Robotics, AI and Other Tech

What is the Corporate Culture for your company?

Has someone else already tested the boundaries of what is acceptable and not acceptable?

 

I wasn't interested in signing up to get the entire writeup, but this snippet does give a good idea about the issue.

A $60 Mod to Meta’s Ray-Bans Disables Its Privacy-Protecting Recording Light

Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses usually include an LED that lights up when the user is recording other people. One hobbyist is charging a small fee to disable that light, and has a growing list of customers around the country.

The sound of power tools screech in what looks like a workshop with aluminum bubble wrap insulation plastered on the walls and ceiling. A shirtless man picks up a can of compressed air from the workbench and sprays it. He’s tinkering with a pair of Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. At one point he squints at a piece of paper, as if he is reading a set of instructions...

 

Why the U.S. Still Trails in Lights-Out Manufacturing

In 1982, The New York Times published an article titled “General Motors: A Giant in Transition.” It discussed how the world’s leading automaker at the time was joining forces with Fujitsu Fanuc Ltd. to form GMFanuc Robotics Corp., a company whose factory-of-the-future mission was to make robots not just for General Motors, but for consumers as well.

“We may make the first electronic, automatic vacuum cleaner,” said the Giant in Transition’s chairman, Roger Smith. “You walk out the door in the morning and at 11 o’clock this thing comes out and vacuums the whole house while you’re gone.”

The Rise of FANUC and the Realization of the Dream—In Japan

Sadly, his vision of perpetually clean floors and a lights-out, robots-making-robots factory in Troy, Mich., would go the way of another failed venture, GM’s plastic-bodied Saturn car brand.

Within 10 years, GMFanuc Robotics’ Japanese partners snapped up the automaker’s shares, restructured the company and gave it what has since become a well-known name: FANUC Robotics Corp.

The result? As reported in Business 2.0 Magazine (itself another failed business venture), the newly formed corporation achieved what Smith could only dream about.

By 2003, FANUC’s robot-filled factory at the base of Mount Fuji was spawning 50 clones each day and could operate autonomously for up to a month. “Not only is it lights-out,” said Vice President Gary Zywiol, “we turn off the air conditioning and heat, too.”

You can’t blame a guy for trying. But you can blame him—and the boards that backed him (or her)—for putting stock prices and short-term profitability ahead of American greatness, however. Over a similar timeframe:

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  • Qingdao Haier Co. of China completed its acquisition of GE Appliances from General Electric for $5.6 billion.
  • Machine tool builder Giddings & Lewis (G&L) acquired competitor Fadal for about $90 million. Three years later, G&L was itself acquired by the French conglomerate Fives Group for an undisclosed sum.
  • Swedish firm Atlas Copco acquired Ingersoll Rand’s industrial tools and assembly systems business from Ingersoll Rand Inc. for $1.6 billion.
  • Chinese technology company Lenovo announced it would acquire IBM’s Personal Computing Division—including the ThinkPad laptop line—in a deal valued at $1.25 billion in cash and stock.
  • Colt’s Manufacturing Company was acquired by the Czech firearms manufacturer Česká zbrojovka Group for $220 million.
  • Daimler-Benz purchased Chrysler for $36 billion, sold it to private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management and was then rescued by Italy’s Fiat S.p.A. to become Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, which then merged with French automaker Groupe PSA to form the Stellantis Group, now the world’s fourth-largest automaker by volume.

In all fairness, American firms engage in similar acquisitions and hostile takeovers—just look at Lincoln Electric’s purchase of Swedish company Air Liquide’s welding division—just as many of the companies listed do their manufacturing here in the States.

And while that helps employ American workers, most of the profits go elsewhere.

Why Isn’t the U.S. Leading in Robotics?
But this article is about robots and their role in lights-out manufacturing—or rather, about answering the question: If the U.S. is trying to correct past mistakes and reshore its production, why aren’t more companies here scooping up as many droids as they possibly can? Or better yet, making them on American soil?

The Progressive Policy Institute tells us Korea has 1,000 robots for every 10,000 factory workers, far ahead of second-place Singapore’s 670 robots, Japan’s 399, Germany’s 397 and China at 322, with Taiwan and the U.S. essentially tied at 276 and 274 robots per 10,000 humans respectively.

As Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, told Congress in 2024, “You cannot have a world-leading economy without a world-leading manufacturing base.” It’s time to get those arms moving.

P.S. General Motors now ranks in third place in worldwide revenue behind Toyota and Volkswagen Group. Said Roger Smith when asked about the business venture, “We will be coming up with new products. I predict they will be highly sophisticated, very technologically oriented.

We won’t be making hula hoops.” He was right about the hula hoops, if not the robots. In 2006, Wham‑O was sold to the Chinese investment group Cornerstone Overseas Investment. The twirling toys are now made in Zhejiang Province.