America may miss out on the next industrial revolution

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 4:19 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] America may miss out on the next industrial
revolution
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


America may miss out on the next industrial revolution
Preparing for automation means investing in robotics
By Nick Statt
Mar 15 2017
<
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/15/14935360/automation-robots-ai-manufacturing-future-sxsw-2017
>

Robots are inevitably going to automate millions of jobs in the US and
around the world, but there’s an even more complex scenario on the horizon,
said roboticist Matt Rendall. In a talk Tuesday at SXSW, Rendall painted a
picture of the future of robotic job displacement that focused less on
automation and more on the realistic ways in which the robotics industry
will reshape global manufacturing.

The takeaway was that America, which has outsourced much of its
manufacturing and lacks serious investment in industrial robotics, may miss
out on the world’s next radical shift in how goods are produced. That’s
because the robot makers — as in, the robots that make the robots — could
play a key role in determining how automation expands across the globe.

Robots that make other robots are the future
As the CEO of manufacturing robotics company Otto Motors (not to be
confused with the self-driving trucking company Uber owns), Rendall focuses
on building fleets of warehouse bots that could eventually replace the many
fulfillment workers who are hired by companies like Amazon. His talk,
titled “Robots vs Jobs: Technological Displacement is Here,” gave a brief
history of automation, charting how the tractor and the assembly line and
other technologies throughout history have displaced human labor.

But then he turned to the uncertain future. Automation optimists and
pessimists have begun arguing over how the world will change, and whether a
mix of artificial intelligence and industrial robotics might accelerate
automation in an unprecedented fashion. “The robots are coming,” Rendall
said. “After the Great Recession, there was a fundamental change in
people’s interest in automation. People started feeling the pain of
high-cost labor and there’s an appetite for automation that we haven’t seen
before.”

While Rendall described himself as one of the optimists, who believes
automation will, in the long-term, improve society and help humans live
better lives, he said there are changes afoot in the global manufacturing
scene that could leave American industries in the dust. “China is tracking
to be the No. 1 user in robots used in industrial manufacturing,” he said,
adding that the country is driving “an overwhelming amount” of growth.

The difference, he added, is how China is responding to automation, which
is by embracing it instead of shying away from it, as the US appears to be
approaching the issue. This is in stark contrast to industrial advances of
the previous century, like Ford’s assembly line, that arrived first in
American industries and transformed the country’s economy into one of the
most robost on the planet.

China is driving a boom in industrial robotics
As it stands today, the top robotics makers are overwhelmingly located in
Japan, with other big names in Germany and Switzerland. China employs the
highest number of these manufacturing robots of any country by a wide
margin, but that number is still dwarfed by the number of human workers in
the country. South Korea, however, has the most robots per capita, meaning
it may soon become a more productive, efficient, and cost-effective place
to manufacture goods than Chinese factories.

Rendall says it is quite likely that China, as well as Korea, will begin
ramping up robotics investments in their own respective industries to
offset rising labor costs and to stay competitive. That could result in a
big boom in homegrown robotics companies in China and Korea, as well a vast
increase in the number of industrial robots in traditional manufacturing
roles. Already, companies like Foxconn, one the largest manufacturers of
consumer electronics, have laid out detailed plans to automate hundreds of
thousands of factory jobs in China. More telling: Foxconn is determined to
do so mainly with its own growing fleet of “Foxbot” robots that it produces
itself.

[snip]

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