was another matter entirely. Coupled with the tyrannical, forced integrations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 this situation has led to a state where race war is more likely than ever -- and it may become a global war.
Seastead this.
Does anyone remember reading a book entitled "Invitation to the Game"?
So instead of using "outsourced" labor, they remove jobs by having robots do them.... almost as bad.
if the japaneese didn't do this..then other nations would be better off b/c they would be more advanced.
the nations of the world compete for (and create) income by doing what they do best and working hard. anyone not on the scale of progress of advanced nations is doomed to sustainence levels (or even worse) b/c they wouldn't have anything useful to trade with.
the economic system does not tolerate slackers (or unfortunate people for that matter).
Please don't argue against my point for the sake of arguing.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
The American leadership understands that in order to keep consumerism alive, new technology MUST BE SUPPRESSED. It's much better to turn a backward nation into a sea of sweatshops and factories, because then you create a nation of consumers, feeding the whole capitalist/consumerist infrastructure.
As soon as you start to replace people with robots (who presumably will not be purchasing the cars, TVs, t-shirts, etc that they make), you have to find some other way for the wealthy to make money off of unemployed people.
Hey, I know! Reality TV! You could pay everyone to have their own reality TV show! Wuhu! I figured it out! Then there would be NO PRIVACY AT ALL FOR ANYONE WHO ISN'T OTHERWISE WEALTHY.
I for one welcome Big Brother. Don't you?
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
Here's the truth behind the rumors: http://experts.about.com/q/2210/3098002.htm It's not: Illegitimis non carborundum (not really latin) It is: Noli arrogantium iniurias pati
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"