China should take active role in robotics
- By Ni Tao
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, March 21, 2016
"It's going to start impacting jobs at all skill levels. It's not just going to be about low-wage people who don't have lots of education. It's really starting to impact also professional jobs," he was quoted as saying in a March 2 interview with Knowledge@Wharton, a publication affiliated with Wharton School.
If Ford is to be believed, then in the future scenarios involving humans competing with robots, or perhaps rebelling against machine oppression, might not exist only in science fiction.
Boon to factory owners
Hyperbole aside, a healthy dose of worry and circumspection can't hurt.
Proponents of robotics often say that unlike humans, machines make few mistakes, they don't tire of monotonous work and they don't slack off. Such attributes make them an ideal alternative to us fickle humans, who as a species can all too easily succumb to error, boredom and fatigue.
This may be a boon to factory owners in Chinese manufacturing hubs like Dongguan that suffer from periodic shortages of labor, and where there is a surging demand for affordable robots to replace unskilled, uncommitted and "unreliable" labor.
Policymakers, however, are left in a predicament. Like leading AI powerhouses such as the US, Japan and Germany, China is a big patron of its nascent robotic industry. But few countries will perhaps experience the consequences of their support of AI on as large a scale as China. After all, its migrants will likely be the first to bear the brunt of an AI onslaught. This is why neo-Luddites want to see the robot technology champions cut down to size. In today's fast-changing environment, it makes no sense to either glorify or dismiss AI. Instead, a more relevant question that AlphaGo provoked is: why are these sophisticated robots made only in the West?
In a recent interview with Shanghai Daily, Cao Qixin, a professor and AI expert at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, explained that China can rival other countries in the number of robots produced every year, yet not in quality. Its domestic market for high-end robots is up for grabs by companies like Yaskawa, Fanuc and ABB.
China's indigenous robots have yet to overcome core technical deficiencies in chips, sensors and decelerators. The breakthroughs are long in coming.
Showing me around what is supposedly a visionary unmanned factory floor consisting only of robots, Cao pointed to a modest-looking robot bought 10 years ago and lamented that such a machine is still beyond the capacity of Chinese companies.
I'm hopeful that one day, robots from China will be able to perform feats once thought impossible. Right now, instead of worrying about our possible enslavement by robots, it's perhaps more inspiring to wait for China's own AlphaGo moment.
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