Krugman: Rise of the Robots

[IDemo]

10. Only to a point

They just completed a new chip fab at the high tech campus where I'm employed. We took a tour of the fab through viewing windows (it's a clean room, so you can't just walk through without the proper garments). In row after row of fabrication equipment, multimillion dollar robotics handle every step of the process without direct human intervention. With robots handing off the product between various stages of manufacture, there was a lone bunny-suited tech attending a station, whereas previous fabs required numerous 'operators' to control an already highly automated process. There are only so many automation engineers and techs required to keep this fab running 24/7/365. Nowhere even remotely close to the numbers employed here in decades past.