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‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#61

Post by ryandrake »

steamy wrote: post #21
tehchromic wrote: post #12

I think this is a real indicator and validation of what the next economy will look like: humans at the apex of the arts, where imagination and craft will be highly valued in the everyday folk worker, and mundane or trivial tasks will be assigned to automatons. We will choose our own employment adventure.

The problem is the current size of the world population is designed and fit for the Industrial Age and not for the Information Age. What do you suggest we have to do to the "surplus" of manpower now? Please no retraining nonsense as jobs will dwindle too and mirror the trend elsewhere. Please show some political sense in your reply.

Invent new enemies every few years and new wars to send all our excess manpower off to?

Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#63

Post by rodgerd »

tjradcliffe wrote: post #36
ffk wrote: post #6

This is a fundamental shift from how many other factories work. In general, the workers are not given enough information to replicate the product. They are shown how to attach a specific sprocket to a widget. The tasks are kept so simple (nothing to do with pleasantness) that no one can learn how the whole device is created or suggest improvements. This model lends to people being replaced by robots because human cap…

Thanks for the nice summary. No way was I going to click on a headline that read like this one! There are two kinds of jobs that robots will have a hard time replacing: these sorts of high-skill, creative, intution-and-experience heavy tasks; and low-skill but mechancially awkward tasks. In both cases, the key to job survival will be that it's something of a niche. Anything remotely generic will be taken over by mach…

> but the Paul Krugmans and David Brooks of the world will be engineered out in the next decade or so by bots that troll the web for stories and generate canned ideologically-loaded commentary based on a smattering of data sources

Characterising a Nobel-winning economist as a content troll says more about you than him.

Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#64

Post by hkmurakami »

ffk wrote: post #6

This is a fundamental shift from how many other factories work. In general, the workers are not given enough information to replicate the product. They are shown how to attach a specific sprocket to a widget. The tasks are kept so simple (nothing to do with pleasantness) that no one can learn how the whole device is created or suggest improvements. This model lends to people being replaced by robots because human cap…

There are two distinct groups involved here.

First, there is a specific role in Toyota group companies with the title "Production Engineering", which is tasked with creating/improving/redesigning/etc. the production process of particular products, new and old. They are the most important category of engineers hired as undergrad and masters engineering graduates, and everyone knows that they are the group best positioned for career advancement through the engineering side of the company. The exact title is "Seisan Gijyutsu 生産技術". If you see a Toyota group company CEO with an engineering background, chances are he came up through this division.

Second are the "craftsmen" who are typically HS grads from the Aichi area, sometimes from Toyota branded schools. They are the ones with the deft touch and individual skill that are often lauded in these western oriented articles.

It's only when you have both sides working together that you will have scalable, transferrable progress.

disclosure: I worked at a Toyota group company as a new grad in Aichi and spent 3 months in the factory as part of my training.

Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#65

Post by ffk »

hkmurakami wrote: post #64
ffk wrote: post #6

This is a fundamental shift from how many other factories work. In general, the workers are not given enough information to replicate the product. They are shown how to attach a specific sprocket to a widget. The tasks are kept so simple (nothing to do with pleasantness) that no one can learn how the whole device is created or suggest improvements. This model lends to people being replaced by robots because human cap…

There are two distinct groups involved here. First, there is a specific role in Toyota group companies with the title "Production Engineering", which is tasked with creating/improving/redesigning/etc. the production process of particular products, new and old. They are the most important category of engineers hired as undergrad and masters engineering graduates, and everyone knows that they are the group best positio…

That's a good point.

Here in silicon valley, the best performing companies are rarely the ones who have only engineering talent. A good engineer often lacks domain experience in the space they are trying to innovate in. It is important to find and work with those who have domain experience in order to progress quickly.

Thanks for pointing this out. :)

Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#66

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rodgerd wrote: post #63
tjradcliffe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the nice summary. No way was I going to click on a headline that read like this one! There are two kinds of jobs that robots will have a hard time replacing: these sorts of high-skill, creative, intution-and-experience heavy tasks; and low-skill but mechancially awkward tasks. In both cases, the key to job survival will be that it's something of a niche. Anything remotely generic will be taken over by mach…

> but the Paul Krugmans and David Brooks of the world will be engineered out in the next decade or so by bots that troll the web for stories and generate canned ideologically-loaded commentary based on a smattering of data sources Characterising a Nobel-winning economist as a content troll says more about you than him.

Krugman is a Nobel-winning economist. He is also a loudmouth ideologue who writes a column, in which he makes authoritative statements that have nothing to do with the research that won him a Nobel. He trades on that prestige, but he's no better than a highly-ideologically-driven professional-economist-but-out-of-his-area-of-specialty in most of what he writes. I have seen him rip Republicans for the same behavior that he lauds Democrats for.

I wouldn't call him a troll. I would call him a shill. And no, that's not not saying more about me. It really is about him.

Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#67

Post by AndrewKemendo »

What I don't understand is why the "Gods" don't say "No we won't train robots to do our jobs."

One of the biggest hurdles to automation in general - especially where replacing skilled workers is concerned - is in teaching (algorithmically or otherwise) the machine to replicate what the skilled worker is doing.

If there really is the existential crisis of "machines taking our jobs" then why are the robot trainers not pushing back? Isn't is immediately clear what they are doing?

I personally think everything should be automated with no mandatory human inputs for the majority of tasks - but that is hundreds of years away if ever. The key sticking point though is whether people will be willing to be "the last human to hold this job."

Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#68

Post by Artistry121 »

hkmurakami wrote: post #64
ffk wrote: post #6

This is a fundamental shift from how many other factories work. In general, the workers are not given enough information to replicate the product. They are shown how to attach a specific sprocket to a widget. The tasks are kept so simple (nothing to do with pleasantness) that no one can learn how the whole device is created or suggest improvements. This model lends to people being replaced by robots because human cap…

There are two distinct groups involved here. First, there is a specific role in Toyota group companies with the title "Production Engineering", which is tasked with creating/improving/redesigning/etc. the production process of particular products, new and old. They are the most important category of engineers hired as undergrad and masters engineering graduates, and everyone knows that they are the group best positio…

This is a great perspective.

You've done a pretty detailed analysis of the company process.

So is the Production Engineer "Seisan Gijyutsu" focused on finding improvements for the Craftsmen to develop or does the Production Engineer "Seisan Gijyutsu" develop the improvements and teach them to the craftsmen?

Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#69

Post by cauterized »

willholloway wrote: post #41
TeMPOraL wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the crux of the issue. It seems that the current economy will rather drive itself to the ground, taking all of humanity with it, rather than transitioning itself to a different value system. It looks like the post-scarcity world is not on the phase-space trajectory we're currently following.

Right now I feel every reason to be gratuitously optimistic. - Solar photo-voltaic is or is about to be the cheapest form of electricity, we will solve the storage problem - Electric cars are getting closer to the tipping point, and they are going to drive themselves - Biotech is making incredible gains, see cancer immunotherapy or NSI-189 - The pace of technological innovation has accelerated and continues - The int…

We're on trajectory technologically but not sociologically.

Re: ‘Gods’ edging out robots at Toyota facility

#70

Post by nosuchthing »

cauterized wrote: post #69
willholloway wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now I feel every reason to be gratuitously optimistic. - Solar photo-voltaic is or is about to be the cheapest form of electricity, we will solve the storage problem - Electric cars are getting closer to the tipping point, and they are going to drive themselves - Biotech is making incredible gains, see cancer immunotherapy or NSI-189 - The pace of technological innovation has accelerated and continues - The int…

We're on trajectory technologically but not sociologically.

  "We eat in restaurants, buy branded toiletries, build 
  skyscrapers, create legislative institutions, travel in 
  flying machines, write poetry, and search for meaning in 
  relationships, temples, and scientific books. Humans have 
  discovered antibiotics, sent probes into space, decimated 
  rainforests, shared a billion views of clips of kitten 
  behaviour, and decoded their own genomes.


  But there is one thing that humans have singularly failed 
  to do, and that is to properly understand their own behaviour. "

  — Robert Aunger and Valerie Curtis:
  Gaining Control: How human behavior evolved
[0] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gaining-control-9780...
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