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from the employees-will-now-lead-lives-of-leisure dept.
Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple's iPhones and other electronic devices, aims to replace human workers with "FoxBots" and achieve nearly full automation of entire factories:
The slow and steady march of manufacturing automation has been in place at Foxconn for years. The company said last year that it had set a benchmark of 30 percent automation at its Chinese factories by 2020. The company can now produce around 10,000 Foxbots a year, Jia-peng says, all of which can be used to replace human labor. In March, Foxconn said it had automated away 60,000 jobs at one of its factories.
[...] Complicating the matter is the Chinese government, which has incentivized human employment in the country. In areas like Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Zhengzhou, local governments have doled out billions of dollars in bonuses, energy contracts, and public infrastructure to Foxconn to allow the company to expand. As of last year, Foxconn employed as many as 1.2 million people, making it one of the largest employers in the world. More than 1 million of those workers reside in China, often at elaborate, city-like campuses that house and feed employees.
In an in-depth report published yesterday, The New York Times detailed these government incentivizes for Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory, its largest and most capable plant that produces 500,000 iPhones a day and is known locally as "iPhone City." According to Foxconn's Jia-peng, the Zhengzhou factory has some production lines already at the second automation phase and on track to become fully automated in a few years' time. So it may not be long before one of China's largest employers will be forced to grapple with its automation ambitions and the benefits it receives to transform rural parts of the country into industrial powerhouses.
To undermine American manufacturing, ditch the meatbags.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:51AM
Actually its already hapening [youtube.com]. They only have to record the vowels and consonants once and then the computer does the rest. I predict within 5 years the same will be true for ALL musicians, the computer will simply build the songs from base sounds and since we already know which patterns are pleasing to western ears? It will be trivial to manufacture pop songs.
BTW if you've seen Aerosmith the past 15 years? Its pretty much this, the band is just playing along to the sequencers. No life, no improv since they have to stay in sync with the sequencer, its just automation. Its rapidly getting to the point studios won't need humans, you can have Marilyn Monroe and Steve McQueen in a new thriller with soundtrack by machine, no humans required. Pure profit for the 1%, everyone else be fucked.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.