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The Robots Arrived at an American Car Plant, and the Line Supervisor Says They're Still Slower Than the People · Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

• 0:00
  [Host] This is Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts, the show where the robot clocked in and finished last. The New York Times published a piece yesterday, August eleventh, from inside two American car plants where humanoid robots are doing real production work.
• 0:14
  [Guest] BMW's factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Hyundai's in Ellabell, Georgia. Reporter Jack Ewing watched one work and wrote that its movements suggested a worker with a bad hangover rather than a technological revolution.
• 0:27
  [Host] What was it actually doing?
• 0:29
  [Guest] Stepping off a charging station, picking a part out of a green plastic bin, loading it into a trolley, then pulling that trolley across the floor. Real parts, real cars, no demo stage.
• 0:41
  [Host] And somebody at BMW said the quiet part on the record?
• 0:45
  [Guest] Ulrich Wieland, the vice president who runs logistics at Spartanburg, told reporters they're still slower than humans. Then he added, they're advancing fast.
• 0:54
  [Host] If the guy standing next to it is quicker, why keep the robot?
• 0:58
  [Guest] The Times answers that in one line. These machines would never take a lunch break, join a union, or require health insurance.
• 1:07
  [Host] That's not a productivity argument. That's a payroll argument.
• 1:10
  [Guest] And BMW is past the trial stage. Figure's earlier model spent eleven months in the Spartanburg body shop and helped build more than thirty thousand X3s before the newer one moved into parts sequencing in June.
• 1:23
  [Host] Who else is doing this?
• 1:25
  [Guest] Hyundai plans to put Boston Dynamics Atlas robots into its Georgia operations starting in twenty twenty-eight, building toward capacity for thirty thousand robots a year.
• 1:34
  [Host] I'd guess the union has thoughts about that.
• 1:37
  [Guest] Shawn Fain called artificial intelligence and humanoid robots a profound threat at the United Auto Workers convention in June. His words: we are in a fight for humanity. Hyundai's Georgia plant isn't unionized.
• 1:50
  [Host] Still, if they're slow and pricey, isn't this oversold? The Times says experts doubt the efficiency gains.
• 1:56
  [Guest] There's a piece on unscarcity dot ai called Autonomy Theater that draws the line I'd draw here. A machine doing a task once under good conditions is not the same as a machine doing it all day, unattended, cheaper than the person.
• 2:12
  [Host] Which sounds like the experts are right. Eleven months of pilots, and it still loses to a guy with a hand truck.
• 2:20
  [Guest] Today. Every hard automation problem sits in that middle band for years. It's a dimmer, not a switch.
• 2:26
  [Host] So what does a slow shift actually buy them?
• 2:30
  [Guest] Data. Language models had the whole internet to read, but nobody ever wrote down the wrist angle for pulling a loaded trolley through a busy aisle.
• 2:39
  [Host] Meaning the only way to get it is to have the machine do the job badly, next to someone doing it well.
• 2:48
  [Guest] For years, on a real floor, with real deadlines. If you sequence parts for a living, the honest read isn't that a robot beat you this week. It's that your week became somebody's training set.
• 3:01
  [Host] So what's the takeaway?
• 3:02
  [Guest] Patrick Deglon calls this The Body in his book Unscarcity. Artificial intelligence automates minds, and the machine on that factory floor is what comes for muscles. The gap in Spartanburg is the window to decide what happens when it closes.
• 3:17
  [Host] For more on autonomy theater and the humanoid buildout, head to unscarcity dot ai. The book is on Amazon, the audiobook is on Spotify. This has been Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts.