Chinese company’s ‘dark factory’ will no human workers soon be the norm
A clip from inside a factory in China has given us another uneasy glimpse into the future of employment as artificial intelligence takes hold.
Manufacturing
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There are millions of factories in China that work around the clock to manufacture vast amounts of consumer products for the world. Six million of them to be exact.
But one innocuous building in Changping is doing things a little differently.
The factory operates in total darkness, minus a few flashes and sparks as things get welded together. It’s not because they’re trying to cut down on the quarterly power bill, but because none of the factory’s “workers” need light to see.
Welcome to the brave new world of 24/7 robot-run manufacturing.
Consumer electronics company Xiaomi unveiled its next-generation smart factory late last year, showcasing a a fully automated, AI-driven facility that has raised the bar for efficiency, precision, and sustainability.
Dubbed a “dark factory”, the facility runs every second of the day without human intervention, integrating AI and big data to streamline production.
Robots have been assembling things like vehicles and electronics for decades, but the sudden shift away from flesh and bone on the factory floor has given us another uneasy glimpse into the future of employment.
A factory that runs itself
The factory produces one smartphone per second.
From raw material handling to final assembly, robots handle everything inside the revolutionary new factory, eliminating human error and ensuring top-tier quality every single second.
Human concerns like lunch and smoke breaks, labour laws and clock-out times have no relevance here.
As complex electronics are assembled, the factory’s systems communicate in real-time, self-adjusting for optimal performance and minimising errors. Self-developed AI systems monitor production live, catching issues immediately before they become defects.
Xiaomi has also incorporated a fully automated dust-removal system that keeps components pristine, so there’s no need to hire cleaners as the factory maintains itself.
Xiaomi poured 2.4 billion yuan ($330 million) into the 81,000-square meter facility, which has an annual production capacity of 10 million devices.
It will spearhead production of Xiaomi’s foldable phones, the MIX Fold 4 and MIX Flip.
Beyond Xiaomi, the factory is a blueprint for the future of global manufacturing. The AI arms race has sped up to an uncontrollable pace and big corporations are looking to the future to eek out an edge over their competition.
It means a large number of monotonous jobs will be replaced by robots in the coming years, a phenomenon that has worried analysts for years.
Some experts argue that while the shift will be disruptive, there will still be a need for humans to be employed, with a far greater emphasis on skills that centre around optimising existing technology.
‘Disruption’ era dawns
Last year, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report predicted that 23 per cent of jobs will go through a tectonic AI shift in the next five years.
The report summed up the next chapter in one word. Disruption.
The paper said that advancements in technology and digitisation are at the forefront of this labour market downturn.
Of the 673 million jobs reflected in the dataset in the report, respondents expect structural job growth of 69 million jobs and a decline of 83 million jobs.
The data claims 42 per cent of business tasks will be automated by 2027, estimating that 44 per cent of the current workforce’s skills “will be disrupted in the next five years”, with as many as 60 per cent “requiring more training” within five years.
Is the world ready for this?
Just about everyone in a job that involves a computer will be impacted as the natural forces of capitalism blend with artificial intelligence. There is widespread worry amongst some in the tech sector who believe we have moved too fast to adjust.
Late last year, the United Nations hit the pause button on letting the unchecked powers of artificial intelligence rule the roost, urging global cooperation instead of simply letting market forces steer the way forward.
In a report published ahead of the UN’s highly anticipated “Summit of the Future,” experts sounded the alarm about the current lack of international oversight on AI, a technology that’s stirring up concerns around misuse, biases, and humanity’s growing dependence on it.
Numerous figures in the AI field have already expressed concern about the frightening global race towards technological supremacy, loosely comparing it to the frantic efforts in the 1940s to produce the world’s first nuclear bomb.
One man known as the “godfather of AI” famously quit Google in 2023 over concerns the company was not adequately assessing the risks, warning we could be walking into a “nightmare”.
While the immediate benefits are already being seen in terms of productivity, the main concern is that we are charging full steam ahead towards an event horizon that is impossible to predict the outcome of.
What we do know is that those spearheading AI development are becoming absurdly wealthy incredibly quickly and thus hold more and more power over the trajectory of the planet as each day passes.
Around 40 experts, spanning technology, law, and data protection, were gathered by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to tackle the existential issue head-on. They say that AI’s global, border-crossing nature makes governance a mess, and we’re missing the tools needed to address the chaos.
The panel’s report drops a sobering reminder, warning that if we wait until AI presents an undeniable threat, it could already be too late to mount a proper defence.
“There is, today, a global governance deficit with respect to AI,” the panel of experts warned in their report, stressing that the technology needs to “serve humanity equitably and safely”.
AI likened to nuclear arms race
Speaking at a recent AI Summit in Seoul, leading scientist Max Tegmark stressed the urgent need for strict regulation on the creators of the most advanced AI programs before it’s too late.
He said that once we have made AI that is indistinguishable from a human being, otherwise known as passing the “Turing test”, there is a real threat we could “lose control” of it.
“In 1942, Enrico Fermi built the first ever reactor with a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under a Chicago football field,” Tegmark said.
“When the top physicists at the time found out about that, they really freaked out, because they realised that the single biggest hurdle remaining to building a nuclear bomb had just been overcome. They realised that it was just a few years away – and in fact, it was three years, with the Trinity test in 1945.
“AI models that can pass the Turing test are the same warning for the kind of AI that you can lose control over. That’s why you get people like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio – and even a lot of tech CEOs, at least in private – freaking out now.”
Originally published as Chinese company’s ‘dark factory’ will no human workers soon be the norm
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