Re:Apple learned automation can't match human skill
by cm2187 on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @03:14AM
(#24845459)
Well, that's my main opposition to "AI will replace [insert any profession]". Many jobs are so specific it will never be economical to hire a team of software+AI specialist to create and maintain the software to automate that work. Plus the fact that the said specialists usually know nothing about the domain.
Re:Apple learned automation can't match human skill
by TeMPOraL on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @05:21AM
(#24846104)
There's always a way around this, and GP hinted at it. Instead of automating a difficult stage of a process as-is, you redesign the entire process, possibly including the final product, to make it automation-friendly.
This is how we deal with problems in general. If we can't solve them on their own terms, we change the terms. For example, designing an all-terrain vehicle is hard, so instead we've been beating the terrain flat, and paving it so that it stays flat, to allow a simple box with wheels to work, and we've been doing that since beginnings of recorded history.
(And speaking of paving - we're not placing random stones in the ground anymore; we're either pouring liquid, or laying stones pre-cut to standard size. Both are much easier to automate, and to some extent they already are automated.)
I can't think of a job so specific that wouldn't yield to competition from equivalent but normalized job.
Re:Apple learned automation can't match human skill
by afiori on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @03:44AM
(#24845629)
A cynic could reply that you only need enough hype/marketing to convince management and a way to shift blame when shit hits the fan.
Re:Apple learned automation can't match human skill
by anotheryou on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @04:20AM
(#24845815)
Now you need three experts, one in the domain, one for automation and an engineer. But only the engineer will be needed in production.
Re:Apple learned automation can't match human skill
by Dylan16807 on Wednesday October 21, 2020 @05:03AM
(#24846020)
If lack of roboticists to spend enough time on each station was the main issue, I bet 100 roboticists would have been plenty. At that rate you can pay them a lot and still save money. And after 6 months you can reassign 90% of them to a new project, while the savings continue indefinitely.
On a production line with 1000 different operations you'd have a thousand low skill people using their eyes, brains, and fingers to develop the assembly process.
You could never get 1000 roboticists working on getting an assembly line going. I don't know how you could even find that many, but if you did manage to do it, you'd probably end up with an assembly line that would spit out 60 iphones a second.
Instead what you might have is a setup where no individual process is getting the attention it truly needs. Each step is probably just barely working because the pressure to get 1000 automation steps working means that as soon as it works even poorly you've got to move on to the next step.