You work in a car factory. Androids come into the shop and start doing your job just like you used to. What does that feel like?
Workers at BMW plants are finding out. In a new video from robotics startup Figure, founder Brett Adcock shows his androids assembling car parts faster than ever.
The Figure robots in the company’s headquarters are doing 1,000 placements every day. (Taking Component X and putting it in Place Y is one placement.)
The robots are still pretty slow compared to a human. But their dexterity is impressive. I especially like watching the hands move.
Figure robots aren’t just in a lab. The company deployed the androids to a BMW factory in South Carolina in a two week pilot earlier this year.
Figure appears to be way ahead of Tesla’s Optimus. The Tesla androids stood behind the bar and bopped to the music at the recent “We, Robot” event. But they didn’t do much else.
If you work at BMW’s South Carolina plant, what are you thinking when you see androids walking onto the floor?
Sure, the robots are slow and awkward now. But we can all see the writing on the wall.
They’re going to get better and faster. And there will be many, many more of them.
Robots don’t take breaks. They don’t need healthcare. And they don’t unionize.
How can you compete with that?
In the long run, you can’t. If I worked in a car factory now, I’d be looking for another job.
In 10 years, I expect to see androids all over auto factories. And they’ll be in other factories too — steel mills, chemical plants, you name it.
Working in a car factory is dangerous. The risk of being injured is twice as high as the average American worker.
Putting robots in these dangerous jobs will avoid a lot of good people getting hurt. On the other hand, those people will no longer have a paycheck.
With a little retraining, factory workers could move into the trades. Auto workers might become plumbers, a job that’s less repetitive and harder to automate.
They’d make more money too!
Government should help with that retraining. Masses of laid off workers is bad for the economy, not to mention political stability.
In the end, no one really wants to work in an auto plant. It’s boring, repetitive, dangerous work.
They just want the money.
Let’s outsource these rotten jobs to robots. We humans can do things we enjoy, and make lots of money along the way.
What do you think of the Figure robot?
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