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America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

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Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#111

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

phillyboy82 wrote: post #93
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the best luck they had was getting in good graces with local probation officers & craigslist classifieds. I appreciate the answer. And I understand that you may not have more-granular info than this. But I am wondering what how jobs were advertised prior to utilizing ProbOff/CL. Maybe the answer is this. There was no avenue to get job listings in front of the most likely eyeballs.

Companies go to ManPower or other job staffing agencies when they need X number of low level employees or temps

> Companies go to ManPower or other job staffing agencies

Son #1 got employed there early but it turned out that a small group had a deal with management and got 100% of the work. New hires went out on one job immediately and then never again.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#112

Post by petermcneeley »

yibg wrote: post #90
petermcneeley wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Ok then what do you make? 2. A bit too late for that given that China is also highly automated. 3. You would have to be serious for this to work. As for your responses. 1 who is "us" 3. I mean some would be automated etc. There is actually data on how little the cost of labor adds to different parts of manufacturing. 2. You at least have a sustainable economy (I dont mean that in an environmental sense)

Typically as economies advance there is a shift to services and higher value add / higher skill manufacturing anyways. That can be the explicit strategy for the US as well. Focus on renewables, high tech, aerospace etc instead of the lower margin / lower skill manufacturing. They're not mutually exclusive of course. There can be some national protection via tariffs on some types of manufacturing, while investing in a…

The USA and the west in general is 40 years deep into this crisis and recent developments have not actually made a shift in that trajectory.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#113

Post by anon291 »

Theodores wrote: post #39
lnsru wrote: post #21

Just my 5 cents. Running factory is damn hard job. 10 products built from 50 different parts having 70 different vendors is a small nightmare. So me people can manage that, but the most can’t. Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily.

The slight problem with how AI is currently being marketed is that AI is going for the fun and creative jobs that people want to do, not the dull and repetitive jobs that nobody wants to do. If every creative job is gone to the AI beast then there will be people willing to do factory work since nothing else will be available.

Rubbish. Ai has been used for many years in factories and modern AI will be even more useful. The issue is that most people aren't going to be the target of this sort of AI advertising and also that this takes longer than making a chat bot

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#114

Post by snozolli »

stouset wrote: post #105
snozolli wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are jobs people just won’t keep doing no matter the pay I do not believe this common claim.

Obviously there is some ludicrous threshold of pay where more people will decide to do some job. But for practical purposes the pay needs to be in line with still being able to price your products competitively in a global marketplace. Even $10,000/yr more might not be enough to move the needle all that much on a job that’s backbreaking, monotonous, and with little prospects for career growth. Especially if you have…

Obviously there is some ludicrous threshold of pay where more people will decide to do some job

Ludicrous only from the perspective of the employer. Everyone wants something for nothing.

The fact is that regular Americans (i.e. not exploited, immigrant labor, or oppressed out-groups) used to do manual labor and manufacturing in the United States. They took pride in their labor. People haven't changed, the economics have.

As for your last paragraph, the oil fields have been able to meet their need for employees for the most part, and that ticks every one of your undesirable factors. So what gets workers there? Pay.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#115

Post by Tadpole9181 »

thaack wrote: post #28
lnsru wrote: post #21

Just my 5 cents. Running factory is damn hard job. 10 products built from 50 different parts having 70 different vendors is a small nightmare. So me people can manage that, but the most can’t. Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factor…

I don't mean for this to be as pointed as it probably will come off - but do you allow these workers to listen to music, take regular (not smoke) breaks, and do their job from a chair?

The few factory jobs I've seen were not only monotonous, they were needlessly soul crushing.

For no reason at all, you had to stand for hours on end. Your only breaks were lunch and smokes. Bathroom breaks were monitored like a crime. And you were afforded no distractions from the task, 100% focus required.

Coupled with no care put into making someone feel actually appreciated and the end-products being MBA shrinkflated garbage nobody could be proud of, it's not shocking that no one in their right mind would want to work there.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#116

Post by yibg »

petermcneeley wrote: post #112
yibg wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically as economies advance there is a shift to services and higher value add / higher skill manufacturing anyways. That can be the explicit strategy for the US as well. Focus on renewables, high tech, aerospace etc instead of the lower margin / lower skill manufacturing. They're not mutually exclusive of course. There can be some national protection via tariffs on some types of manufacturing, while investing in a…

The USA and the west in general is 40 years deep into this crisis and recent developments have not actually made a shift in that trajectory.

It seems like the US in particular isn't able to pick one path and stick with it. The shift towards services has already happened. But investment in silicon, renewables etc is on again off again. There now seems to be a desire to bring all manufacturing jobs back to the US, although it's not clear who wants this or why. e.g. who actually wants clothing and toy manufacturing back in the US?

So we have a set of ad hoc policies (or EOs), that don't seem to have an overarching goal.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#117

Post by jordanb »

gaindustries wrote: post #34
thaack wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factor…

> The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factory having higher pay and significantly better benefits. Better pay + benefits than the most rock bottom lowest possible pay + benefits is really pathetic. And based on the vagueness of your claims, we can assume full-time hours are also out of the picture, meaning no health insurance. On top of that, tyranical small business owners are usually a nightmar…

Decent chance given that it's a plastics plant probably not unionized and probably in a red state that the air is not healthy to breathe.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#118

Post by Pulcinella »

stouset wrote: post #102
Pulcinella wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need actual data to decide how significant is "significant." Otherwise you will just have businesses complaining no one wants to work for "significantly" higher pay (a whole $0.05/hour more).

I’m sorry but this is a ridiculous take. $0.05/hr is $104 a year for a full-time job. Zero people are going to have that be the tipping point for them to take on a monotonous, often physically draining job that they’d otherwise turn down.

Yes that is my point. What business owners consider "significant" and what sane people consider significant are often quite different.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#119

Post by denkmoon »

phillyboy82 wrote: post #96
pseudocomposer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, the “higher pay and significantly better benefits” are not actually significantly better. I’d rather we address that than just exploit some other workers overseas where they’re out of sight, out of mind. Honestly, it seems like tariffs on imported goods would be the way around this, but also, we need to be sure that money is going to the people doing the work, not just the owners. Speaking of which, I don’…

Wrong. Kids brains are fried from phones / social media so much that they struggle with repetitive labor. I see this all the time at an automotive plant. UAW wages are good, especially after the last contract, but we still get people who struggle putting a sticker on a car for an hour straight before their break or task switch.

Then long hours of repetitive labor are a skill which needs to be attracted for.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#120

Post by justin66 »

bgwalter wrote: post #56

They are now open about it. Musk tweets about a new company Macrohard, which does not manufacture itself ( https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1977281341264740625#m ): "Our goal is to create a company that can do anything short of manufacturing physical objects directly, but will be able to do so indirectly, much like Apple has other companies manufacture their phones." In other words, we are a knowledge economy and…

They orchestrate partners!
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