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Will Your Next iPhone Be Built By Robots?
itwbennett writes "Foxconn has ambitious plans to deploy a million-robot army on its assembly lines. But while robots already perform some basic tasks, when it comes to the more delicate assembly work, humans still have the edge. George Zhang, senior principal scientist with ABB, a major vendor of industrial robots, thinks Foxconn will eventually replace human workers for much of its electronic assembly, but probably not in time for the iPhone 6. For now, humans are still a cheaper and more practical choice."
Android built iphones?
If the work is done by robots anyway, then what is the advantage of producing in China (except when producing for the Chinese market)? You don't have the advantage of cheap workers (robots don't get wages), but you have the disadvantage of higher transport cost.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Seems more and more jobs are being replaced by technology. What happens as the population grows but jobs dissapear?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What we really need to worry about are robots building robots. That's when they finally don't need us any more and can rise up as our oppressors. That's the beginning of the end, man. The beginning of the end.
iPhone 7 : Not only built BY Robots, built FOR Robots!**
(**Like all iPhones)
Now Apple is going to put Chinese workers out of a job. I can see it in 20 years, the CEO and CTO the only ones raking in the money, in their automated office with roomba's (made in Poland) cleaning up the office after hours and their Google driverless cars taking them home, to their Toyota robot butler opening the door...
"For now, humans are still a cheaper and more practical choice."
That's been the argument about labor since the dark ages. Slavery was cheaper than horses. The pyramids were built by people dragging slabs up the sides using ropes and pulleys; Even though it's almost a certainty that the Egyptians knew of more advanced engineering. They also buried the slaves (alive) with the king when he died. The question has never been whether humans are cheaper than machines: The larger the size of the labor pool, the lower the cost of labor. Supply and demand; Basic economics.
The question has been how workers are treated, and what level of servitude a society is willing to accept for some, or all, of its members. Even by the laws of the United States, what China routinely allows with its workforce is inhumane. I say this with the full knowledge that my country has some of the worst labor laws in the first world -- the fewest number of vacation days, the spread between what the head of a company is paid and its entry-level workers the highest of any country on Earth, and a grossly underfunded federal workforce safety department.
We shouldn't be doing business with them; They don't even have child labor laws worth a damn. But they have a lot of our money and they're cheap. For many countries, that's enough. I wish it weren't -- where are the europeans' "citizens of the world" speeches when they really matter? You're just as guilty as we are, that's why. Until human rights are something afforded to our enemies, as well as our friends, then we should be honest with ourselves: Nobody really has human rights. What we have... are privileges. And we live our lives in comfort because a significant portion of the world doesn't, and we aren't willing to help them get them.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Your specific question (if robots, why China?) was answered directly a few years ago by Terry Gou, Chairman of Foxconn. According to Terry, the US has "too many lawyers." Linky here.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Hmm... those rioting workers should have been more grateful for their jobs. The sly fox has a solution to worker unrest. The current version of robots do not strike or riot.
robots would be cool, i suppose. I am reading this on my iphone 5 that I stood in line 23 hours to get. I got it at the Apple store. It is made by Geniuses (Genuii?) Everybody asks me about my thin new phone. It is thin and light and had a bigger screen than the crappy old iPhone 4s. sure the maps could use a little work and the lightning power cord costs crazy money but hey, I 'm hip and people adore me because I have an iPhone5 I'm sure the people who made it are well treated and probably just like me: 30 something, stylish, hip and know their way around a wine shop.
-badford
It surprised me how much labor goes into iPhone manufacture at Foxconn. Cell phone assembly was automated years ago by Motorola, Nokia, and Sony. The iPhone form factor doesn't change much from year to year, and the volume per model is high. That's the ideal case for automation. Only very low salaries make it possible to do the job cost-effectively with humans.
He said "Bite my shiny metal Android. I'm usin' my iPhone to order more beer. Oh crap! A touch screen. Metal. fingers. useless. I need a human hand. Where can I get one. C'mere you..." Then I heard screaming and was disconnected.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
For example, a robot to scan and bag groceries wouldn't be too complicated [...] However, it hasn't been completely automated because paying someone minimum wage to put your groceries in a bag is still cheaper than a robot.
Around here it has -- they figured out that you didn't even need a robot, you can just get the customer to do all of those things himself. It's genius, I tell you!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Oh shiz! Foxconn worker riots were bad enough. Can you imagine an army of factory robots rising up against their masters? Apple would usher in the robot apocalypse. Android - The iPhone Killer
Sure, it is possible that they will start building mainly robot based factories in mainland Chinal, but why bother? In its purest form a robot factory would just take raw materials and energy as input, with product as output. You want to place a factory like that in a location with a really stable energy supply, good infrastructure, and a stable political situation. Staff costs wouldn't be such a big issue, since you wouldn't have too many staff anyway. So, why choose China, where you would have to deal wiith rampant corruption, bad infrastructure and millions of starving former factory workers?
Personally I would put the factories in Japan, northern Europe and Canada, that way they would be closer to the consumers as well. It would certainly save a fortune in security!
Expanding on your great points: http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.