Slashdot Mirror
A US Apple Factory May Be Robot City
dcblogs writes "Apple's planned investment of $100 million next year in a U.S. manufacturing facility is relatively small, but still important. A 2009 Apple video of its unibody manufacturing process has glimpses of highly automated robotic systems shaping the metal. In it, Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of design, described it. 'Machining enables a level of precision that is just completely unheard of in this industry,' he said. Apple has had three years to improve its manufacturing technology, and will likely rely heavily on automation to hold down labor costs, say analysts and manufacturers. Larry Sweet, the CTO of Symbotic, which makes autonomous mobile robots for use in warehouse distribution, described a possible scenario for Apple's U.S. factory. First, a robot loads the aluminum block into the robo-machine that has a range of tools for cutting and drilling shapes to produce the complex chassis as a single precision part. A robot then unloads the chassis and sends it down a production line where a series of small, high-precision, high-speed robots insert parts, secured either with snap fit, adhesive bonds, solder, and a few fasteners, such as screws. At the end, layers, such as the display and glass, are added on top and sealed in another automated operation. Finally, the product is packaged and packed into cases for shipping, again with robots. "One of the potentially significant things about the Apple announcement is it could send a message to American companies — you can do this — you can make this work here," said Robert Atkinson, president of The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation."
If the reason it can be done in the US is automation there's very little difference in terms of employment -- The capital holders get to keep more of their capital, some Asians get fired, and very few Americans get hired.Sure the GDP will rise but that won't make the slightest difference for the unemployed.
Robots are replacing workers everywhere and we need a new economy to deal with the situation.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I mean sure, on paper wages in the US look high, but then again there's next to no social security. There's no mandatory health insurance, there's little public infrastructure. In some places you even need to have a car.... at least that's what the typical prejudices say.
...if you don't actually pay anyone except the huge firm that sells you the robots (which were probably made by other robots). So, while I admit this is an overly simplistic view, we get all of the industrial waste and hardly any jobs. I sure hope more companies do this! There's a park down the street that would sure look great if it were paved over and filled with widget-making robots so a couple hundred people could make 11 bucks an hour to sweep the floor.
Apple is really NeXT 2.0. NeXT also had a fully automated computer assembly plant which was closed down when NeXT got out of the hardware business.
This massive factory will provide 10 badly needed jobs. Somebody fortunately needs to oil the robots.
It's a myth that automation is bad because it leads to unemployment, but no-doubt that myth will be perpetuated here. Someone might even say "yeah it frees people up, frees them up to STARVE." Let's try to address that before it happens.
As processes become more automated, the things we want become cheaper because the cost of labor is the dominant cost in almost every business. This means people have more spare money available, and it will be spent on things that before would have been considered too wasteful. This creates new industries and new jobs.
At one time, people would have spent virtually all their wealth on food. Because of improvements in automation, most people in the U.S. now spend a small fraction of their wealth on food, and this leaves extra money for, say, entertainment. At one time, having many people devote their whole lives to entertaining others would have seemed hugely wasteful -- those people should be out gathering food, after all -- but the wealth created by automation means that it's now a reality.
Some folks also make the claim that the new wealth will be concentrated in too few hands, and most people won't get wealthier. That, too, is false: automation makes things so cheap that just about everyone ends up owning things like microwaves, air conditioners, and computers -- things that before were reserved for the rich. Here's a good explanation of this: http://youtu.be/OkebmhTQN-4
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
Without the use of people, who gives a shit.
iRobot!....oh...wait
Table-ized A.I.
"Machines making machines? How perverse!"
Table-ized A.I.
There's no problem building an automated production line. The description in the article would apply to the Sony Walkman production line from 20 years ago. Anything where you can do vertical assembly, just placing the parts in order onto a base, can be automated very effectively with simple robots.
It's amazing that Foxconn uses over 100,000 people just to make iPhones, which are not very complex mechanically.
It won't be that long from now !! Back to being something used in K12 and MPAA studios !! The "phone" then is yet another tech commodity, and you can't keep fanbois attached when no one cares about the "phone" anymore !! And that time is coming up sooner than you could imagine !!
its the only reason the company I work for can be competitive on cost in electronic assembly, that being said it takes a small army to keep the machines running and fed 24/7
Robots can't commit suicide from overwork.
Not that that has a direct bottom-line impact, as asian workers are valued at less than a single iPad they make... but it has started to have a mildly negative impact on consumer opinion.
This space available.
The impact of holding down labor costs is that income of the market is going down. It means fewer people can afford to buy your product. That means your market is getting smaller. You'll have to reduce the scale of your business. And that means you'll have to cut costs even more. And you know what that leads to.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Read that as "at the end, lawyers". Seems to be one of Apple's three legs: marketing, legal and steve.
All of the robots used to produce these products will be made in China. So really the jobs are rendered obsolete by robots, and then the robots are moved to the US, but the actual jobs that support this supply chain still originate from China. It does look better on paper to say these products are manufactured in the US.
i always had trouble with the machining video. It seems like a waste of time and materials to carve EACH MacBook out of a single slab of material. I would have thought that the case was injection moulded and then 'finished' with a machine.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
"Machining enables a level of precision that is just completely unheard of in this industry."
Level of precision making squares with round corners? Stone artists in the Roman era were marking arches like that all day long.
OOOPS MY BAD, I misread "in this industry" as implying actually making something.
IN FILING TRIVIAL LAWSUITS and engaging in ANTICOMPETITIVE CONDUCT being entirely UNABLE TO COMPETE IN THE MARKET and LOSING MARKET SHARE DAILY then yes APPLES's level of EVIL LEGAL PRECISION IS just completely unheard of. Even antitrust giant Microsoft shudders at how Apple manipulates the courts and the market.
What a level of precision Apple is reaching for.
Quick someone spray more kittie litter on the floor. Apple's coming to mark more territory.
M
This is just a new Revolution by Apple. I bet that in the future a lot of other companies will copy Apple and use robots in manufacturing.
I've love to know when CNC machines became "robots"
"One of the potentially significant things about the Apple announcement is it could send a message to American companies — you can do this — you can make this work here
And then the law suits begin.
Don't worry, Rodney Copperbottom will rescue Bigweld, and remove Ratshit and his mother from power...
It's about brand management. Apple can now say they are making stuff in the US.
In the past (and possibly now) the majority of jobs were repetitive low skilled (e.g. digging holes with a shovel, porter, assembly line worker, etc.) that just about anyone could do with a bit of on the job training. To leave school at 15 was not uncommon 20 years ago. The service / knowledge economy jobs require a much more highly skilled workforce. If you look at the previous transition from farm labourer to assembly line worker both jobs were relatively similar in terms of the type of personal attributes required.
My concern for society is that with education standards dropping coupled with an entitlement / victim mentality that many people are being disenfranchised and have little chance of contributing to society. We cannot stop change, but we should plan for it.
Automation is an inevitable fact, it has been happening since especially the industrial revolution. The standard of living increases as more is produced per capita. The only problem is that if there is a standard of living imbalance across borders, some of that standard of living improvement happens in another country. The fact is that it is a good thing long term. Why should I as a westerner continue to live off the domestic product of the poor in the world without they reaping the rewards ? Rich can't eat money, they spend it somewhere, so ultimately this "money" thing is just an illusion. They can snort it up their nose or spend it on expensive toys for all I care. The standard of living is measurably improving, not at the same rate for all but the richest kings 100 years ago didn't have the conveniences most people have today. Somebody may have wiped their arse for them but their teeth fell out sooner, their kids often didn't make adulthood and so on ...
Money is simply a reward to make people contribute more to society. All we need to do is figure out a way to reward those that contribute more to society for a better return to society.
It's obvious that you don't know the robotics market... The largest makers are Japanese, German and American.
Welcome to the Appleture Science Enrichment Center.
What is Agile software development other than a 21st century, nonlinear assembly line with the project manager as a shop floor manager?
Larry Sweet, the CTO of Symbotic, which makes autonomous mobile robots for use in warehouse distribution, described a possible scenario for Apple's U.S. factory.
So a guy with no insider information, no possible record for having such information, and an obvious bias in support of his theory, suggests Apple may possibly use robots, similar to those made by this guy's company?
Yeah - Apple might use a heavily automated manufacturing process. They might also use low-cost labour. They might do a lot of things. But basing entire Slashdot articles on obviously biased theories ... well, it's just par for the course around here of late...
Britney Spears is a robot?
Of course it is possible to do the assembly with robots. Japanese manufacturers and Samsung already did it for smartphones. Foxconn is replacing people with special robots from ABB, which have two arms and stereo cameras. They can be used as drop-in replacement for humans. In the 2000s companies in Asia switched away from the totally automated factory, because of the cost of re-configuring robots for different product lines. However, progress has been made in the field of smart fabs. Therefore, the switch over time can be minimized and is already part of the product development process (as it is for human based processes as well). Therefore, it is completely possible to do the same, which is possible in the 2000s and today in China, also in the USA.
However, it will not bring jobs back. We have to accept, that manufacturing jobs will be reduced by two effect in the future (ok the same shit happens since the 1970s): First, productivity rises due to better tools, manufacturing processes, and better training. This increases the potential output and as the productivity rise was always higher then the GDP and consumer base rise, the number of people necessary in production is reduced. Second, robots become better suited to do variable tasks. The smart fab is a concept, which is heavily researched and the results are implemented widely in the automobile, smartphone and other electronics industry, as all these industries use platforms, module concepts, and product line methods to reduce development time and allow the production to be adapted in short time to different products of the same kind. For example, car manufacturer are able to produce five different cars on the same product line. So the first car is produced for Jonny Sixpack, it is a yellow Passant, while the second car is a New Beetle in deep blue, for his neighbor. Both cars come with different engines and other stuff like air conditioning, media center etc. (I am absolutely sure that other manufacturers beside VW are also capable of doing that.) Therefore, the jobs are gone for good.
The jobs are not coming back. We have to come up with a different way to distribute wealth in a society in which production is done by machinery. We could do a lot of things which are not destined to be super productive in terms of accuracy and outcomes. For instance, craftsmanship can be very rewarding for people, especially for those who have great potentials in that area. Also in caring for each other, there are a lot of jobs possible. The only problem is. How do we get the money circulating? When products can be produced cheaply, recycled and or disassembled quickly (with low energy consumption and without (much) waste). While craftsmen, may form dishes and furniture, that stuff normally stays in use for decades or centuries (not like that IKEA and Bob's furniture, which disassembles after some time). This results in you need one table in a lifetime. And as the number of people is stagnating (starting to be that way in 10-50 years, depending on the prognosis), the amount of replacement tables is very limited. The same applies for many other things.
So in the end: How will we distribute wealth? And, what will we do with all the free time? After all we only can buy products when we have money. If nobody is working anymore (beside the 10% in product development, 10% administration, 3% farming) the people will not have money and therefore they are not able to buy the products. Therefore the products do not have to be produced, and therefore they have not to be developed. In short: No consumer base => no production => no jobs => no money => no wealth for factory owners => no wealth for people in finance.
It's a myth that automation is bad because it leads to unemployment, but no-doubt that myth will be perpetuated here. Someone might even say "yeah it frees people up, frees them up to STARVE." Let's try to address that before it happens.
As processes become more automated, the things we want become cheaper because the cost of labor is the dominant cost in almost every business. This means people have more spare money available, and it will be spent on things that before would have been considered too wasteful.
Were does this "spare money" come from?
Great article Soulskill !
Have a nice one http://youtu.be/ov8FeODxyXU
will press the button that turns the factory on. He will then be fired.
... robots just became cheaper than chinese labour.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
..it is a problem of your mind. Too many of you think of manufacturing as "smelly, dull, low-paid". Workers are annoying problems.
Now, what if
A) your workers are actually professionals and have a three-year long education under their belt ?
B) they are experts in their respective process (from programming tool machines to properly putting leather into an expensive car) ?
C) they can rise into middle management from their technical expert position ?
D) these people are seen as being the most valuable element of a manufacturing process ?
E) your workers were proud to be "manufacturing workers" ?
Then, dear Americans, dear Brits, you would probably have a world-beating manufacturing industry. But alas, you treat workers like retards who are only annoying. You train them for 30 minutes and then they have to operate a 2 million $ PCB manufacturing line. To hell with quality, we need to ship now. And in three weeks, lets fire the guy we just hired.
You think of workers as enemies in a scheme to Get Rich Quick and that means you will never ever spend the money to train this worker to do proper machining, mechanical finish and so on. That's why Detroit Autos suck and why American and British manufacturing in general is in the crapper. Disrespect the workman and lose your industry !
GM already tried that with their "Saturn" works. The japanese took the opportunity to rip out GM's soul with well-trained and well-motivated humans and their 100 Billion neurons each. Each of their neurons was properly connected to 10000 other neurons while GM management tried to replace neural networks with stupid computers.
to build and maintain those robots.
Firstly, china having our technology and the manufacturing capability is just asking for trouble for the US. It's like asking Germany to manufacture our At
...Apple's just announced their new SkyNet which is claimed to revolutionize how machines interact...
And you morons thought Apple was going to create US jobs. Nah, the robots will run everything. German, Korean and Japanese made robots. But we'll always need some Americans to sweep the floor. Keep supporting Apple boys.
Great article.
Have a nice one all http://youtu.be/ov8FeODxyXU
This is the only way manufacturing should be done. Not only will many jobs be created, to program, design and assemble the robots, but all jobs will be well paid and exploitation free. We want this type of manufacturing to be done in the United States, it creates high quality jobs and supports the human rights standards that we as a nation believe in. I am no Apple fanboy, but this is also a huge win for their customers, because humans can not match the precision of robotic manufacturing. Good news for nerds.
Math
management--but it is hardly marketing manipulation to inflate your brand by doing good things and then being honest about it.
When cars are automated, and I don't just mean self-parking, our shipping industry will drive 24/7 with robots delivering our internet packages. We will be like UK punks socializing by the delivery routes which will be congested with robotic efficiency. Then like a story written by HG Wells, too late we will realize our folly in having created a gigantic planetary robot. I wonder then if we will be like the necessary bugs in our stomach to "it" or if we will be deemed a parasite that must be removed. (Un)lucky for us we have our Mother N, Using our knights and bishops we pave the way to our children fantasies, Cheers,
Robots reduce the number of low wage jobs but this move on Apple's part should still create thousands of high skill engineering and technician jobs in the USA. I work for Intel in Oregon where the majority of the manufacturing is done by robots but the manufacturing process is so complicated and new products are constantly being created that it still requires a huge number of highly skilled workers to oversee all the operations. It is naive to think that these factories full of robots will run themselves automagically without LOTS of oversight and constant improvements/tweaking of the manufacturing process.
One of the things that has drastically changed since the industrial revolution is the distribution of blue-collar vs. white-collar jobs. As others have pointed out, society's industrialization made the average desk job much more common, rather than reserved for the wealthy elite in business.
As rote, tedious, manual work is automated, there will be even more of a need for positions requiring education. Rather than dropping out of high school in a podunk town in northern Indiana just to go work at an auto factory for the rest of your life, it will be much more valuable to go to college, get a real degree (that is, an education that promotes critical thinking, math and science, and the skills required in those who will design and support and troubleshoot all this new automation technology, not a liberal arts degree that succeeds in little more than teaching you how to be politically correct and "feel" more), and make yourself useful as the world around you continues to evolve.
It is absolutely logical that businesses are going to move more and more toward automation. The cost of labor is high - not just the paychecks, but the benefits, the insurance, the constant evaluations by OSHA to ensure save work environments (not a bad thing, but even a small accidental slip-up can be costly to a large business), and unionization. Machines will never demand a raise, they'll never demand "collective bargaining rights", and they'll never insist on a pension plan. All these are pervasive in the world of manual labor employment - far more than what is commonly seen in white-collar desk jobs.
I think that Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory makes a very good point - Charlie Bucket's father loses his job assembling tubes of toothpaste after his employer buys a robot to do the work. However, the company quickly realizes that they need people who can support and repair those robots, and they hire Mr. Bucket with a better job and better pay, doing something that a robot can't do.
It's a myth that the plebes in society are incapable of getting an education and a real career. Start working on computers. Start working on cars. Learn a trade and become a plumber or an electrician. These jobs aren't going anywhere. We will always need people to fix our toilets and our laptops and our vehicles. We will see an increasing need for people who can engineer new technology, market it, and support it. These are the skills we should be encouraging the next generation of workers to focus on.
I'm a geek girl. Seriously.
job based health Obamacare or not is the killer.
Now take Obamacare and cut out all the job / employee stuff. But at best it's bridge to a over all new plan that covers all and it payed for out of taxes.
For years before Obamacare places have played games to get out of having to give workers health insurance and others have only offed joke care plans. I was on a interview for a IT job and they said there health insurance plan sucks and you can get a better one on your own.
Based on 30 years of industrial Engineering experience: WITHOUT reading it, I call BS! TOTAL and COMPLETE [expletive deleted] put forth by a bunch of otherwise useless academic pukes who could not actually design, build, and distribute ANY physical product of any utility. See NUREG 0711.
Myself, as a former and reformed NT network administrator, I "do" power plants and industrial equipment which do NOT use digital systems because digital systems break too often and can not be "fixed" at "dark-thirty" in the morning because the manuals for every digital system I have ever read SUCK, and the corporate "help" lines are USELESS to anybody responsible for field repairs. See also, the "smart grid", it is a farce!
and more trades based education as well in the automation field.
Robots will need maintenance, repair, installing and uninstall.
people in jail / lockup get more then just BASIC health care
start socializing these profits and productivity gains. I'm just saying... otoh if somebody's got a better idea (that doesn't involve 90% of us dying of starvation) I'm all ears....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
we just keep moving more and more of the wealth to the top, and let the rest of the world go to hell. If you're in the top 1% that's still 60 million people living like gods among men. The US middle class was really a fluke. First time in history. Before that a miniscule group of people took everything and the rest died of starvation and/or elements. I think the phrase is 'winner take all' economics...
Anyway, I guess my point is, people keep asking what's gonna happen when nobody can afford to buy stuff, ignoring the fact that the folks that own everything don't really care, because, well, they already own it all.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
but not all jobs need 4+ years of college that is what is missing we need more trades / apprenticeships.
College is not to be used as a dumping ground for all and they trun out people with skills gaps but at the same time you have people who go to tech schools with the skills that get passed over as the tech schools are jammed into the college system and they have gaps in the well rounded college part.
Now the tech schools should go full trades / apprenticeships and cut out all the other college stuff.
there was a huge run on them in the early 2ghz processor era, which is probably when most of your PCs were from. Go get yourself an 800mhz pentium and watch how long it lasts. I'm sitting here typing on a 3 ghz Athlon 64 that's well over 5 because I bought a board that fixes the bad caps problem.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
to get money out of the hands of the top and into the bottom? The top right now are using their wealth and privilege to gut companies' pensions and equity. Hostess is the current example, but remember Sci-Fi monthly and quarterlies? Every wonder what happened to Asimov's monthly magazine? The suits will tell you Americans just got dumber and stopped reading. Fact is somebody noticed that the company that distributed those monthly reading periodicals was stilling on a tonne of real estate that had appreciated in value over the years. They got bought up and liquidated for the short term profits. Every mag instantly lost their distribution network, and those guys run pay check to paycheck (real Americans there), so they went under.
How are you planning on dealing with those guys? The Bain capitals of the world? They completely break Capitalism, unless you're OK with the 'winner-take-all' approach.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
People not required ;)
they can commit death by overheating / over stressing parts
Perhaps some do. It's also true that many such people get the kind of health care that kills them. E.g., diabetics denied insulin. (It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens, and there aren't repercussions. After all, it's hard to *prove* malice, when all the witnesses can't or won't testify. And people in jail rarely have external support that can and will afford lawyers...and THOSE people don't get the same treatment.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I see a lot of variations of this answer to people who fear technology change:
People will just move into areas that require labor, like building and maintaining automation.
This type of statement always reminds me of this poster:
The bad news is robots can do your job now.
The good news is we're now hiring robot repair technicians.
The worse news is we're working on robot-fixing robots- and we do not anticipate any further good news.
I kid, and I understand that people will move towards areas with more employment opportunity. However, in the short term there is going to be a lot of pain. This is also tied to the Luddite fallacy:
But as long as real prices fall or real incomes rise, the additional purchasing power gives consumers the ability to purchase entirely new products and services, such as better health care and wireless communication devices and services. This has many leading economists believing that technological change, although it disrupts the careers of individuals and the health of particular firms, cannot lead to systemic unemployment
The problem I see is that real income for most of the population has not risen (AFAIK).
As Big money+robots combination is more efficient in more and more jobs, the communist-socialist outcome is not imminent. I see new emerging way of living - we'll all become pets of few rich ones, who'll be able to mine on asteroids without any need for us.
You know - Bill Gates is supporting Africans in Africa, financing their cure from AIDS and probably more. And it is not because they are just all lazy and do not want to work - but they are already not needed in the world economy. So when robots will take all our jobs - and I mean "all", we can not hide behind our high education, PhD - it is just a matter of time - when robots will get our creative jobs too. So, like a nice guy - Bill Gates, the owners of the New Virtual World will just feed us and give some money to live and buy their Internet-advertised goods.
But we will not have any rights, We will b e just pets.
Socialism is dangerous.
Everyone will be forced to cut their grass using scissors--that will create lots more jobs, right?
Put another way, you're an idiot. Automation is a good thing.
Stock prices have plummeted, sales have also taken a dip... will this bring good fortune to Apple someday? Let's see...
I sell house and lot
The GOP and Silicon Valley want ever more H1B visas for STEM graduates, spewing a list of horseshit reasons, but never the real reason: high tech skilled, compliant immigrants from cultures with near zero workers' rights that are more than willing to work for pennies on the dollar (unlike those lazy USians).
We already have completely automated production of software in the IT industry, i.e., we effortlessly create millions of copies of our product with the push of a button and no manual labor required. And yet there is still full employment of computer programmers, in design rather than in production. Why should the hardware industry be any different? Isn't hardware design an endlessly difficult and varied problem, just like software?
Robots building and designing the robots is inevitable. I think the only question is whether they all work for 10 super-rich guys at the top, or if perhaps those who weren't born into the robot-owning families actually can live off of something more than scraps.
lol NO!
If your robot can build a nice robot, I can build a better robot-builder myself and my robot's spawn will kick A$$ on yours and I and my robots will be rich until
someone else builds a better builder than mine...
and so "progress"...
so study robot design, kiddies!
Oh, and robots get into trouble -- that require a human overseer, so there will be a need for robot repair people too and then there is... lol
At some point a robot that can: perform tasks, reproduce, ... pass a citizenship test, .. will have to be treated as a person.
And then we can tax the $HI1 out of it.
Having your plan disconnected from work is excellent, but owning your own has some issues...
Try bargaining for better rates with a large company, especially on something that is hard to move to another company, and is that important to you....
And what happens if you lose your job for an extended period of time and cant pay your premiums....
Sucky as it is, I think the real answer is single payer.
emt 377 emt 4
Capitalism runs unchecked, people at the bottom get desperate, have a socialist revolution, take everything by force from the rich. The resulting socialist economy eventually bankrupts the nation and results in severe human rights abuses, causing a revolution where it is replaced with a democratic capitalist system.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
The big difference between socialism and capitalism is who is on top. Those with money are on top in capitalism, those with political connections are on top in socialism. Somebody will be running things, and many of them will abuse their positions. It's human nature.
Soon no one will either be able to earn enough money to buy these products, or even if they end up with 5 part tome jobs and have the requisite cash, they'll be so knackered, they won't have the energy to turn one on, let alone look at the wretched thing.
There is a lot of rhetoric on this thread about the impending doom of humanity as everything becomes automated. I think generally anytime you have a paradigm or technology shift people speak about the end of the earth or that we will all be replaced by robots. I don't think that automation of society is a bad idea. I do not believe that switching to manufacturing by robots will necessarily equal long term problems for humanity. I think the net effect is that people will move to fields that can not be automated or if the are automated they will come at great expense of time, resources, or other forms of effort.
For example, psychological counseling is traditionally done person to person. I don't know that someone who is struggling with an issue will choose to talk to an inanimate object over a live human being that can express empathy or even share in the life experience a patient is struggling with. I don't know many children that will want to stop playing with other human beings because a robot will be more entertaining. I think the jobs will shift to new fields such as Entertainment and the Arts, Athletics, Social Applications, Creative Pursuits - to be honest I think work will end up feeling a lot less like work.
I think as more of the mundane jobs are pushed off onto robots people and the money that they are involved with will shift to other sections of our economy. If an owner automates all production and no longer employs human beings - he too loses. Henry Ford new this principle all too well and chose to lower the costs of his cars through economies of scale so that he could increase his customer base. I think with Apple, eventually, Cook et al will fully understand this and reembrace humans in other portions of their business.
You're assuming that you're smarter than my robot builder. What if my robot builder has an IQ of 600, and it designs one with an IQ of 600k and so on?
I have a feeling that AI on the level of humans isn't that far off, and once somebody can figure out how to achieve human-level AI it is just a mater of time before superhuman AI comes along. Pretty quickly the AI machines will be building smarter machines whose intelligence only an AI could comprehend. So, assuming the AIs are still subjugated we need to figure out how to get them to work for all of us, unless we just want whoever invents the AI to just treat the rest of us as pets...
We are still going to need cheap, plentiful energy to power all of this automation, or am I missing something? May I suggest clean, American, natural gas? With all those high paying energy jobs in the energy sector, there would be plenty of money to buy iPad 7's, iPhone 8's, iPod 9's and iCar 10's.