Firstly, much of shipbuilding is automated. They use robots to paint them and apply anti-fouling coatings. They also use loads and loads of automated machinery to create the steel parts that make up most of the ship. Do you think some dudes are forging rivets, beams, and pipes by hand? No, those are made by machines that make zillions of them.

Secondly, nearly every ship--even ships that seem generic like big container ships--is a custom, one-off thing. They're all bespoke (for the most part), being engineered for specific purposes, routes, and they even have "upgrades" for companies that pay extra (e.g. nicer quarters, extra antenna masts, more and special equipment mounting options, etc).

Notice how my post is not talking about the present tense.

Automation does not require very high precision though it does require a modicum of consistency. Millions of vibratory bowl feeders with huge tolerances on their alignment mechanisms demonstrate this fact ("Damnit! A part got caught again... Gerry! Loosen that tolerance screw much farther out so that won't happen again" LOL).

In fact they cannot automate the disassembly of cars even though their construction is highly automated. We just grind them up in a big grinder and separate the materials. So basically the same thing as with ships just on a smaller scale.

That's why I said, "eventually with non-general AI".

Even a well written algorithm could work with something that's mostly in expected shape. How in the flying fuck is everyone so brainless that they cannot understand non-general AI can still adapt to things? Fucking hell.

I'm not talking about current industry practices. I'm talking about combining existing technology with unlimited bidget to create a factory that could kinda' do the task.

"Possible" and "practical" are two extremely different things, and you goons pointing out that most obvious basic fact are adding nothing.

This depends on the system. Mechatronics engineers spend a lot of time learning and figuring out how to make systems that can withstand edge cases like an incorrect screw size. There's whole engineering/mechatronics disciplines around automation reliability (though much of it involves lots and lots of sensors and cameras, haha).

The way they test these things is by intentionally throwing bad parts into the mix at various stages of their automation. Something like a screw being too big/small is a trivial matter that won't make it through a system or facility designed by professionals.

The real problem that really throws a wrench into every mechatronics engineer's carefully-planned automated masterworks is people doing things like throwing wrenches into their carefully-planned automated masterworks 😁

Why the flying fuck do you think I said, "non-general AI"? Even a well written algorithm could handle things coming in not in perfect shape, yet everyone pretends "non-general AI" means, "execute instructions repeatedly without any input what so ever."

Use your brain. Even basic dumb algorithms that can run on an Arduino can respond to input. Machine learning can easily respond to dynamic input, so stop failing to imagine the most basic of basic things I say.