China is about to open its first human-free car factory: it will arrive before 2030 and will usher in the era of “dark factories” and robots. Should this worry us?
https://www.motorpasion.com/industria/china-esta-a-punto-estrenar-primera-fabrica-coches-personas-llegara-antes-2030-estrenara-era-dark-factories
30 Comments
At least people miiiiight stop saying that Chinese cars are affordable thanks to cheap or slave labor (as opposed to the true reason, automation and incredibly efficient vertical integration of the whole supply chain)
Wow what will the billions of people there do then ??
depends. Keeping in mind – when you now hear “Chinese factory coming to country X” this is why and how. Labor is no longer an issue/requirement
We should probably be more worried about the Kung Fu robots armed with Nun Chucks.
The goal of the ruling class now, is to ultimately replace the means of production. You will own nothing, you will owe everything.
Not really. China needs this because of massive population decline.
“Human-Free” until something inevitably breaks or goes wrong and a bunch of technicians have to go in and fix it. And the cleaning crew. And the maintenance workers. And Quality Control. And logistics staff.
To be fair dark factories have been around for some years now in things like polymer production in the united states. There are a handful of humans in management, engineering, and then logistics loading and unloading trucks. Scary but already here.
We need better global tax systems to prevent tax evasion (the legal and illegal kinds) and we need universal income.
Otherwise we are headed towards a dark dystopian future.
The United States should worry about this – the rest of the world is moving forward into the future while we head back to the coal mines. Literally and figuratively.
Seems like this sort of technology could bring manufacturing back to the US. No more high labor costs.
They’re truly going to take the global lead very soon. The US is rotting from the inside at the moment and it’s only getting worse. I don’t know if there’s enough time to wait for the next administration to maybe get things going in the right direction again
Tesla had already tried automating their factories as much as possible years ago
Wealthy western countries should celebrate this. The only reason we started offshoring was for cheaper labor costs. There’s nothing intrinsic about China that would enable their dark factories to produce goods any cheaper than a US/EU dark factory. Add in transport costs (and climate impact), and domestic robot-produced goods will be much more attractive than those from overseas. And we can re-shore all this manufacturing without costing a single domestic job, because those jobs haven’t been here for decades anyway.
China’s the one that should be worried. Cheap labor was their competitive edge. They wisely built on that, but pull that out from under them, and the playing field is completely level.
And before you go all “but the supply chaaaain” yes, it will take time to rebuild the supply chain we ceded to Asia but again, there’s nothing intrinsic that says we can’t, once labor costs are removed.
It might be harder for EU countries that don’t have a lot of cheap land but that’s not an issue for the US.
Why are we worried about population decline. We are automating ourselves into oblivion.
It should worry the US that China is beating the technological crap out of it. Clean coal!
the question isn’t whether this should worry us. it’s whether countries that aren’t doing this should worry. labor cost advantages disappear overnight when nobody’s on the floor
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Telsa spent a lot of time trying to figure this out and ultimately failed because humans are insanely good at adapting to complex problems. Yes they were also using AI to try and build them.
Only if you then buy the cars that roll out of that factory.
I remember Tesla tried this with the model 3. It was an abject failure. The problem was the hoses. Things that flop and sway are difficult for machines to grab on a moving production line. They move in unpredictable ways that either confuse the robot if it has a vision system (very expensive) or causes them to miss when they try to grab it from an assumed general area.
I’d be interested to see if they can make this work but I’m not holding my breath.
Why would this be a bad thing? More automation is always good in factories for production.
The only downside is reduced employment in manufacturing, but the improved production is a net societal benefit.
This is actually a fantastic thing and people will fear it just like they feared modernization of factories back in what the 30s? Fully automated factories is a very good thing and is a major step towards a society where we don’t have to do manual labor.
America’s far too corrupt and inept to pull this off so no, I’m not worried about this. I have much bigger worries.
Is there an article in English? Are people commenting based solely on the post title?
Yes. Super intelligence won’t need us for any reason now j
I’ve worked manufacturing before. Every single line worker has repetitive motion injuries, every single one, because thats what you do for 12hrs. Bot factories are a step in the right direction. We don’t want bots creating art, or hallucinating on the internet, we want them to provide ROI
Robots have been in car factories for 65 years now. I’m honestly surprised it’s taken this long.
Also, there’s no way it’s completely human free. People have to manage the robots and fix problems. You don’t want that line shutting down because some robot got stuck in the way.
The US should do the same thing. We may need to ditch the union in order to do it.
China (all companies) tend to make crazy claims all of the time. Ask Elon how the weather is on Mars.
If all of our jobs will be replaced with machines and AI then how will these companies make money if everybody will eventually become broke and unemployed?