Robots replace 90 per cent of humans in Chinese factory - productivity increases 162 per cent

Our robot overlords are finally here, and they want YOUR job, citizen

The Changying Precision Technology Company factory in Dongguan, China, has replaced 90 per cent of its human workers with robots - and is now producing three times as many pieces of technology.

Instead of 650 human employees, there are now only 60, with general manager Luo Weiqiang telling Chinese newspaper the People's Daily that the aim is to cut this further to just 20 staff.

Human beings have been replaced with robot arms, which have been busily crafting parts for mobile phones, with production per employee increased from 8,000 to 21,000 pieces at the same time.

This amounts to a 162.5 per cent productivity improvement, and there is further bad news for the outdated meatsacks clutching their Chinese equivalent of P45s - the previous defect rate average of 25 per cent has now been reduced to just five per cent.

There are just 60 robot arms doing the work of 650, largely redundant, employees - an arm can replace between six and eight humans - and the plan for the next two years is to up the robot employee total to 1,000, according to Chen Qixing, president of Changying.

Shenzhen Evenwin Precision Technology announced a similar scheme in May 2015.

The whole situation is potentially worrying for China, which now has nearly 200 million citizens above 60 years of age. A demographic - and potentially economic - crisis is waiting in the wings.

Professor of cognitive neuroscience and director of Sheffield Robotics, Tony Prescott, recently remarked at an evening talk on the evolution and future of robotics at London's Science Museum that progress needs to be made to improve global wealth inequality that robotic labour could potentially worsen. He warned that the alternative would be a future in which people had to compete with machines for the same jobs.

Showing a cartoon by intelligence technologist Rui Perera, Winfield described the "how it is" state that a human may say, "Damn, a robot took over my job. Now I have to look for a new source of monetary income."

The "how it should be" scenario involves a human freed from the need to do the job that's now been automated, with a new freedom to "actually enjoy life".

"Enjoying life" could naturally extend to education, creating more skilled workers to begin perform work robots are not (yet) capable of, and expanding the general reach of the human race.