“The
worst kept secret of Apple and its Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn
isn't their poor labor conditions. It isn't even the fact that they
use robots to help bring together all the pieces that make up an
iPhone. It's that their robots are now performing more and more
human-like functions.”
“Foxconn
parent company Hon Hai is set to deploy an army of 10,000
assembly-line robots to help meet the demands of producing the highly
anticipated iPhone 6. Hon Hai CEO Terry Gou revealed in a recent
shareholder meeting that Apple would be the very first customer of
Foxconn's latest robots.”
“I
wouldn't be surprised if sometime in the next five years, robots will
even take care of the final touches, ...”
“Some
analysts see this trend toward robotics transforming labor markets
globally. Marshall Brain, founder of How Stuff Works and author of
Robotic Nation, says the push towards automation is happening much
faster than people realize. 'Within a couple of decades,' said
Brain in an interview, 'there won't be a single job that robots
can't do better than humans.'”
“The
shift to automation will undoubtedly lead to substantial productivity
gains for companies, but as that happens, jobs will be increasingly
at risk.”
“Larry
Summers, former U.S. Treasury secretary during the Clinton
Administration and former head of Obama's National Economic Council,
predicts technology will have a profound effect on the average
employee. 'We are seeing less and less opportunity for what average
people — people lacking in certain skills — are going to be able
to do,' ...”
“'Right
now, there's a big process of automating all of the warehouses in the
United States. It used to be you had people running around picking
stuff out of warehouses and putting them in warehouses,' [...]
'That whole process is going to be pretty much completely
automated within the next couple of years. No one really pays
attention to it because warehouses aren't in places we normally go.
But that's going to happen.'”
“Producing
some of Apple's products is already an almost completely automated
system. In 2013, the company began producing its Mac Pro at the
Flextronics Americas factory in Northwest Austin. They may get to
engrave 'Made in USA' on their products, but some argue it does more
harm than good. 'It's located in Texas, which makes everybody feel
good,' said Brain, 'but it's not providing any jobs.'”
More:
“I asked him about the move of
Apple to produce computers in America, by bringing back in the US
the production from China for the first time after decades. 'How's
that?' And the answer was the expected one, although quite
impressive: 'Wages are of no importance. The export of
productive processes from America to China (off-shoring) was only
an intermediate stage. The production has returned to America, but
not the jobs. The new factory of Apple, not only is constructed
without American workers' sweat, but will also produce MacBook Pro
through complete automatization, without hiring Texans. Welcome to
the New, Brave World', ended with a smile, referring
obviously to the Brave New World of Aldous Huxley.”
|
Read
also:
Technological Unemployment
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