Gargantuan Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn employs more than 1 million people and tens of thousands of robots making iPhones and other electronics. It has a reputation for cost cutting, including at the expense of its workers. Now, it’s teaming up with an artificial-intelligence researcher who helped trigger Google’s reorientation around machine learning in order to make its own factories more efficient.
Andrew Ng was a Stanford professor when he joined Google in 2011 to work on a project that created software able to recognize cats---and a new corporate emphasis on AI at Google. He later led AI research at Chinese search engine Baidu. Thursday, he disclosed his first major project since striking out on his own in March. It’s a startup called Landing.ai aimed at helping manufacturers make use of AI technology. Foxconn is among its first clients.
Ng says his company is needed because the manufacturing sector can’t yet make use of recent advancements in machine learning. Expertise in the field is scarce, and coveted by internet companies like his former employers. “Outside the IT world almost no one has access to the technology or talent,” Ng says, wearing a varsity jacket with “AI is the new electricity” in cursive script over his heart.
Landing will work consultant-style with clients to provide the expertise they lack---not unlike new services from Google and Amazon that have been availed by companies such as USAA and the NFL. Ng says his team is building tools it can apply across many different clients. A company video shows software spotting flaws on circuit boards and camera lenses, a tedious task Ng says is often done by humans. His team of around 20 is also tapping machine learning to adjust the configuration of equipment such as injection-molding machines to improve quality, or use of materials.
Landing’s initial clients will be in China and Japan, Ng says. Foxconn, the only one named so far, is a big get. Aside from its astounding size and deep relationships with premium brands like Apple, the company has shown an intense interest in using automation to cut costs.
In 2011, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou told the Chinese government’s news agency that it was planning to deploy 1 million robots over the next three years to replace workers and improve efficiency. But in July 2016, the general manager of Foxconn’s automation technology department committee told the South China Morning Post that the company had slowed the planned rollout, in part because of technical limitations, and at that point had deployed only 40,000 industrial robots.
Foxconn didn’t respond to a request for comment on its plans with Landing. Ng said he had recently visited Wisconsin, where Foxconn is building a new plant, but declines to say exactly what he’ll be building for the company.
Whatever it is, Ng claims that his startup won’t leave factory workers worse off. “AI can make a society where everything is much better and humans are freed from mental drudgery,” he says. Ng claims society can adjust to more powerful computers in industry by investing in education---and is smartly selling both the disease and the cure. He cofounded online education startup Coursera, where he is now cochair of the board, and launched a new project with the company to spread AI skills this summer.
