Buongiorno, On 2025-10-23, 380° wrote:
[...] > mentre ancora stiamo «En attendant les robots» (più o meno dal 1970), servono > urgentemente schia... ops, lavoratori "a pacchi" (o a chili?), "on-demand" e > "just in time" [1] ma soprattutto che costino metà dei serbi e metà della > metà degli italiani (che già sono sottopagati); evidentemente la > delocalizzazione non è più così lucrativa e i flussi migratori - di > lavoratori qualificati, mi raccomando - verso i paesi (relativamente) ricchi > sono ancora _drammaticamente_ insufficienti. [...] In Giappone qualcuno ha escogitato la soluzione per risolvere il problema della scarsità di manodopera /a basso costo/ dovuta alle politiche di immigrazione del governo («the country has been cautious about expanding immigration»): "automazione" _offshore_. Molto significativo che lo stipendio degli operai-operatori sia del tutto analogo a quello dei lavoratori Nepalesi in trasferta _spintanea_ in Serbia di cui si parla nell'articolo precedente in questo thread: attorno ai 300€ o 300$ al mese. Quindi è sciantificamente dimostrato che la /finta/ (semi, parziale, smart ma non abbastanza?) automazione serve da _proxy_ per le politiche di COMMODIFICATION dei _lavoratori_, che attraverso l'automazione e i processi disumanizzati perdono la caretteristica di /persone/, tornando a essere ingranaggio come all'inizio della "rivoluzione industriale": si chiude il cerchio. https://restofworld.org/2025/philippines-offshoring-automation-tech-jobs/ «Japanese convenience stores are hiring robots run by workers in the Philippines» By Michael Beltran 20 October 2025 • Manila, Philippines --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- Filipino tele-operators remotely control Japan's convenience store robots and train AI, benefiting from an uptick in automation-related jobs. • Tele-operation of robots allows physical labor to be offshored. • The Philippines is seeing steady hiring by global companies for AI-related IT service and tech jobs. • Filipinos are paid less than their counterparts in the developed world, and worry they will lose their jobs to automation. Inside a multistory office building in Manila's financial district, around 60 young men and women monitored and controlled artificial intelligence robots restocking convenience store shelves in distant Japan. Occasionally, when a bot dropped a can, someone would don a virtual-reality headset and use joysticks to help recover it. The AI robots are designed by Tokyo-based startup Telexistence, and run on Nvidia and Microsoft platforms. Since 2022, the company has deployed the machines in the back rooms of over 300 FamilyMart and Lawson stores in Tokyo. It is also planning to use them soon in 7-Elevens. Robots restocking convenience store shelves in Japan are monitored remotely by employees in Manila. The bots are remotely monitored 24/7 in Manila by the employees of Astro Robotics, a robot-workforce startup. Japan faces a worker shortage as its population ages, and the country has been cautious about expanding immigration. Telexistence's bots offer a workaround, allowing physical labor to be offshored, Juan Paolo Villonco, Astro Robotics' founder, told /Rest of World./ This lowers costs for companies and increases their scale of operations, he said. “It's hard to find workers to do stacking [in Japan],” said Villonco. “If you get one who's willing to do it, it's going to be very expensive. The minimum wage is quite expensive.” It's easy to get young, tech-savvy Filipinos to operate the robots, he said. Each tele-operator, called a “pilot,” monitors around 50 robots at a time, an employee told /Rest of World/. Most workers in this article requested anonymity to safeguard their jobs. The bots are usually autonomous, but occasionally — about [4%] of the time — they mess up. Perhaps they drop a bottle, which rolls away. Getting the AI bot to recover it by mimicking the human grip perfectly — the friction, the feel of metal in the hand — is one of the more challenging problems in robotics. That's when a pilot steps in. Astro Robotics' tele-operators are benefiting from an AI- and automation-related boom in IT-service work and tech jobs in the Philippines, even as [layoffs] hit similar workers in richer countries. Filipino tech workers maneuver industrial robots, drive autonomous vehicles, collaborate with AI on various tasks, or help build “AI agents,” which are computer programs that enable autonomous action. [...] They mostly work for companies based outside the Philippines, Rowel Atienza, a professor of machine learning at the University of the Philippines, told /Rest of World/. A third of his students are employed by foreign firms, including ones based in the U.S., he said. [...] The combination of automation and offshoring is a “game changer” for the U.S., Robert said. Automation was expected to reduce the number of jobs locally but raise the demand for skilled workers who would receive higher pay. “But by offshoring those jobs, you have a double whammy in an economic sense,” he said. Developing AI agent systems in the U.S. can cost anywhere from $10,000 for a basic chatbot to $300,000 for an enterprise-level autonomous system, Robert said. Costs would be much lower in the Philippines, where contractors usually do not receive health care or retirement benefits, he said. [...] Each tele-operator earns between $250 and $315 per month, roughly the same as a call center agent, an employee told /Rest of World/. Their job is to monitor the robot and prepare reports about its performance. In the rare cases when the bot makes a mistake, they strap on a VR headset and use joysticks to manually control grasp and place the drink back on the shelf, the worker said. [...] The worker said they often feel dizzy and cross-eyed from cybersickness, a type of motion sickness associated with VR. Its occurrence is related to how much they use the headset: In a typical eight-hour shift, they take over the robot about 50 times, and it takes up to five minutes each time to resolve the error. [...] The tele-operators' movements are helping train fully autonomous robots for Telexistence. Over the years, the company has gathered “a large amount of unique ‘embodied' teleoperation data and know-how” from its human workers, according to a [press release] in June. The company is providing this information to San Francisco-based startup Physical Intelligence to help develop foundation AI models aimed at giving robots human-like “physical intelligence” — the ability to perform basic physical tasks, such as grasping or manipulating objects. [...] Robert said full automation may never be achieved, and some humans would always be needed to monitor automated systems. “Are robots and AI gonna take all the jobs from humans? The answer is no — because humans are pretty useful. The future is a robotic-AI-automation-human hybrid workforce,” he said. [...] That hybrid future is already visible in the Philippines. Aside from IT-service work, Filipino IT engineers are helping build the AI systems transforming how people work globally. [...] Filipino workers are eager to work for foreign companies because they pay better than local firms. Marc Escobar, chief technology officer of Philippines-based startup Sofi AI, was offered a job as an AI engineer for Anthropic, the California-based startup behind [Claude]. He was offered $1,500 a month — high pay for a 22-year-old fresh out of university. But Escobar turned it down. Though Sofi AI pays about half as much, his company believes in creating opportunities for engineers locally, he said. “I can't do it [join a foreign company] because I want to see our local efforts, our company, succeed,” Escobar said. “I want to show that we can also upscale with AI in the Philippines.” [Michael Beltran] is a Labor x Tech reporter based in Manila, Philippines. [4%] <https://www.theworldfolio.com/interviews/telexistence-revolutionizing-robotics/6077/> [layoffs] <https://restofworld.org/2024/indian-workers-us-tech-layoffs/> [content moderation] <https://restofworld.org/2025/tiktok-moderators-turkey/> [training] <https://restofworld.org/2025/generative-ai-clickwork-venezuela-migrants/> [according] <https://www.marknteladvisors.com/research-library/ai-agent-market.html> [expected] <https://www.360iresearch.com/library/intelligence/industrial-robotic-arms> [press release] <https://tx-inc.com/en/blog/2025/06/25/12307/> [surveyed] <https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/digest/> [Claude] <http://claude.ai> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- -- 380° (lost in /traslation/) «Welcome to the chaos of the times If you go left and I go right Pray we make it out alive This is Karmageddon»
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