From The Daily Mail:
iPhone maker Foxconn has revealed Apple's new iPhone 6 could be the first to be made using its 'robot army'. The firm has pledged to have a million robot workers by the end of the year - and CEO Terry Gou has revealed the robots, dubbed 'Foxbots', are in the final stages of testing. It is believed Foxconn will install 10,000 robots as a test.
Each $25,000 Foxbot can complete an average of 30,000 devices per year it has been claimed.
Foxconn, which currently employs more than 1.2 million workers at its various factories across China. However, the firm's robot initiative has been delayed since it was first announced in 2011. At the time, Gou said the company had about 10,000 units already in operation, a number that was supposed to rise to 300,000 in 2012, then one million by 2014. However, the firm is also ramping up human workers for the iPhone 6, with 100,00 being hired according to some reports.
Dozens of pictures have leaked online claiming to show Apple's iPhone 6. They all show a thin, curved device with distinctive white 'bars' across the back. However, a Japanese news agency has claimed that in fact, the finished product will look very different - and that it could even have a curved screen.
Related Stories
For years, iPhones (or their boxes) have said that they were "designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China." But thanks to an escalating trade war between the US and China, that might not be true in the coming years. Reuters reports that two of Apple's biggest manufacturing contractors, Foxconn and Pegatron, are working to expand their facilities in Mexico with an eye toward eventually building iPhones there.
[...] This isn't Foxconn's only effort to diversify away from China. Last year, Foxconn announced plans to begin manufacturing iPhones in India, and the company is now manufacturing the iPhone SE there.
Sources told Reuters that Taiwan-based iPhone contractor Pegatron is also considering a shift to Mexico, but few details about its plans are known.
Previously:
(Score: 3, Informative) by modest on Tuesday July 08 2014, @01:49PM
I just have to say, I came over from the other news for nerds site and was delighted to find you answered my question as to what was missing from the end of "30,000 devices" in their summary.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday July 08 2014, @01:55PM
I've been thinking about this over the past few years, long before Soylent ever happened.
White-collar jobs that manage a workflow of some sort are disappearing as these workflows are captured in business automation software. We don't need as many college-educated people doing white-collar jobs. Automation is going to take over the service industry and also manufacturing.
Old companies are purging workers as they automate, and new companies leverage this kind of workflow technology from the start, so they're lean. What has developed is an upper class of owners of intellectual property (everything from copyright-industry content to actual business workflows) and managers who are so high up they're immune to being fired (because they manage the outsourcing, contracting, and vertical market packages a corporation uses).
What are the rest of us going to do to make a living? We hear about people being "creative" and starting new industries, but the copyright industry has a lockdown on creative content. Only a few companies like Apple (which sells both hardware and a DRM lockdown solution) can make connections to the copyright industry. Your average company like Aero is going to be destroyed, and innovation like bittorrent is iffy. Anyone can make their own content, of course, but the average e-book author on the Kindle makes under $500/year (I researched this figure). There is so much music floating around that even the copyright industry is suffering from low sales this year. Creativity isn't going to put food on the table. Even if you work for the copyright industry, creators get paid very little. Most authors make almost nothing on their books. We all know about Hollywood accounting. Study the history of how the comic book industry treated its creators. Also study how the recording industry treated musicians (search for Robert Fripp/King Crimson's battle for digital sales as a good starting point).
Almost every niche, vertical market, and business process has been automated by 2014. Software developers just aren't needed much. I tried to find a need that I could fill with new software, and ... couldn't. It's all been done. I even asked people point blank what software they'd like to have to make their lives easier, and got no real answer. They couldn't think of anything. If you look at something like the GNU needed software list, it's stuff that took decades for paid developers to build (like audio/video editing software) or things like hard AI.
We can't give away our labor to free software and earn money to eat. Working on free software is great for college students or developers who have good-paying jobs.
And if educated people like software developers find work drying up ... what about people who aren't as educated and don't have "in-demand" skills? I like to look at lists of jobs that need to be filled in the next few years, and they're almost all in the medical field. Where will jobs come from besides the medical field? I've been trying to answer this question basically since 2010 and haven't come up with an answer.
Has human history had a crisis quite like this? We've had post-industrial layoffs, but people could retrain for new jobs. Now blue-collar jobs, white-collar jobs, and minimum wage jobs are or will soon be automated. Retail jobs have always been the last resort of people whose career field has vanished, but even these are being automated. I guess we could all work in Amazon warehouses, but I'm not physically up to it.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:39PM
...Which one will it be?
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com] (Chapter 1 of 8)
http://www.thevenusproject.com/ [thevenusproject.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project [wikipedia.org]
Please read MANNA in full then read the essay
on the homepage of THE VENUS PROJECT to get
the full effect of two (wildly?) different
solutions to the same fundamental problem
facing Mankind. To say anymore would be
giving out spoilers. The very first two
links at the top of this post are likely
all you need to get to the crux of this
issue with a minimum of excess baggage.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:39PM
I read this story, called The Darfsteller, [troynovant.com] and it haunted me ever since. It touches upon your theme and the root of this article which is, what happens when machines start to replace us. If you've not read it, do so. You can find it via Google in pdf.
To borrow from the old phrase "With Freedom comes responsibility" there needs to be another, "With Automation comes social responsibility". If people cannot make a wage then what will they buy? The billionaire still only buys one set pf pants at a time, even though he has an factory automated to make thousands. The workers replaced can't buy his pants for they don't have jobs, so who does he sell too?
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:34PM
Thanks for the link to that story.
Took some time to find the story itself rather than an ad or review for it.
The billionaire sells his wares to emerging markets in developing nations
that are not already saturated with competing firms and exploited like
first world countries--thus limiting overall profits.
To sell stuff in the first world, he has the third world manufacture it
for dirt cheap then re-imports it to the first world and sells it for as
much as he can which is Standard Operating Procedure now.
Once the 1%-ers have essentially all the manmade wealth and natural resources
of Planet Earth under their control, the game will be over -- what will be
the point of continuing?
Lewis Black says it best here! :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENGUYeiGtNk [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:29PM
That's the point. You and me are not needed, unless you happen to be a long legged super model.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by CRCulver on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:52PM
There are still plenty of ways to make money in a "creative" profession. Just look at Perez Hilton [perezhilton.com]: all he does is trash-talk celebrities of the day with a flamboyantly homosexual personality that doesn't leave content consumers ambivalent, but he makes a killing doing so. He is essentially a self-man man in an industry that didn't exist a decade or two ago. Sure, you can't expect the masses of Third World poor to become bloggers, and automation is going to hit them hard, but I strongly suspect that a few million Americans or Europeans could work in the same industry, whether as the sassy site personality or as behind-the-scenes assistants, if they just put their mind to it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:08PM
Pool cleaners, plumbers, electricians, hair-dressers, driver instructors (while it lasts), soldier, soylent-green raw material.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by WizardFusion on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:27PM
Phone Sanitisers
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:34PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:26PM
I don't think so. The last positions we had to fill were filled this year, after looking 1 year for a suitable candidate. There are lots of topics not yet sufficiently covered by software. Self driving cars will require a lot of work until they are actually ready to roll. Image processing for the next revolution in digital photography (lytro?) is still an interesting topic. I bet each industrie could use hundreds of small custom tools to improve their work flow. Software to turn data into information (make data better accessible) still leaves something to be desired. There are lots of other topics. But I agree that it would be difficult to invent a stand-alone sw and sell it, these are more spezialized tools.
This is the more interesting topic to me. The problem is not the lack of work, I don't think it is difficult to find something entertaining or even worthwhile to do for everyone. There are lots of areas where people are still underpaid and overloaded with work, e.g. in nurseries, homes for the aged, hospitals, etc. The problem is rather, how should the money-redistribution be re-organized.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:32PM
There are really only three choices.
1) We continue developing labor saving technology and eventually the people who own the robots are the only ones employed. They have all the money. The rest are poor and dependant upon them. It's basically becomes a new form of feudalism.
2) We continue developing labor saving technology. But we find a way to better distribute the benefit. Ultimately we gain some jobs by producing more but we also have to work individuals less so that that less work can be shared by more people.
3) We stop developing technology. Maybe we even regress a bit. There is plenty of work for all but it is busy work. It's work that wouldn't have been required had we kept progressing. We waste our short lives doing stuff that wasn't necessary.
I sure hope for number 2 although I don't see much evidence yet that our society, maybe even our species is capable of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 09 2014, @01:42AM
I think that if #2 doesn't happen, we will end up with violent revolution instead. Idle hands do the devil's work.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Tuesday July 22 2014, @03:19PM
I'm not sure that violent revolution is even possible today. Can you imagine handguns, rifles and shotguns vs drones and tanks? As for the idle hands quote that just sounds like an excuse to keep people in servitude to me. I can think of plenty of things I would do with additional free-time and none of them are negative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:52PM
You're absolutely right. Thing is, a lot of us saw this train coming a long time ago. FWIW, my advice to anyone is to get ahead of the next curve, because this one is thundering toward the inevitable dead end.
I know because I do automation. My job is to kill jobs, and I'm damned good at it. It was an intentional career choice I made 25 years ago because the writing was on the wall. I'll be retired before I completely obsolesce.
Human history has had a similar crisis, sans the shinies. It was called Imperial Rome. They outsourced their army and merchants, leaving citizens with nothing but bread and circuses. The various sackings were just highlights of a long, painful decline. This time around, it isn't just a decaying Mediterranean empire, it's global. I nearly weep for the future of my son, an engineering student, and his classmates. Dystopia will be the next empire.
(Score: 2) by emg on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:47PM
Yes, but it's only global. Who cares what happens to the Earth once we're established across the solar system? Who'll care about a job when they're living on an asteroid with a 3D printer that can produce pretty much anything they want?
Most of our ancestors never had jobs. Most of our descendants will never have jobs. What's so horrible about that?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Daiv on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:21PM
1. Let Foxconn roll out and perfect the robot assembly.
2. Ripoff the technology and open up robotic assembly plants in the USA and all over the world.
3. Reduce time delays from production in distant places and logistics.
4. ...whatever
There are some huge potential wins for this. I'm curious how it all plays out. I would love to see the cost of maintenance, actual yearly production, average downtime.
I'm sure most everyone only sees the obvious potential downside, but I'm too curious to focus JUST on that.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday July 17 2014, @05:05AM
One million robots * 30,000 devices per robot per year = 30 billion devices per year.
30 billion devices per year / seven billion people = one device per person per quarter.
Will there be space in the market for anyone else?
1702845791×2