World News

They don't need to be humanoid.

The whole "dark factory" thing was invented by the Japanese, decades ago, ttbomk.

Huge factory, no lights on in it, simply because there weren't any humans in it.

Patrols for surprise-errors/mistakes/malfunctions were done by flashlight.

Japanese-management got things down to a few cosmetic-blemishes per million units back in the VCR days.

Their quality-control was 2nd to none.

That other Asian industries can learn from the Japanese, in ways that our culture prohibits us from doing, shouldn't be surprising.

All the people who insist that the only thing that China produces is shit-quality "Chinesium", iPhones were produced in China for years ( no idea if they still are, & don't care ) and those things were far tighter quality than anything I've ever built, or than anything ANY of the North Americans I've worked-with have ever built.

China produces a spectrum, ranging from shit-quality to stunning-quality.

Same as we do.

Ideological "glasses" blind us, they don't "help" us see what's actually going-on.

& as another already-identified, "robotics" in no way implies humanoid.

Car-manufactories have been using giant robotic-arms for series-spot-welding for .. decades, now?

I'd do all the fuselage-riveting of old-style sheet-aluminum aircraft by robot, if I was a manufacturer of those things:

once you get the programming right, then you don't have "human error" sabotaging your product-integrity.

It's the same at all scales: what we are good-at, isn't what robots are good-at, & either we segregate the work so that we are doing the adaptive/innovative/human-process-centered stuff, & leave all the mechanical-repitition to robots, XOR we're sabotaging our own competitive-ability.

Exactly as the "strategy" of letting the short-term bottom-line now proves, when Asian industries invest strategically, in future-competitive-capability.

Decades-ago there was an example of the US steel-industry: they coasted on their establishment, while Japan invested in more-precision-chemistry & better foundries, then .. after some years, those investments came on-line, & the US steel industry, which couldn't compete with that, just got the US gov't to establish protectionism, to tarriff the Japanese steel industry, to protect the anti-strategic US companies.

( this is from one of the strategic-management textbooks of Blackwell: it's literally a reference-text case )

Accountability won't ever be tolerated by opportunistic-authority, including industry-incumbents, therefore "protectionism" damages the market to protect the anti-strategy of the incumbent players at the cost of our world's finite-opportunity.

That is normal: S. O. P.

Different cultures value different things.

Some people value making things right, whereas other people value corrupting everything that they can, as much as they can, for sake of how much the "get away with" ( the word "shoddy" is actually the real name of a guy who established that paradigm in the US )

We wouldn't invest in what Asia's invested-in: why should we have any ability to compete?

That is our "strategy".

And when we are economically-butchered by our "strategy", then .. then the oligarchs will simply protect themselves, & exploit the then-current situation, same as now.

Nothing changes, fundamentally..

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The telegraph is a low-quality right-wing rag in the UK that frames everything with a hint of xenophobia. I'd say it's a pretty poor source for "world news". Definitely take it with a large dose of salt.

Edit: MBFC rating is "mixed" with right-wing bias

I think the picture in the article was just AI bullshit art. It's not how anyone really thinks robotic factories look.