Corporations, well aware of this, happily use the prospect of a robotic future as a threat - just as they use offshoring - to discipline their human workforce and hold down wages. To the anxious and precarious workers of today, a “lights out” factory raises the specter of a jobless future. Much will depend on whether we humans leave robotization to the free market or whether we take deliberate steps to shape our future relationships with robots, work and each other. The rapid progress in robot development raises sobering questions: How many jobs - and which ones - will be lost or transformed? What policies should we pursue as we prepare for a robot-dependent world? And what will become of human work if robots do much of what people do now? workers are at risk of replacement by robots or other computer-based technologies. In 2013, two Oxford University researchers, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, estimated that 47 percent of U.S. Engineering breakthroughs in robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning are coming faster than expected. Recently, they’ve sparked an abundance of both. “I’m not trying to drive labor out just to drive labor out, but for consistency and efficiency. “The vision I have and won’t live to see is a completely ‘lights out’ operation,” says Winzeler, who is 72. Winzeler hopes robots will ultimately replace all flesh-and-blood production workers, leaving just the higher-skilled, better-paid technical and administrative staff, and making it possible for his company to remain a globally competitive manufacturer. Now, with 43 robots, 35 fulltime human workers and 15 part-timers, it turns out up to 15 million gears a month (average price: one nickel). In 1985, the factory employed 60 people and produced 2 million gears a month. If we embrace the robots that humanity is on the brink of creating, the issue will be whether these machines and people can coexist in solidarity, within a world of unprecedented wealth.īig factories have employed such robots for the past 50 years, but few small companies have pushed robotics as far as Winzeler Gear, which will soon be adding a cutting-edge “collaborative” robot to its workforce - a flexible robot that is easily programmable for different tasks.ĭespite stiff competition from factories in low-wage countries, Winzeler Gear has thrived in Chicago thanks to its robots.
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