NEW ROBOT

Google, Foxconn and our new robot overlords 

 

Bipedal humanoid robot "Atlas", primarily developed by the American robotics company Boston Dynamics, now a subsidiary of Google. (Credit: Reuters/Siu Chiu)

This is how the world ends: Not with a bang, but with an eight-word Wall Street Journal headline: “Foxconn Is Quietly Working With Google on Robotics.” Prepare to meet your new robot overlords.
Of course, if I were writing a science fiction novel in which intelligent machines take over the world I’d probably consider it a cliché to suggest the rise of the bots hit the tipping point after a collaboration between one of the world’s most advanced manufacturers of electronic gear and one of the world’s most aggressively forward-looking software companies. I’d be more inclined to suggest something more exciting and exotic — like Facebook’s News Feed algorithm becoming so complex that it ushered in the Singularity, or a Pentagon virus designed to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactors disastrously merging with Russian malware.
But the more mundane path forward is always the more likely. Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer of electronic goods famous for its town-size assembly plants, suicidal workers and Apple supply line prowess has made it clear for years that it wants to upgrade from humans to robots. Google has recently been making a big push in both artificial intelligence and robotics. Together, the two companies are perfectly positioned to push the state-of-the-art. Amazing things are bound to happen.
Or seriously troubling things. The big question about Foxconn and Google isn’t actually whether Skynet is around the corner, but what impact further robotics advances will have on the labor market. Humans, apparently, are a pain in the ass for Foxconn.

The cooperation comes as Foxconn has been striving to accelerate automation efforts at its factories amid challenges of rising labor costs and workplace disputes in China, where it has more than a million workers….
“Foxconn needs Google’s help to step up automation at its factories as the company has the lowest sales per employee among the contract makers, given its large workforce,” said Wanli Wang, an analyst at CIMB Securities. “Using robots to replace human workers would be the next big thing in the technology industry…”