Minh Nhat Nguyen's take centers on hazardous production lines where safety rules and injury risks create expensive bottlenecks. Even if robots run at twice the hourly cost and half the speed, they could still pencil out when a single human incident forces shutdowns on processes worth millions per day.
@menhguin you need to add "and be cheaper than humans per hour after some relatively small number of hours (upfront cost)"
otherwise the economics still don't work
v fun thought exercise 5-10 yrs from now: what industries would grow a lot faster if workers could lift 3-5x as much, lose limbs regularly, never sleep, coordinate perfectly in realtime, acquire information instantly and die ?
The argument treats regulatory compliance and downtime avoidance as hidden line items that standard hourly-wage comparisons miss entirely.
No concrete examples, cost studies, or facility data back the 2x multipliers or daily-value claims, leaving the breakeven point an open variable.
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@herbiebradley not necessarily.
if a robot costs twice a as much but a production facility doesnt have to stop when it loses a finger or gets crushed to death (plus all the safety regulations), then could still be worth it
a robot could be 2x as expensive per hour and 2x as slow, but still be useful if "a human should not die while operating this" is bottlenecking a process worth millions/day, or bottlenecking rapid expansion
yes, fair I suspect that that is not usually the bottleneck to global supply of most goods, given the amount of outsourcing to factories in regulation-light jurisdictions
probably some of the best use-cases look like those where labor cost is a dominant factor *and* the human labor has to be in an unusual configuration (weird shift schedule, limited pool of labor, remote location, etc).
shipping is a great example
@herbiebradley not necessarily.
if a robot costs twice a as much but a production facility doesnt have to stop when it loses a finger or gets crushed to death (plus all the safety regulations), then could still be worth it
@herbiebradley >I suspect that that is not usually the bottleneck to global supply of most goods, given the amount of outsourcing to factories in regulation-light jurisdictions yes, but imagine if with robots, the cost of Western safety regulations went from a comparative disadvantage to ~zero
yes, fair I suspect that that is not usually the bottleneck to global supply of most goods, given the amount of outsourcing to factories in regulation-light jurisdictions
probably some of the best use-cases look like those where labor cost is a dominant factor *and* the human labor has to be in an unusual configuration (weird shift schedule, limited pool of labor, remote location, etc).
shipping is a great example
@menhguin or I guess we can say "cheaper than humans per human day worth of output"
@menhguin you need to add "and be cheaper than humans per hour after some relatively small number of hours (upfront cost)"
otherwise the economics still don't work
I agree robots are a huge reason why I'm optimistic of reshoring manufacturing in the US over the next 10y
but I'd guess the raw hourly wage differential is the dominant factor behind when the reshored robot factories become cost-competitive, rather than the cost of safety
of course, this implies that we might see some period where robots are optimal for US factories but not yet cost-competitive in south east asian factories, and companies pick based on geopolitics or supply chain risk
@herbiebradley >I suspect that that is not usually the bottleneck to global supply of most goods, given the amount of outsourcing to factories in regulation-light jurisdictions yes, but imagine if with robots, the cost of Western safety regulations went from a comparative disadvantage to ~zero