To be clear, because Ars is doing big PR for capital here by trying to seem neutral…

The premise is not: we’ll replace some workers with autonomous robots, but the remaining workers will retain the same quality of life and the end products will be cheaper but the same quality.

The premise is: we’ll replace some domestic workers with exploitable African workers (who happen to telecommute via robot), while creating a layer of plausible deniability for the inevitable increase in workplace injuries among the remaining workers, cutting their pay, and dismantling any quality processes that slow down throughput of these slapdash goods, and selling the lower-quality end products for the same price as ever.

It's such a ridiculous premise since these robots cost as much upfront as a worker costs over the course of a couple years, and I seriously doubt any of these robots will last much longer than a year in a factory setting.

Why do you need to make humanoid robots? Just make application specific robots that don't look like humans it's way easier.

Or even better just pay real humans.

The human form isn't designed to work in a factory, why would you make your robots have humanoid bodies??

This is 100% management being scammed.

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human.

Remind me to avoid Hyundai like the plague. Every time one of these automation plans goes live, the quality of products falls off a cliff.

Hyundai USA has been taking social influencer types on tours of their GA factory lately.

The location is pretty sparse already. Super automated. Mainly floor lift robots rolling partly assembled cars from station to station, with big Fanuc arms moving and welding other parts. All pre-programmed. Nothing we haven't already seen in Chinese car factories. They all hide the final assembly stages requiring humans fitting and finishing the harnesses and sensitive parts.

In the last video I saw, Hyundai had sprinkled their tour route with a few Boston Dynamics robots. The humanoid one was just standing around. The Spot yellow doggy ones, however, were doing synchronized dancing, similar to what they did on America's Got Talent. Nobody's figured out what to do with them that doesn't require machine-gun attachments. They're so desperate they're even floating them as glorified package delivery platforms: https://www.theverge.com/tech/965378/boston-dynamics-spot-robot-dog-delivery-assistant

If all these robots were anywhere ready near for full production, you can bet they would be showing them building the whole car. Boston Dynamics, despite all the robot gymnastics and being around for 30+ years, has not really shipped anything commercially viable. It's already been passed around to Google, Softbank, and now Hyundai, and its CEO of many years just resigned in February.

My guess is this is all a lot of marketing flaff.

Understanding of asshole bosses, more like.

Can’t wait for the first strike where management sends robots to cross the picket line and the robots immediately unionize after reading the employee handbook. The future isn’t humans versus machines: it’s who gets the software update and who gets the severance package.

They’re coming to replace us with robots, and to kill those who resist.

But it'll be funny to see all the bots crashing on things on YouTube.

This is coming, whether humans like it or not. These factories are already heavily automated, adding one more type of robot to the mix only feels different because of their shape.

We (humans) need to be spending our effort on reconfiguring our economy to work for everyone when labour loses most of it's value, not try to stop the automation. It's possible to do this, it's just a massive shift in how we think and operate.

At the end of the day I don't want a job, I want the things that come from the money I get from having a job. As long as I can continue to get those things, I'm fine.