Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

english.hani.co.kr

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 224 posts

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#41

Post by theamk »

ryandrake wrote: post #13
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #7

> Samsung’s 12-inch line utilizes an overhead hoist transport (OHT) system, an automated transport network that operates along tracks installed on the ceiling, to move bundles of 25 wafers called “lots.” On the 8-inch line, however, this transportation is done manually. There is much more market demand for 12-inch wafers, so Samsung has modernized and automated many processes. The 8-inch line, however, is outdated. W…

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

Have you seen "good vs services employment" graphs, like this one? [0]

Number of people producing goods has been shrinking for a longest time, its under 20% now. It'll likely keep shrinking as automation becomes more advanced, and in the future "service" would be much more important.

When I was a kid, I've read some sci-fi stories about societies like those, where most people were working in service industry.

[0] https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2023/09/0...

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#42

Post by Ajedi32 »

ryandrake wrote: post #13
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #7

> Samsung’s 12-inch line utilizes an overhead hoist transport (OHT) system, an automated transport network that operates along tracks installed on the ceiling, to move bundles of 25 wafers called “lots.” On the 8-inch line, however, this transportation is done manually. There is much more market demand for 12-inch wafers, so Samsung has modernized and automated many processes. The 8-inch line, however, is outdated. W…

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

That sounds like a very low-margin business, if literally anyone can create and maintain it with close to zero human input. Its like the sci-fi equivalent of generating books with AI and selling them on Amazon. The cost of goods produced by your hypothetical business would plummet, and the real value would simply shift somewhere else that is still able to benefit from human labor or ingenuity.

If you're talking about a world where AI has become so advanced that humans have literally nothing to contribute to society, in any field, then that's called a post-scarcity society, where the very concept of a "business owner" (not to mention the concepts of "business" and "owner") starts to lose all meaning.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#43

Post by esalman »

bluedino wrote: post #37
wormlord wrote: post #36

Samsung is the only job interview I have walked out of. I was told "you'll basically have zero wlb for the first 2-3 years while we are getting this fab off the ground". I immediately said I was withdrawing my candidacy. I can't imagine what the floor workers jobs are like if that's how demanding the SWE side is. It's especially soul-crushing when you think what the next Xnm process translates to in the real-world. I…

wlb?

Work-life balance.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#44

Post by Blackthorn »

kybernetikos wrote: post #30
Blackthorn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, violence has been at least somewhat successful as a disincentive for this. Hasn't always fixed the immediate problem but the threat of it, and eventual implementation, kept too much of a gap from happening.

I doubt it'll work this time though though, since we are beginning to make big strides in automating violence too. The people who own the boxes will own the murderbots too.

They always owned the police anyway.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#45

Post by dangrossman »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #42
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

That sounds like a very low-margin business, if literally anyone can create and maintain it with close to zero human input. Its like the sci-fi equivalent of generating books with AI and selling them on Amazon. The cost of goods produced by your hypothetical business would plummet, and the real value would simply shift somewhere else that is still able to benefit from human labor or ingenuity. If you're talking about…

The fictional automated business may cost tens of billions of dollars to build. That means almost no one, not literally anyone, can create it. If a small group of giant conglomerates are the only companies wealthy enough to build these automated factories, then there's no competition to drive down prices, and no automatic path to a post-scarcity society. Instead, it's the dystopia ryandrake described.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#46

Post by wdh505 »

bluedino wrote: post #37
wormlord wrote: post #36

Samsung is the only job interview I have walked out of. I was told "you'll basically have zero wlb for the first 2-3 years while we are getting this fab off the ground". I immediately said I was withdrawing my candidacy. I can't imagine what the floor workers jobs are like if that's how demanding the SWE side is. It's especially soul-crushing when you think what the next Xnm process translates to in the real-world. I…

wlb?

Work life balance

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#47

Post by [deleted] »

ryandrake wrote: post #13
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #7

> Samsung’s 12-inch line utilizes an overhead hoist transport (OHT) system, an automated transport network that operates along tracks installed on the ceiling, to move bundles of 25 wafers called “lots.” On the 8-inch line, however, this transportation is done manually. There is much more market demand for 12-inch wafers, so Samsung has modernized and automated many processes. The 8-inch line, however, is outdated. W…

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

[deleted]

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#48

Post by Ajedi32 »

dangrossman wrote: post #45
Ajedi32 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a very low-margin business, if literally anyone can create and maintain it with close to zero human input. Its like the sci-fi equivalent of generating books with AI and selling them on Amazon. The cost of goods produced by your hypothetical business would plummet, and the real value would simply shift somewhere else that is still able to benefit from human labor or ingenuity. If you're talking about…

The fictional automated business may cost tens of billions of dollars to build. That means almost no one, not literally anyone, can create it. If a small group of giant conglomerates are the only companies wealthy enough to build these automated factories, then there's no competition to drive down prices, and no automatic path to a post-scarcity society. Instead, it's the dystopia ryandrake described.

> If a small group of giant conglomerates are the only companies wealthy enough to build these automated factories

So AI can build everything except the factory itself? Sounds like there's still a need for human labor.

And if the opposite is true and AI can build the factory, then it's not going to "cost tens of billions of dollars to build"; the factory will be just as cheap as the goods its producing. Literally everyone could have their own factory.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#49

Post by its_ethan »

svara wrote: post #24
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

That's the argument for universal basic income in a nutshell. I'm not so convinced, I think this comes from the limited mental model of thinking of the economy as a system for making widgets. Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires. Being a valued member of a community is a rather basic human need. As such, the economy will find novel ways to meet that ag…

I think there's something very true about your idea here.

I don't know that there's really any study or data that would back it up, but if a large amount of people don't have the structure and expectations that employment provides, things would deteriorate quickly.

Obviously there's a spectrum here, and mindless jobs that pay as little as legally allowed aren't exactly providing fulfillment that people need. In any individual case, of course it makes sense to say "why should I/they have to do this? they should be able to chase passions or find other opportunity" but when you talk about that being "granted" to large chunks of the population (happening at essentially the same time).. I don't see it working out super well in the short or long term.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#50

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

svara wrote: post #24
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

That's the argument for universal basic income in a nutshell. I'm not so convinced, I think this comes from the limited mental model of thinking of the economy as a system for making widgets. Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires. Being a valued member of a community is a rather basic human need. As such, the economy will find novel ways to meet that ag…

> Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires.

I like that definition.

Post reply on HN