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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."
So your solution to the greed of the "job creators" which is leading towards unsustainable wage disparities and high unemployment due to large-scale automation is to make it easier for them to get their fix by lowering employee benefits?
Why do you think the answer should be anything but "yes"? US labor just isn't that value. One of the things that would make it more valuable is precisely dropping employee benefits and such things.
GP was right, we do need a new economy to deal with the fact that people can't compete with robots anymore,
I'm a licensed purveyor of unicorn farts and pixie dust. Everything your "new economy" needs to work just like you want it to work.
Here's what I think the "new economy" will look like. A small group of "greedy job creators", a large group of parasitic leeches, who will eventually go extinct since they've lost the ability to manifest the new economy. Don't worry, it'll probably be quite humane via a policy of paying for sterilization.
we've been putting hackish fixes on this tarted-up barter system for too long and it won't stay running much longer. Trying to make people cheaper than robots doesn't seem like a good short-term solution. Maybe instead we stop giving into the money addiction of the few?
I wasn't proposing making people cheaper than robots as a short term solution, but a long term one. You'd have to supplement this with education and bionic augmentation (and perhaps much more of the transhumanist technology tree) so that people can compete with sentient AI.
As to "giving into the money addiction", those people with that "addiction" do amazing things. It just isn't a problem. I'd rather go after actual problems than fantasy problems.