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

washingtonpost.com

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

#361

Post by fidotron »

nradov wrote: post #352
fidotron wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm somewhere in the middle, young enough that almost everything I've seen new is disposable crap (including the tools), old enough that I have had an interest in things from before and noticed that they really were built much better, or at least heavier, back then. I've made the comment on here before that I believe it's short term energy optimisation, in that it used to be seen as reasonable to much heavier objects…

Cars haven't gotten any lighter. Rather the reverse. Battery packs are quite heavy.

Almost like changing the energy source causes a step change in energy optimization priorities . . .

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

#362

Post by trollbridge »

wmwmwm wrote: post #214
alsetmusic wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to contemporary luxury does not a genius make. There was that bit in the film, "Goodwill Hunting," about an Indian man who found a math book and went on to define groundbreaking math from what he extrapolated. I don't know the details, but I don't think the film made that up.

I’m guessing Ramanujan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

20 years ago, we had a server named after him. It was always fun explaining how to pronounce it and the who exactly he was.

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

#363

Post by [deleted] »

crote wrote: post #69
mullingitover wrote: post #44

The US spent decades transitioning from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, deliberately. Now there's a populist making political hay, throwing out numbers about trade deficits, which ignores revenue from services . Yes, there is have a trade deficit on goods, that was a long-term strategy because services were a superior investment. Manufacturing is an inferior way to make money unless you're planning to g…

> Nukes make conventional war for survival irrelevant. So how come Russia hasn't annexed Ukraine yet? And why spend literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year maintaining a conventional military when you already have nukes? And when are you going to press that button? Do you nuke Eurasia the second they cease diplomatic communications? When a cargo ship heading to LA founders for mysterious reasons? When a smal…

[deleted]

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

#364

Post by bluGill »

tclancy wrote: post #302
mikewarot wrote: post #133

Having worked in a job shop, a factory that did gears down to quantity one, I became quite aware of the differences between IT, my previous job, and actual physical production. The machine tools were all made 50+ years ago. Changing anything was a dangerous thing to do, because you might cause jobs that have known and reliable setups that are done a few times a year in quantity, to fail, erasing the profits for the j…

There is a really interesting generation gap issue in the replies to your comment. What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools while the older folks are thinking (I imagine) “if the tools have lasted that long they must be well-honed and very good”. Of course, this could simply be the perspective of someone turning 50 this year.

As an older folk, I perceive 50 year old tools as likely worn out and in desperate need of replacement. However often nobody makes the tool anymore and so we are willing to spend a lot to maintain them instead. (I drive a 25 year old car - this is only possible because I can get a rebuilt transmission, but my maintenance costs over the last 10 years would have bought much newer/nicer used car, and I'm getting close to where I could buy a new car)

The other possibility is the tool isn't used much and modern accountants would never allow you to buy it in the first place because of all the cash tied up. (that is the work the tool did over those 50 years wasn't enough to pay for the cost of the tool and the space to store it)

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

#365

Post by trollbridge »

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…

My local factories are mostly union, and they rely heavily on the union to help fill empty openings. They also set up booths at local job fairs and have a poster board with current openings (typically electricians and pipe fitters, sometimes line workers or machinists). The jobs also have benefits and vacation and sick time off. Everybody I know who works there is always trying to get as many overtime shifts as they can, especially the weekend and holiday ones which are double or 2.5X time. Electricians are IBEW, pipefitters are pipefitters’ union, rest are UAW even though it has nothing to do with cars.

General advice is if you’re down on your luck and need a job, you can go there and be at $25 an hour in a few months (step pay increases are mandated by the union). It’s not for everyone but it certainly has less turnover than the local McDonald’s which starts and stays around $14.

Unions should do a better job of marketing to employers that they can supply a trained work force. For example the IBEW here always has a full book of apprentices. An employer can get a qualified electrician along with an apprentice basically guaranteed.

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

#366

Post by schmidtleonard »

ffsm8 wrote: post #272
janalsncm wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a result of brain drain, honestly. The people who stood up that hardware 50 years ago are 50 years older now. By contrast, the Chinese have mastered process knowledge , transferring from one domain to the next. If we want to compete with them, it’s worth knowing what doing well looks like.

They built this knowledge up only in the last 10-15 yrs though. It's absolutely possible to reverse this trend within a much shorter time period then this argument always implies.

Wars are won or lost in 5 years, not 15. I agree that it's possible to reverse the trend, but we have to decide that we want to independently of a physical conflict, before someone else teaches us that deindustrialization is not advancement. Otherwise the lesson will come too late.

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

#367

Post by bluGill »

simmonmt wrote: post #353
nvader wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fascinating. I really don't know much about the world you're describing, so thank you for sharing your perspective. Don't customer needs change over time? How would one adapt to shifting demand, or new materials becoming available, or old materials going out of supply.

It depends on the item. Let's take this screw pitch gage: https://www.starrett.com/details?cat-no=155 Starrett doesn't really compete on price, as evidenced by the fact that this is a $95 item whereas the cheap alternatives go for closer to $10 on Amazon. So they're probably not making or selling very many of them. But they sell enough to make it worth keeping them in stock, and eventually they'll run out so they'll…

For those not familiar, Starrett has a reputation of quality. If you want the best you buy Starrett and pay the price. Often those Amazon alternatives are good enough, but often they have minor usability issues such that they are not as nice. Sometimes those Amazon alternatives are wrong in ways that matter and they can't be used at all.

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

#368

Post by Thlom »

varjag wrote: post #303
3D30497420 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also require a degree of consensus and quality of leadership which is completely lacking.

The leadership in democracy does what the population wants, even more so in the past couple decades.

Yet somehow the desires of the population is fulfilled to a higher degree in authoritarian China than in the beacon of democracy USA.

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

#369

Post by Broken_Hippo »

RataNova wrote: post #289
mikewarot wrote: post #133

Having worked in a job shop, a factory that did gears down to quantity one, I became quite aware of the differences between IT, my previous job, and actual physical production. The machine tools were all made 50+ years ago. Changing anything was a dangerous thing to do, because you might cause jobs that have known and reliable setups that are done a few times a year in quantity, to fail, erasing the profits for the j…

It's wild to think we used to build things to last decades. Now we build them to chase benchmarks for the next quarter

Did we, though? I am just not convinced.

A lot of cheap stuff through history that was definitely not made to last. I had paper dolls as a child. So did my mother. Probably her mother too - I'd ask, but she's dead.

How long do you expect a car to last? 100k miles (160k km), at least? It wasn't all that long ago that they were dead at 100k.

They used to add talc and sawdust to bread because they were cheaper than flour. Talk about chasing a quick buck. I very highly doubt they even cared about the next quarter. More realistically, things were built using the cheapest parts they could to make what they wanted - and they wanted things that would sell. Sure, some made things nicer than others but that's no different now.

Most of the things that we have now - old fridges, chairs, and so on - are flukes. They survived despite the odds.

Would most people even know if an MP3 player was built to last? How about an ink pen?

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

#370

Post by antonvs »

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.

> we still get people who struggle putting a sticker on a car for an hour straight before their break or task switch.

That seems wholly reasonable to me. Expecting humans to be able to do work like that, and especially to get satisfaction from such work, seems like the aberration.

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