
Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years - acak
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131018764.htm
======
rkalla
Foxconn is an interesting mega-beast. It has a campus that houses 500k people
and employees 1 million.

Just think about that... when was the last time you heard of a company
employing more than like 200k people _world wide_ and this company employees 1
million at it's production facility in China.

Apparently living and working conditions aren't great, we all read the
followups to the original suicides. From what I gathered they were extremely
barren, but better than the alternative of sleeping on the street in that
city. They made it sound like if you try and get by in the city on your own,
and you are low-income, it is incredibly vicious (mugging, etc.)

What I find interesting is that as these people fight for better conditions
and increased wages, Foxconn's reply is "Whatevs, we are getting robots to
replace you".

In the next 3 years they are looking at rolling out 1 million robots to
replace workers, I imagine slowly firing 50-70% of their workforce. The only
way I see these people not getting fired is the Chinese govt, in an attempt to
stem riots[1], requires Foxconn to keep most of them employed.

This is an interesting twist of the future... I suppose some part of me
assumed that by 2020+ machines would be making most of what I use, but when I
look at the scale of jobless people as a result of it, it really makes me
scratch my head to figure out where we fit in the future.

Our only salvation seems, at least for now, to expand ourselves in creative
professions that cannot be performed by machines (yet).

When AI finally becomes mature enough to model a human (I don't really expect
that to be very far off. Our compute power is getting ridiculous) I imagine
that won't be off-limits for robots either and our job as humans will be just
to exist and experience... nothing more.

tl;dr - assume robots and AI get sufficiently advanced to do most everything
physical and most things that are deemed creative... what IS our purpose here
then?

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E>

~~~
hackinthebochs
It always makes me scratch my head when people brush off the coming automation
revolution by saying "they'll just get _other_ jobs". The point is,
eventually, there will be no jobs at all. This is going to require a major
rethinking of our social structure. Even the process of getting to that point
will be slow and cause severe economic and social upheaval. We need to be
thinking about this now before we have 10 million rioting in the streets
because there are no jobs left.

~~~
hugh3
The point isn't that there'll be no jobs, because ten jobs building a hundred
widgets an hour can be replaced by ten jobs maintaining a hundred robots that
build ten thousand widgets per hour, thus making everybody significantly
richer.

The real problem is that increasing automation only creates jobs for _smart_
people, while destroying jobs for _dumb_ people. Not everybody capable of
building widgets is capable of maintaining a widget-building robot. We're
replacing manual labour jobs with jobs that require a brain, but half the
population still has below-average intelligence.

~~~
rkalla
Good point, but does it have a conclusion?

I think Kurzweil refers to it as the Singularity... but basically what happens
when AI reaches the point where it can manage itself or advance itself?

This is certainly in the realm of "what if" because we haven't established if
sheer compute power CAN get us AI that eventually becomes self-aware.

I sort of assume it can, but I don't like to make sweeping statements based on
my assumptions. We might find some missing "human" link in the intelligence
chain that stops computers and AIs from making that final leap once we get to
that precipice.

~~~
zacharypinter
Here's an interesting article on that:

[http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/26/hear-that-its-the-
singul...](http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/07/26/hear-that-its-the-singularity-
coming/)

"A common misnomer about the Singularity and the idea of greater-than-human AI
is that it will involve a conscious, self-reflective, and even morally
accountable agent. This has led some people to believe that it will have deep
and profound thoughts, quote Satre, and resultantly act in a quasi-human
manner. This will not be the case. We are not talking about artificial
consciousness or even human-like cognition. Rather, we are talking about
super-expert systems that are capable of executing tasks that exceed human
capacities. It will stem from a multiplicity of systems that are individually
singular in purpose, or at the very least, very limited in terms of functional
scope. And in virtually all cases, these systems won’t reflect on the
consequences of their actions unless they are programmed to do so."

------
nextparadigms
If USA wants to become a strong "manufacturing" country again, it needs to
become a leader in the robot workforce revolution, too. This is disruption. It
will happen either way, and it's a net benefit for human kind.

It doesn't mean it will replace humans, but it does mean it will kill a lot of
current jobs, just like the Internet is killing many jobs now, but creating 3x
more in return. Having a robot powered economy means consumerism will explode
and there will be a lot of _new_ jobs being created.

Obviously this will upset a lot of things and people in the short term as they
need to change jobs, but I think most people are already starting to get used
to switching jobs often. The country leaders will need to think long-term
here, but seeing how US thinks about "saving jobs" right now, I wouldn't be
surprised if they introduce some laws _against_ robot manufacturing in the
next few years, but hopefully they won't.

If they push this, it could create a new golden era of growth for USA. If they
don't act fast, the Asians will do it first, and they'll continue to remain
the leaders in manufacturing (which will probably end up happening).

~~~
adaml_623
I'm happy that the internet is creating 3x more jobs than it is replacing....

But just in case the unemployment rate continues to rise will you do me a
favour and calculate what the tax system should do if you have a couple of
hundred rich people who own all the robotic factories, farms and trucks and
80% of the rest of the country on 'government handouts'. I'm just saying that
we should think about this problem just in case we accidentally manage to
replace all the jobs with computers and robots.

~~~
gst
I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work
as farmers anymore, as a majority of the tasks is done by machines.

I agree with the parent (of your post) that jobs will just change and people
will switch to other jobs that provide a better return.

But let's assume that this isn't the case and a few hundreds of people own the
robots that are doing _all_ of the work (even founding startups). I'd say that
this would be the perfect case:

We don't need to work to survive, but we would have plenty of resources that
allow us to work on things that make fun (of course most of us are doing this
anyway). Of course it's pretty clear that for this to work we also would need
to change the political and economic systems considerably, but this is not a
bad thing - they change all the time.

~~~
dmm
> I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't
> work as farmers anymore

What do you mean by this? Are 90% of people farmers now?

> I'd say that this would be the perfect case:

Actually in that case I'd say people would be consumed by politics and trivial
bs and destroy themselves in a generation. It'd be very similar to today,
except rather than spending all day minus 8 hours on youtube they'll just be
on there all day.

~~~
beedogs
I think what he means is that there will come a point at which technology
renders most occupations obsolete. What happens when 90% of the population
aren't needed in the workforce?

~~~
ebaysucks
Human desires are endless. This is why you will always have employment.
Technology frees up time and humans than use part of that time for leisure and
part of it for doing more meaningful, higher value work.

~~~
hackinthebochs
What do you mean by "employment"? In the far enough future, anything that's
deemed profitable can be done much faster by automation. No one will pay a
human a check to do something that can be done dirt cheap by a robot.

The point is that our society rations limited resources through money. When
resources are no longer limited, and no one can earn any money through
employment, we'll require a completely different social and economic system
for distributing resources.

~~~
nextparadigms
I don't think that will happen until we have "replicators". Until we can make
literally everything ourselves, we'll still need jobs. We'll also need almost
limitless resources, too, unless our desires will tend more and more towards
virtual things rather than physical. Either way, it's really hard to predict
what will happen 50 years from now, but I'm quite optimistic about the human
race.

~~~
chokolad
With things like MakerBot one can argue we are getting to the point where we
have "replicators" pretty rapidly.

------
nextparadigms
This is the robot they plan on using:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjo4AsTVh0s>

[http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/8657F5E05EDE6AC5C1257861002...](http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/8657F5E05EDE6AC5C1257861002C8ED2.aspx)

[http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/13/frida-concept-robot-
will-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/13/frida-concept-robot-will-solve-
all-of-foxconns-problems-by-re/)

~~~
ippisl
Can you please link to the source ?

------
iqster
I don't see how this will work in 3 years time. Cheap robots today (<100K)
suck at manual dexterity tasks. It took quite a lot of work to get a PR2 to
fold laundry (and some of the best robotics people in the world worked on
this). The kinds of tasks I imagined Foxconn workers performed all require
significant manual dexterity.

For an amazing use of robots in a factory environment, I would suggest a tour
of BMW's Munich factory. They have a whole bunch of specialized robotic arms
that do things like welding, lifting, painting, etc. Their factory still
employs humans (albeit fewer humans). In BMW's case, their use of robotics
makes sense. Foxconn, not so much.

Finally, there are some completely automated car factories. I thought
Hyundai's US factory manufactured cars solely with robots. However, I believe
they have a higher defect rate (partially due to this process).

Edit: Link to the PR2 laundry folding robot -
[http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/04/02/towels-uc-
berkel...](http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/04/02/towels-uc-berkeley)

~~~
dmethvin
One reason that assembly of products like phones requires human hands is
simply because nobody has yet tweaked the designs and processes to make them
friendly to robot assembly. There hasn't been a financial incentive to do so
yet.

------
ximeng
Promotional videos from a company involved with Foxconn robots:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa8qCj1oQn0>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTpvIc0Zd2E>

And another asking if they'll still need humans (spoiler: no):

<http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjMyMTMzMzk2.html>

One more blurry one:

<http://video.sina.com.cn/v/b/51887552-1635296834.html>

------
sixtypoundhound
From a social perspective, isn't this counter productive? China has a ton of
people they need to transition from rural economies into urban employement -
building robot factories does nothing to address this issue, which is a big
deal in a country with compulsory military service (youth unemployment ->
civil unrest).

For a competitive perspective, if the labor component is being automated - why
should it be cheaper to run a robot factory in China vs. the US? Sounds like
you a difference in legal climate...that need to be evened up.

~~~
riobard
Not until you see the whole picture.

In the past few years, Pearl River Delta area (around Shenzhen, where Foxconn
and the other sweat factories are located) has been experiencing continuous
shortage of experienced cheap labor. Other areas like the Yangtze River Delta
(around Shanghai) are offering higher wages.

The supply of cheap labor in China is not unlimited. The vast majority of
young generation in rural parts of China has already been lured into cities to
work. The remaining population in many villages are children and old people,
which no body wants them to come.

Simply put, China (and the rest of the world) could not sustain the cheap
labor cost anymore. Foxconn is forced to use robots to reduce its reliance on
human. Simple robots aren't expensive anyway. Going all robots is expensive,
but not robots + human. Robots can perform routine tasks while leaving more
challenging work to human. Win-win.

By the way, China no longer relies on compulsory military service. Most of my
friends (me included) have never served in the army. Volunteers and paid
soldiers are the majority now.

~~~
meric
One anecdote vs another, my cousin is currently serving compulsory military
service.

~~~
riobard
I said “China no longer _relies_ on compulsory military service”, not “China
no longer _has_ compulsory military service”. It is still there, but it
compulsorily drafts significantly less people since 1998. So effectively, we
no longer have to worry about this anymore.

Nevertheless, the army, just like Foxconn, needs some cheap “labor” to do
boring work anyway. Not sure how your cousin got drafted. I hope he does well
there. Best wishes.

------
Mrich30
Just a logical step in the development of countries/industries. First human
labour is cheaper, then it becomes more expensive and robots become cheaper
too making them a good alternative. As a plus, humans dont have to do the
dangerous jobs anymore. This very cheap labour will now also move to other
countries, making them richer in turn until they will also move to robots.
This is the good side of globalization and should be applauded, provided that
people who are fired have a chance to move to other jobs and get supported by
training and education if necessary.

------
ColinWright
There are two stories on this currently posted to HN, this one, and the one at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2827861>

I have no idea which will get the discussion, if either, but it might be worth
trying to make sure any discussion doesn't get unnecessarily split.

------
huherto
Somebody is going to have to design, manufacture, and maintain the robots.
Consumer goods will be cheaper. Robotic technology will make progress. A lot
of people will benefit but we must also think about the people who will loose
their jobs. I don`t have an answer but I hope there is a plan for them.

~~~
orijing
> Somebody is going to have to design, manufacture, and maintain the robots.

Eventually that will be the robots: Designing, manufacturing and maintaining
themselves.

~~~
rkalla
Exactly right. It just depends on where you stop in the hypothetical timeline
of thought.

If you stop in 2020, then yes, we have a ton of human engineers working on
this problem.

If you think out 2030, now more of it is handled by machines and testing
routines/simple AIs.

You think out to 2040 and now a good majority of it is automated.

You think out to 2060 and you are begging for your life at the feet of a red-
eyed monster or some variation of that future :)

------
benthumb
Was at the Microsoft campus bus stop in Redmond recently and it was plastered
(and I mean plastered) w/ posters for Mike Daisey's spoken word piece:

<http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/>

------
ThomPete
This is the real challenge. In 1995-2002 the us lost something around 2
million jobs to Chinese manufacturing.'the chinese lost 15 million jobs to the
robots.

------
mrbill
It's pretty hard for a robot to throw itself off a roof.

------
ComputerGuru
Sounds like an Onion News headline...

------
georgieporgie
"...which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou _at a workers' dance
party_ Friday night."

Wow, talk about a dick move. I wonder how he spun that.

~~~
tomjen3
I imagine that the average tenure at a Chinese factory is less than three
years, so I doubt this will effect most of the workers currently there.

~~~
adaml_623
Got any references for your claim of 3 years?

------
peteretep
You couldn't get away with this politically in the Western world without a
huge stink, although from a capitalistic point of view, it's the right thing
to happen.

China in capitalist trail blazing shocker? ;-)

~~~
_delirium
Highly automated robot factories are already pretty normal in the Western
world, especially for new factories. It has led to some political controversy,
though I mostly see it come up when a local government feels it wasted its
money with subsidies when they didn't bring jobs: in Germany and France, a
number of localities have been disappointed to find that they lured a new
factory to town, but then that factory doesn't hire many locals. That leads to
the question: if a factory doesn't bring jobs to town, is there a reason
locals should still be positive towards it? (One possibility is if it brings
tax revenues.)

My Google skills seem unable to dig up the story, but there was a piece in one
of the major newspapers a few years ago about new factories in France, and how
eerie/futuristic/empty they felt; you go onto the factory floor and it's just
robots humming away, with a handful of technicians.

~~~
mseebach
> That leads to the question: if a factory doesn't bring jobs to town, is
> there a reason locals should still be positive towards it?

If "positive" means "throw tax money at them" then no. But if "positive" means
"not actively opposed" then why not?

Also, in this context, "no jobs" means "fewer jobs than an old world manual
factory". Having a thriving community of factories, even if they are not piled
high with "Modern Times" style workers is still very likely to be a very
positive thing for a community. Advanced factories still need service, they
need supplies and end products shipped to and from, they need said supplies to
be made and most importantly, they need innovation which attract innovators
which starts the cycle over again.

~~~
_delirium
For "why not", I suppose it depends on whether the factory has any downsides.
Traditionally they have some pros and some cons: they bring jobs and tax
revenue and a thriving "stuff is happening" feeling to the local economy, but
they can also bring things like odors, air and water pollution, noise,
increased truck traffic, and possibly requirements for new infrastructure
(e.g. wider roads). That's why new factories can run into opposition in a way
that new Google offices don't.

I agree they bring some needs for service as well, but even that might be non-
local. In the story I can't seem to find, that was (correctly or not) a
complaint of the local government, that of the people the factory _did_
employ, many weren't even locally based, but Parisians who worked remotely for
a third-party servicing firm, and drove out to the factory only when needed.

~~~
mseebach
Most of the grievances can be (and are) addressed by placing the factories in
business zones that are placed near to transport links and a certain distance
from residential zones.

Obviously I don't know the details of the story, but it sounds like it goes
both ways: This local government is likely home to a lot of people that would
commute to Paris. And as they attract more factories, eventually someone might
see an opportunity to open a local services firm. After all, time spend
driving out to the factories are wasted.

I recently had an errand in a business district near a major airport. As I
cycled through, I enjoyed picking out the chain of supporting firms (airline,
caterer, catering equipment, for one). Neither HAS to be near each other, but
if practicality line up with opportunity, why not?

