China Aims to Retool Its Manufacturing Industry with Robots | Hacker News Reader

China Aims to Retool Its Manufacturing Industry with Robots

technologyreview.com

18 pointscpeterso11 comments

"China is laying the groundwork for a robot revolution by planning to automate the work currently done by millions of low-paid workers."

Any ideas about what China has in mind for those 'millions of low-paid workers'?

Educate them and turn people into scientists, engineers, doctors, medical researchers, lawyers, computer programmers, etc?

China's population growth is slowing. Doesn't sound like they'll have the extra people. Better to educate them and move upmarket.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2010/09/china-pop...

> Doesn't sound like they'll have the extra people.

When automation wipes out 99.99% of jobs, nearly all people will be "extra" people. Globally.

Beat me to it, this article completely disregards the lost wages for employees. Perhaps China will become the first country to begin wage replacement. As technology, robotics and automation grows, more will find themselves with out jobs and perhaps unable to start anew.

Same way western economies work? Create debt and more debt and base whole economies on sale of houses to one another. When it all fall apart double down

The same thing that every other nation that used to have armies of low paid workers (e.g. USA, England, Germany, etc, etc) did.

Yes ,but the US and Europe had many decades to go through the cycles. China has a large workforce which would have to find a way to make a living during the economic upheaval.

> Any ideas about what China has in mind for those 'millions of low-paid workers'?

I think China is a special case: The legitimacy of the whole political system, not just the current leader, depends on their ability to deliver economic satisfaction to their population. Major dislocations of low-skilled workers who probably lack the wealth or safety net to endure long-term unemployment could be risky.

On the other hand, without political reform how will the masses make their voices heard and have their interests addressed? Chinese leaders have a long history of treating them like chattle, from what I understand.

An interesting thought on automation from Bob Work, who heads the Pentagon's long-range planning for robotics and automation on the battlefield. I don't know that it's true or how broadly it applies, but it's something to think about regarding how automation is conceived of in different cultures:

I will make a hypothesis: that authoritarian regimes who believe people are weaknesses ... that they can not be trusted, they will naturally gravitate toward totally automated solutions. Why do I know that? Because that is exactly the way the Soviets conceived of their reconnaissance strike complex. It was going to be completely automated. We believe that the advantage we have as we start this competition is our people [1]

The Pentagon's research and current planning is that human-computer teams are much more effective than either alone, in many situations.

[1] http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2015/12/pentagon-nervous-a...

It would have been a lot easier to simply take the blue pill, if anyone honestly believes this does not all come to a head I wish you the best in your blissful ignorance

how about their workers? a lot of people will loss jobs because of robot

Reply on news.ycombinator.com