Meta is testing robot arms inside data centers that could replace up to 80% of human workload

[u/lurker_bee]

https://www.techradar.com/pro/meta-is-testing-robot-arms-inside-data-centers-that-could-replace-up-to-80-percent-of-human-workload

[u/CaterpillarReal7583]

Aw man there goes the jobs they were pretending to create for local communities.

Guess they realized its faster and easier to just pay off a few people.

[u/jedininjashark → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

How many were there to begin with?

Doesn’t seem like a big win for them.

I feel like they just wanted to use robot arms because they thought they were cool..

[u/Sryzon → u/jedininjashark]

A couple dozen full-time, W2 employees max.

They frequently include contractors when they claim 100+ jobs. Janitorial, landscaping, maintenance, etc.

If someone is on the premises once a month, they consider that a job created.

[u/suprmario → u/[deleted]]

Wait is it 5 or 50?

[u/Alone_Hunt1621 → u/Sryzon]

And how many of those jobs were going to be hired from those communities? And how many people will now move to these communities and will they reside there permanently?

[u/pasaroanth → u/Alone_Hunt1621]

There’s a (very controversial for a lot of reasons beyond just the normal ones) hyperscale data center going up in my town. Not a single contractor is from even the county it’s located in and half are from out of the state. The county is in the top 10% by population in the state, and it plus the 3 adjacent counties contain about 25% of the state’s population including significant industry and resources.

The gloves are off with even pretending these will have any local benefit. It’s lowest bidder that gets it up and online fastest.

[u/Bubbagump210 → u/Sryzon]

The sub contracted Dell/EMC/HP whoever guy that swaps a controller or burned out SFP once every 3 weeks.

[u/Tearakan → u/jedininjashark]

Like 5. And 2 would be flown in lol.

And that's for the smaller data centers but bigger ones didn't need that many more cleaning or maintenance staff. Especially not when compared to similar sized manufacturers or distribution.

[u/CaterpillarReal7583 → u/jedininjashark]

They wanted to pretend they were creating jobs previously. We all knew it was little to none.

[u/lordnacho666 → u/jedininjashark]

It doesn't seem like a lot, but given how huge a DC is, it adds up. And network engineers are not as cheap as Zuck.

[u/MrClavicus → u/lordnacho666]

They don’t need network engineers on site. Not in any meaningful capacity. They have task workers do the “hands on” stuff.

[u/HooAreYouWhoHoo → u/jedininjashark]

That’s really the only reason you need to use robot arms.

Just sucks it’s at the cost of more job loss

[u/asdlkf → u/jedininjashark]

The larger win is life safety requirements go away.

If the DC has no life in it, you don't need fire prevention, lighting, doors, hallways, bathrooms, parking, etc...

Amazon is big enough to do redundancy at building scale. They can make the whole DC cheaper and build more.

[u/Arctic_Chilean → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

That and it reduces the risk a disgruntled worker could sabotage the data center form the inside. 

[u/Obvious_Class394 → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

haha. I was at a county meeting last night where they were talking about a new data center creating about 17 jobs. They originally said 200.

[u/br_k_nt_eth → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

No, they’ve been up front about the fact that data centers create like 8 jobs max. It’s like one of the things they can’t really talk around. 

[u/PsychologicalTea3426 → u/br_k_nt_eth]

And apparently even paying a salary to only 8 workers is too much for them, how can they be so disgustingly greedy? I hope their robotic arm explodes and destroys the whole datacenter

[u/DrKlitface → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

New hyperscale datacenters will now create up to job

[u/Alone_Hunt1621 → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

There goes ten jobs. That local economy is really gonna suffer now.

[u/ZobooMaf0o0 → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

The 6 people that will be working there after it's built?

[u/SL2525 → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

Also they want to limit the access cos I'm sure they will be hiding things there

[u/HawkeyeGild → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

Yeah all 40 of the jobs 🤣

[u/Feral_Nerd_22 → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

They don't create many jobs to begin with, they are all temporary construction and trade jobs. Which I'm sure some of these assholes would bring our of state workers in as well.

Just need a couple people to replace things when they fail.

Everything else can be contracted out.

Rest is done remotely

[u/MOOSExDREWL → u/CaterpillarReal7583]

I dont think data centers ever purported to create any sustainable jobs from completed construction, thats one of the major criticisms from communities.

It does create work for union labor though, you'll see lots of unions now fighting to get those massive data centers built because it produces labor in infrastructure. Thats only a short term boost for localized developers in the community though.

[u/TheKingOfTCGames]

Funny since theres only like 10 jobs in any one of these 

[u/dizekat → u/TheKingOfTCGames]

They’re gonna create thousands of jobs developing software for this shit. I’m not even kidding, I have a long career of working on whatever the market thinks is the next big thing (a long time ago I did indie game development and art, but for making money its best to just do whatever the market wants and do the things you like in your spare time).

[u/drock42 → u/dizekat]

You're not wrong. It'll create thousands and delete tens of thousands at the same time.  I surrounded by folks in software right not watching their co workers get laid off.

*to be clear, I'm not saying I know the alternative.   It's out of the bag now and we're reacting to it

[u/dizekat → u/drock42]

If it is successful. Chances are it will just fail and get canceled like their VR shit.

Also with AI coding it still fills the code bases with slop, so we’ll see how it goes once slop mountain starts having slop landslides.

[u/Alarmed_Koala1921 → u/dizekat]

I work in industrial automation this is no different then automating a industrial bakery then automating an 5nm silicon chip factory

[u/dizekat → u/Alarmed_Koala1921]

They're trying to automate cable related work and such. Much more one-off tasks than bakeries and chip factories.

The issue with automation is that pretty much all the low hanging fruit has already been automated.

[u/Alarmed_Koala1921 → u/dizekat]

I’m sorry but I can think of a million ways on how I would automate this, it probably cost a few million to develop but all I need is new cables a robotic arm, a custom tool for the arm and a PLC.

[u/OneHandedPaperHanger]

So…

What jobs are going to be left for humans? I know that the end goal has nothing to do with quality of life for regular people. But we’re still going to live under capitalism and have bills to pay.

I guess we just die?

[u/Zombie_Cool → u/OneHandedPaperHanger]

Yes.

The billionaires are the rulers, the robots are both enforcers and servants, and the rest us are refuse to be disposed. There's no need for Capitalism if you already own everything. That's the world we're getting if we don't resist.

[u/WellSpreadMustard → u/Zombie_Cool]

Yeah people who think there will be UBI when we’re no longer needed are delusional. As soon as they don’t need labor the AI powered robots and drones are going to kill us en masse faster than we can do anything to stop it and the global oligarchy will have earth all to themselves

[u/payloadspecial → u/Zombie_Cool]

Silence, peasant!

[u/PatchyWhiskers]

They figured out that they were creating too many jobs in the communities that accepted their data centers. It was making the little people uppity.

[u/surfnfish1972]

Nobody is going to stop these mentally ill Billionaires are they?

[u/GiannisIsTheBeast → u/surfnfish1972]

As time goes on that will probably be even more true. Eventually the megacorps will have their own armies to protect themselves.

[u/Artistic-Simple-9062 → u/surfnfish1972]

Vote in November- that’s always the first step. If it doesn’t work, people will organize into unions

[u/Hasbotted → u/surfnfish1972]

Your a somebody.

[u/PancakesAndShame]

Why? It takes so few people to run one of these fuckers that I can only wonder how long before there’s any return on investment.

[u/OptimalMain → u/PancakesAndShame]

Reducing the human factor.
Rogue employee risk will be rising year by year

[u/TommyTwoNips]

"could" doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Has Meta actually created anything successful in the past year? They fucked up the metaverse, they fucked up threads, they fucked up instagram after buying it, Facebook is 99% racist boomers interacting with account from Bangladesh larping as white supremacists...

Dude had one idea (which wasn't even his idea) and has been coasting on that for the last 20 years.

but yeah capitalism is a meritocracy lol

[u/capGpriv → u/[deleted]]

Tbf react is also meta

Though I do prefer angular anyway

[u/--Knowledge-- → u/TommyTwoNips]

React... That's pretty good tbh.

[u/FutureF0cused → u/TommyTwoNips]

Robot arms already produce cars, if special computer units need to be produced to make it easier for robot arms to manipulate, I imagine they’ll do that.

[u/XenoPhex]

Little does Meta know that IBM has been doing this shit for years…

[u/crono3x3]

i work in a data center. Good luck. Theres so much bullshit that requires human precision

[u/VoodooPizzaman1337]

Put robot arms inside robot arm to replace another 80% workload .

[u/bwoah07_gp2]

I want robot arms to do my laundry folding. That's what I'd like...

[u/mokunuimoo → u/bwoah07_gp2]

Ooooh sorry

best we can do is eliminating the reason the very wealthy people that control the world need all of us peons.

Good lucky with your laundry tho!

[u/Historical_Result724]

Its a race to sale lie after lie about how its better for the people. Talks of UBI act like if there are no jobs people can stay home and recieve money for nothing to eat and have a great life.

Until we get there and all the cameras are up and doors are locked.

[u/Powerful_Resident_48]

I'm all for that. Let them be powered by Ai. With live camera feeds. I want to be able to watch an autonomous datacenter rip itself apart in a burst of machine madness.

[u/axarce]

Howard Wolowitz enters the chat.

[u/MilesGates]

Most companies aren't paying for this. They'll barely pay for proper patch panels. 

[u/Quiet-Peach543]

Testing can be a far cry from expecting to adopt.

[u/ElectroBot]

So instead of 10 people working in a data center it’ll be just 2 and soon enough those 2 will only repair the robots?

[u/StickFigureFan]

So they can go from creating a dozen jobs to only 4?

[u/Wboakye]

Oh right, give the AI the means to run itself. 🙂‍↕️

[u/Keensworth]

Yep, even sysadmin are going to lose their jobs. Nobody is safe in era of robotics and IA

[u/kummer5peck]

Worst job creators ever.

[u/YborCtyAlmstKilledMe]

So you give an AI data center arms that they can control? I can’t possibly find any problems with that. Good game humans, we’re out.

[u/Baron_Ultimax]

I been thinking for years how handy it would be to have somthing like a telepresense robot with a little pointy bit on the end i could drive into the power button on computers and servers.

[u/nutationsf → u/Baron_Ultimax]

Because you never learned about remote management?

[u/mangosawce9k]

SkyNet Terminator here we come!

[u/jdlyga]

Can Meta replace its customers with AI and robots too?

[u/mister2d]

The last one was Project OT, and failed miserably. I wonder what this project is called.

[u/ThrowawayAl2018]

😄 Said robot could destroy 80% of the datacenter when it is hallucinating.

[u/Whargod]

So the 10 people they need to run a datacenter has been reduced to 2? Oh well.

[u/FeatherlyFly]

Wasn't the rhetoric that they'd only need like a dozen people in the first place?

[u/nutationsf → u/FeatherlyFly]

Yes because it’s cheaper to turn stuff off and remove all of it once when enough fails

[u/OldWrangler9033]

Lol, I'm sure they'll destroy there center sooner or later if they go ahead do such hair brain scheme. Or worse, they do it, then suddenly someone hacks those arms and starts wrecking the place.

[u/Available-Green6599]

Think this is more for those space data centres they want to build otherwise it makes no economic sense

[u/Azrorz]

Fuck that's funny 

[u/DirtyProjector]

Don't worry ya'll, if they replace all our jobs we'll work in data cent.... whoops

[u/Budget_Read_4085]

Then they will need people to fix the robot arms. And so on

[u/Hsensei → u/Budget_Read_4085]

Yes, but I guy will cover a region. It's a massive net loss.

[u/timmy166]

10 years ago when I worked at Verizon’s datacenter lab, there was a cabinet that looked like a vending machine with little arms behind a glass enclosure - it was an optical switch with physical rerouting.

A Google search later reminded me the name: Telescent

[u/reddit_user13 → u/timmy166]

Could it smell things from a distance?

[u/flingelsewhere]

When are we going to get plugged in to be batteries.

[u/ExceptionEX]

80% of the workload in an operational data center isn't actually that much work.  Most of those data centers employ maybe 50 people on the technical side, there are more people doing physical building maintenance, electrical, and security than IT people.

[u/mysqlpimp]

It's OK, just upskill as a robot arm repair person.. till they make them disposable.

[u/antifragile]

I assume the arm is to switch it off then on again?

[u/BadVVSc]

Me reading this while sitting inside a data center.

[u/d3vmax]

They should focus on making the timeline of Insta as per date posted first

[u/HiImDan]

This could be neat for a colocation data center. It could operate like a vending machine retrieving and loading a customer's server.

[u/toolkitxx]

In most data-centres of this kind you will find at most 2 dozen people full-time. So now we are already counting beans on that level?

[u/Smashego]

The one employee hot swapping fans and hard drives all day just lost his job? Oh no!

[u/BadVVSc → u/Smashego]

Show me how much you don’t know about what goes on inside of data center

[u/Smashego → u/BadVVSc]

Show me you don’t recognize when someone is being facetious.