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In a World of Robots, Carmakers Persist in Hiring More Humans (bloomberg.com)
It looks like car-industry employees who are concerned about robots taking their jobs don't need to worry -- for now, at least. Of the 13 publicly traded automakers with at least 100,000 workers at the end of their most-recent fiscal year, 11 had more staff compared with year-end 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Combined, they had 3.1 million employees, or 11 percent more than four years earlier, the data show. From the report: Carmakers in China and other emerging markets, where growth is strongest, favor human labor because it requires less upfront investment, said Steve Man, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in Hong Kong. In developed markets, tasks that can be handled by robots were automated years ago and automakers are now boosting hiring in research and development as the industry evolves. "There's been a lot of growth in emerging markets, especially China, so that's one reason automakers are adding staff," Man said. "More staff is being added on the R&D side, with the push for autonomous, electric, connected vehicles." A trio of Chinese automakers, SAIC Motor, Dongfeng Motor Group and BYD -- in which Warren Buffett is a major investor -- increased staff by at least 24 percent. Volkswagen accounted for more than one in five jobs among the group of 13, and increased its employee count by 12 percent in the period. Things, however, look differently at General Motors, which shrank its payroll 18 percent to 180,000, and Nissan Motor, which contracted by 2.8 percent to 139,000 workers, the report added.
It's below minimum wage for many jobs. It's about $125 a week a month for manufacturing jobs.
Why are the chinese hiring humans? They are still cheaper than robots.
Plus chinese workers are often injured on the job (often permanently) because their safety standards for working with chemicals is still worse. In part, because life is still worth less in china. In the U.S. republicans appear to value human lives at about 1.2 million (based on the regulations they pass). democrats and the courts appear to value human life at about $8 million (based on the regulations and laws they pass and court judgements.)
I think the first is too low (it used to be 2 million) and the second is too high. It used to be about 2 million-- I expected it to be about 3-4 million when I researched this post.
In china, it looks to be about $5,000 to $10,000 currently tho it is more expensive if the person lives but is injured/crippled.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The press just needs to calm the fuck down. Robots and AI have been around a long ass time. People were making stupid ass predictions in the 1950's about robot-slave helpers, flying cars, jetpacks, decent batteries, etc... Worlds Fair kinda shit, you know? Technology has really marched on... AI can't even create a decent spellchecker yet and people are finding out it's real work and costly sometimes to replace humans even for easy assembly line jobs. Not always, but more than the press would have you believe.
This article is full of shit. First you have this.
Car-industry employees concerned that robots will put them out of work needn’t worry -- at least for now.
Which, okay Bloomberg, tell me what you got there...
Auto companies are hiring more for software positions than hardware roles to prepare for a future in which more vehicles are communicating with each other and their surroundings, Man said.
...Seriously, what the literally fuck Bloomberg? The folks that are concerned about their job isn't the R&D team, it's the fucking guy who bolts a door onto the car, the folks that make after market shit, and so on, ya know, those hardware people you just fucking glossed over.
The rising popularity of electric cars is also set to cause an upheaval at manufacturers that make parts for internal-combustion engines.
Holy MFing Shit! Bloomberg!? So, there's no need for anyone in the auto industry to worry except the people who were the one worrying to begin with. Got'cha! How fucking disconnected are you from the world? I get that you all deal with numbers and what-not, but I think you're forgetting just because the numbers go up does not mean it's great news for everyone involved.
Saturn, the former GM subsidiary heavily invested in automation. If you remember their slogan "A Different Kind Of Company, A Different Kind Of Car ", their goal was to produce high quality, low labor vehicles. They never quite hit the "quality" mark, and that's exactly where they are today... gone, almost a decade now.
The fact are - "AI" doesn't exist yet and automation is way over hyped. Thus the nexus between the 2 is vaporware and will be for another decade or 3.
well there is also the little issue that at least for americans, education prices are skyrocketing, and wages aren't keeping up with inflation. Sure some people may not want to work in school, but some are actually calculating that it will take many decades to actually break even assuming everything goes perfectly.
I bet they're just extracting their brains and implanting them in the cars, and using them in place of hiring people to write and QA their UI software and anti-collision algorithms.
On Autoline After Hours a robot-programming gentleman said "Using robots to build cars is difficult. We nickname them Blind, Dumb, One-Armed Bobs because they can't see what they are doing. They have no intelligence. And they only have one arm so the tasks have to be extremely simple."
He then went on to explain there are many situations where the human is the better worker.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
First the robots just moved in fixed positions.
Then they had simple switches, and could sense their environment a bit.
Now they have 2D vision which works well for many simple tasks. They can also do simple planning about how to move in a fixed environment.
Tomorrow 2.5D vision will become common. Bin picking already works. Sort of.
At each step more automation is possible.
Real wages are slowly moving up. And college tuition and fees are up, but not that bad - it's when you factor in room-and-board on-campus that things have really exploded.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well, a production job in the car industry costs about $100,000 a year. (Including overhead of management and HR and more of these ancillaries) so it costs $900,000,000 per year over 150,000 cars => $6,000 per car. The Model 3 on average costs $ 45,000 so that gives $39,000 for producing the car and service and all that. That looks not too bad.
On Autoline After Hours a robot-programming gentleman said "Using robots to build cars is difficult. We nickname them Blind, Dumb, One-Armed Bobs because they can't see what they are doing. They have no intelligence. And they only have one arm so the tasks have to be extremely simple." He then went on to explain there are many situations where the human is the better worker.
That's the "classic" industrial robot arms that have been around since the 80s. They're still in use because although quite basic and inflexible they're also cheap and reliable. But if he think those are the only kind of robots coming for the jobs, well then I think he missed the last 30 years. We have robots with sensors. We have robots with more than one arm. And I don't know if they're really intelligent but we have robots that'll check its input, output and self-integrity and will set off alerts and alarms, not just blindly keep doing what it's doing. I suppose there's still many situations where the human is still the better worker, but robots have far from peaked in functionality.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Regarding predictions, my impression is that a lot of them are actually fulfilled, even if ultimately in somewhat different way. And perhaps a bit later than expected. Also, concerning cybernetics in particular, it's kind of difficult to satisfy expectations when we don't even have an fully satisfactory (to everyone) definition of what "intelligence" is.
Ezekiel 23:20
It's too soon to know whether that is an upward trend, or a continuation of the approximately flat compensation evident since 2000 (which is up on mid 90s but lower than the 70s).
"Don't hit us too hard with environmental regulations and don't look too closely at the taxes our Big Guys should be paying, because you endanger JOBS, JOBS, JOBS".
Perhaps this old, old saw has a backside, too?
Wrong. I've visited two modern plants in the last five years. One was a tea packaging facility and the other was a tape drive assembly plant. Not only do I know exactly what kind of automation they used, I also got to talk to several plant engineers about the software side, too. There are still a shitton of people working in manufacturing. It's not some empty robot plant. "Modern" shit didn't just come along and replace everyone. It didn't happen yesterday, it didn't happen 40 or 50 years ago when people were saying the same shit, and it isn't going to happen tomorrow. As I said, just calm the fuck down. This is evolutionary not revolutionary.
A work environment for robots costs as much as one for humans. But they can use the robots to replace the jobs that humans don't want to do - paint spraying, installing glass windows and auto-mobile dashboard panels. That leaves the humans to install the smaller lightweight components.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
If you have a plant that can house 100 workers and machinery you can install better machines and have it do the work of 200 with those same 100 workers. You can now produce twice as much with lower overall unit cost. The number of workers in that plant stays the same, but another plant that cannot raise the capital to buy the new machines goes bust and the total number of workers goes down as the market can be served by the remaining plant.
Automation reduces the need for human workers. There is no doubt about that. However, it doesn't mean that there aren't a certain number and class of jobs that need doing by people. Stating general arithmetic regarding worker to machine ratios lacks the subtlety to include the fact that not all the jobs can be done by machines in the first place. Do factory owners want more automation and is there a general trend toward it? Yes, of course. That, however, is definitely not my point.