US Regaining Manufacturing Might With Robots and 3D Printing

For years, the U.S. has been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs to China because of the vastly cheaper labor pool. But now, several different technologies have ripened to the point where U.S. companies are bringing some operations back home. 3D printing, robotics, AI, and nanotechnology are all expected to dramatically change the manufacturing landscape over the next several years. From the article: "The factory assembly that the Chinese are performing is child’s play for the next generation of robots—which will soon become cheaper than human labor. Indeed, one of China’s largest manufacturers, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, announced last August that it plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers in China presently do. It found Chinese labor to be too expensive and demanding. The world’s most advanced car, the Tesla Roadster, is also being manufactured in Silicon Valley, which is one of the most expensive places in the country. Tesla can afford this because it is using robots to do the assembly. ... 3D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that in the next decade we start 3D-printing buildings and electronics."

Comments

Goodbye jobs

[RichMan]

Say goodbye to a whole lot more mid-level jobs. This is the path we are going down, labor is expensive.

But what is the cost of a large unemployed population ?

Re:Goodbye jobs

[crazyjj]

But what is the cost of a large unemployed population ?

Historically, this has led to political instability and social unrest.

Re:Goodbye jobs

[crazyjj]

People will be freed up for creative jobs, jobs that involve human intelligence which can't be done by machines.

And what are the non-creative idiots going to do for a living? Working in the environments that most of us /.ers work in, it's easy to forget that they're still the majority, you know.

Re:Goodbye jobs

[Belial6]

This is why at some point we need to accept that as some point in the future most of the population is going to be permanently unemployed. This can either be the dream of a paradise where everyone can live a life of leisure and self fulfillment, or it can be a horror where where the wealthy live in leisure while the teaming masses live in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty. We need to decide which way we will go, and move in that direction.

We are not there yet for the general population, but we are far enough along that we would likely be better off if we accepted that some segments of our society have reached that point.

Re:Goodbye jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

And what are the non-creative idiots going to do for a living?

They'll do what they've always done: Management.

Re:Goodbye jobs

[crazyjj]

If you want to get an idea of what this looks like in practice, just look at Brazil. The rich live in heavily-secured opulence, the poor live in abysmal poverty.

Re:Goodbye jobs

[TheRaven64]

Someone has to drive the buses, sweep the streets, flip the burgers and operate the checkout at the supermarket et cetera, et cetera

I've been to several cities where busses have been replaced by automated trams. Street sweeping isn't done by guys with brooms anymore, it's done by guys driving around (slow-moving) vehicles. They're no harder to automate than a roomba. Most supermarkets have self-service checkouts and just one security guard to watch half a dozen or more of them, and even that wouldn't be required with RFID on the product tags. Burger flipping is probably around for a little while longer - it's not hard to design a machine that would cook and assemble fast food burger (it's simpler than many automated factory tasks), but the human is so cheap in comparison to the machine that it would take a good few years to break even and the human is more flexible when you want to change the menu.

If these people had been stakeholders in the businesses introducing automation, then it would have been fine: as they were replaced by robots they'd have just had more free time and less work. Unfortunately, we've concentrated ownership in a small subset of the population and are trying to fudge the gap with welfare payments, paid out of a general fund and not by the people making profits from the trend.

Re:Goodbye jobs

[DM9290]

With any luck it will also lead to automatic education systems that will allow all those people learn new skills to better deal with the new world.

Gosh.. I sure hope we get lucky! Because if we don't get lucky we're looking forward to the collapse of the economy and major violent civil unrest.

No doubt it will be hard, and impossible for some, but such are any major shifts in economy and production.

You are envisioning the economy is going to shift to something that robots can not do but people can? shift to what? Poetry? Erotic massage? Surrogate motherhood for the ultra wealthy? Sperm donation? Organ sales?

All the signs point to the economy shifting towards ever more automation, and ever more accumulation of wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer owners, and there are no signs or reason to suspect this trend is ever going to stop until there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do that a robot can't do better, at which point on what side of the fence are you going to be on when surgical robots show up to harvest your organs at age 18 to pay back all the money you've been borrowing to survive through your childhood but can not possibly repay?

The irony of "creating jobs"

[ACluk90]

What an irony when politicians are talking about creating jobs. Economy is not about creating jobs, but about eliminating the need to work and rising the quality of life. This is the way to the future.

4 day work week?

[Piata]

All this automation is great and everything but when does it actually translate into a benefit for humanity in general?

I'm so glad some business can now churn out more crap to purchase at cheaper prices. When are we going to focus on shortening the work week or making housing more affordable? What about investing more time in expanding humanity's presence in the solar system? Or reducing our environmental foot print?