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Xiaomi unveils new autonomous smart factory that operates 24/7 without human labor

Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun said the 860,000-square-foot facility, located in the Changping district on the northeast outskirts of Beijing, follows a lab-level smart factory built in 2019...

In brief: In what could be a worrying sign of things to come, Chinese phone maker Xiaomi has built a new autonomous smart factory that can not only make 10 million handsets per year, but can also identify and correct production issues while optimizing the entire process. Robots have been replacing factory workers for a couple of decades now; one of the largest cuts came in 2016 when Foxconn reduced its workforce by 60,000 by swapping them out for unpaid machines that toil 24/7. But Xiaomi's smart factory takes automation to the extreme by potentially replacing those who would diagnose or fix problems with the production and help optimize processes.

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