• DasRav [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    30·
    6 days ago

    China is so bad at making money from products. It is known.

    Elon though?! Selling you a guy in a robot costume?!?!? Gorillion dollar market cap! We will have to go to that gold asteroid to get all the gold to give it to Elon cuz he will have earned all of it!

  • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    22·
    6 days ago

    Whenever the West has some new tech grift “innovation,” the narrative is always “the companies behind it aren’t profitable now, but don’t worry they’ll start churning a profit any day now!”

    • TommyCatkins [none/use any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      I agree with you there. The cost to keep them running will never be cheaper than just paying someone to do the work. Every factory I have ever worked in had automated processes that sat unused and collecting dust in some corner because the accountant said it was cheaper to pay someone to do that task all day than to maintain the process.

      • BobDole [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        5·
        5 days ago

        It depends a lot on the type of factory. For example, for the last couple decades semiconductor manufacturing is fully automated except for maintenance (including installation here) and contingencies when maintenance is happening (people moving wafers around with carts when the automated handling system is down). Part of this is certainly that the advanced processes can’t be done by humans anymore, due to precision, scale, contamination, and safety reasons.

        BUT the humanoid robots would be useless.

        • TommyCatkins [none/use any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          2·
          4 days ago

          Most manufacturing does not need to be done at the same level of precision or cleanliness that advanced electronic components require though. I used to work at a small injection molding factory making storage totes and we had ONE press that could automatically put stickers on a large tote. Every other press required the operator to put the sticker in by hand while they inspected for issues with the product.

          And I’m not saying that all automation is useless, as most food packaging plants are fairly well automated with operators just ensuring that everything goes correctly, but it will never be viable to replace those workers with a robot since they will never be able to adapt to a sudden change like a human can.