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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

#461

Post by hedora »

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…

The crazy thing is, due to coordinated propaganda campaigns, people don't realize that the Biden administration got people to invest in US factories at an unprecedented rate. Trump's already managed to scare off a lot of that investment, presumably because he wants to protect the trade deficit.

Here's a graph of actual private investment money going into factories in the US since 1950. It proves my point:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RC1Q027SBEA

I guess the tariffs are serving some other purpose, like forcing foreign governments to bribe him under-the-counter(?) That'd explain his rapid increase in net worth since taking office.

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

#462

Post by overfeed »

zbentley wrote: post #271
DannyBee wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic, that sounds like there's very little space of tinkering, exploration or innovation." This is the opposite of brittle. You say this as if those things are desired here. Those things would be a net negative to a well known production process for complex parts. After years, that process has been refined to basically the limits of the machines and the physi…

> not everything requires improvement or tinkering. Some things are just done. For sure, but how do you know? If it's only via: > The experimental part is done until a new machine might provide some benefit (Often this is done by the manufacturer trying to sell them). Then you would test it out on that machine, not fuck up an existing well-running process. ...then I worry about the efficiency of improvement. Sure, ma…

> For sure, but how do you know?

In actual engineering, one can work out the theoretical limits (strength, expansion, etc) and measure the current product's performance against the limits. A new widget-making machine or process cannot imbue widgets with physics-defying properties. Any fundamental improvements can only be made on the outside, auch as new alloys; but that would be an entirely different product, nor the one you've been selling for 40 years that your customers trust and love.

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

#463

Post by __loam »

dijit wrote: post #342
tclancy wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, a lot of the tools we use as developers have 30-40 year heritage's themselves. The things that most people depend on and are in the background.

Relational databases are from the 70's

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

#464

Post by mbesto »

crote wrote: post #74
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. In my opinion one of the biggest reasons we won't see manufacturing come back to Western countries is that we still believe this is how most factories operate. Chinese people aren't stupid , they have been spending a fortune on automating as much of their manufacturing as possible! Western lab…

> In my opinion one of the biggest reasons we won't see manufacturing come back to Western countries is that we still believe this is how most factories operate.

Not really, American manufacturing is already automated. Manufacturing jobs have steadily decreased[0] while output has increased (or stayed steady) in manufacturing since the early 2000's [1]. There is only one reasonable explanation for this -> automation.

While it is true that the Chinese are indeed automated their manufacturing, it still doesn't negate the fact that companies like Foxconn still have 200k employees in China.

IMHO the real reason you'll never see manufacturing come back to the USA is because you can't convince people who are already in less manually intensive labor conditions to go back to more manually intensive labor conditions. Said differently, it's easier to get someone who's family has spent decades doing back breaking work in a rice paddy to work in a factory for slightly better pay than it is to do the reverse.

[0] - https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/forty-years-of-falling...

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GOMA

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

#465

Post by lossolo »

anonymars wrote: post #404
nradov wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global supply chains seem to be gradually breaking down due to a mix of politics, demographics, and armed conflicts. Everyone has become accustomed to the post-WWII system of global free trade but historically it is an aberration and everything will eventually revert to the mean. I wouldn't be surprised if China disintegrates into another civil war within the next few decades. We can't necessarily rely on foreign cou…

> China disintegrates into another civil war within the next few decades I'm curious about your reasoning on this. China was not the one at the top of my list of "Major world powers likely to have a civil war sooner than later"

Agree. At this point, a civil war is more likely in the United States than in China.

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

#466

Post by UncleOxidant »

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…

> The rush to fill brand new high energy intensive data centers with hardware that has commercially useful lifetimes measured in months (instead of decades for machine tools) seems quite short sighted to me.

There's a sort of collective ADHD where we as a culture or economy collectively chase the latest shiny bauble in the hopes of getting rich without having to expend any effort. It often ends badly for the economy and then we go through a phase where we collectively are forced to slow down and reflect on our mistakes vowing not to repeat them... only to do so a decade or two later. The older you get, the more you notice this pattern. We did it in 2000 with the dotcom implosion and then again in 08 with housing and shady mortgages. This time it's overbuilding AI; putting way too much capital into infrastructure that has short useful lifetime.

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

#467

Post by ap99 »

lesuorac wrote: post #388
ap99 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about leverage, which you mentioned. If you have no leverage during a negotiation and your counterpart has can say 'no' without having to give up anything then you're screwed. America doesn't have to be the best manufacturers, but we do need to have the ability to say, "fuck it we'll build it ourselves" when the other side of the table says something we don't like. And anyone living in the fantasy utopia where t…

But you don't have to build it yourself. If China wants to play hardball then Vietnam can make the goods. This is the great system we had until Trump decided he'd piss off every country. We had a very much you vs the world when doing diplomacy as USA but now it's just you vs USA which is a much weaker position.

There won't always be a Vietnam or an India.

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

#468

Post by dcchambers »

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…

> The rush to fill brand new high energy intensive data centers with hardware that has commercially useful lifetimes measured in months (instead of decades for machine tools) seems quite short sighted to me.

The only way "number goes up" capitalism continues to work is with planned obsolescence and things that need to be replaced regularly. This is a feature of the system, not a flaw. Nvidia (and all of their investors) love the fact that the stuff they make now will be outdated or broken in a few years.

If things last forever and never need to be replaced the only way to continue to increase profits is to have more people buying them. And global population appears to be peaking, at least in western countries, so that's not going to happen.

Is it sustainable? Probably not. But everyone seems to have their heads buried in the sand at the obvious dangers of what we're running into.

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

#469

Post by bluGill »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #398
bluGill wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those tools functional? Have you ever checked? I'm not sure what tools you are talking about, but likely some of them are measurement tools and they can seem to work perfect while giving the wrong measurement. Other might be cutting tools that cut, but they are a bit dull and if you don't know how to check you won't realize the cuts are not as good as new anymore (or maybe you have sharpened them and they now cut…

> but likely some of them are measurement tools where and why did you come to this conclusion?

When someone says machine tools I assume it assumes the measurement tools. It doesn't have to, but you can't do much work without measuring. (unless you build to fit - which works okay but there is a reason it went obsolete 100+ years ago)

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

#470

Post by kube-system »

lmm wrote: post #202
kube-system wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US employers cannot discriminate against a deaf person and must make reasonable accommodations to make it safe for them to do their job. US employers are not legally required to make accommodations for people who simply want to listen to music at work. Today's vehicles already have a lot of sound deadening (and good stereos) and it is becoming a problem for emergency vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lvTBmBD…

> US employers cannot discriminate against a deaf person and must make reasonable accommodations to make it safe for them to do their job. > US employers are not legally required to make accommodations for people who simply want to listen to music at work. So it would be reasonably possible, but since it's not legally required they'd rather make their workers miserable for no benefit, and then complain how difficult…

Well, just because an employer can make reasonable accommodations for one or a few deaf people, doesn't necessarily mean that it would be reasonable or safe for the entire organization to operate in the same way. A "reasonable accommodation" could be something like a modified job role. E.g. you might move someone from a role that can't safely be done while deaf into a role that they could do. That's something that you could do for one or a couple of people, but you couldn't do for everybody.

I do agree with the sentiment that employers should take more efforts to make their jobs enjoyable to do. But some job sites have things that can kill people. The reason that heavy machinery beeps when it backs up is because people died at work before it did.

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