SMT component placement isn't that different to placing bricks. Conventional wisdom is that if you can design a PCB that requires no manual work, its assembly cost is more-or-less location independent. SMT pick and place can hit speeds of 200,000 components per hour [1]. That's about 50 components per second.
Fixturing isn't automated in most places. Sure a gantry style CNC machine can drive screws vertically into your parts to join them, but it requires a human loader to put the two parts onto the fixture in the first place.
The tasks requiring high dexterity like final assembly of the product with displays, keyboards, ribbon cables and cases is still done by humans by hand.
Those are already an issue. AI is a bigger threat to cognitive tasks than to physical ones.
Skynet isn't goanna attack you with Terminators wielding a "phased plasma rifle in the 40W range", but will be auto-rejecting your job application, your health insurance claims, your credit score and brain washing your relatives on social media.
There’s a difference though. The “cool” Terminator Skynet pursues its own goals, and wasn’t programmed by humans to kill. The “boring” insurance-rejecting Skynet is explicitly programmed to reject insurance claims by other humans, unfortunately.
So still, no need to worry about our AI overlords, worry about people running the AI systems.
> AI is a bigger threat to cognitive tasks than to physical ones.
I don't see how you could possibly think this is true. Physical automation is easier to scale since you only need to solve a single problem instance and then just keep applying it on a bigger scale.
Automation doesn't work where high dexterity and quick adaptability is required. You can much cheaper and quicker to train a human worker to move from sewing a Nike shoe to an Adidas shoe than you can reprogram and retool a robot.
Robots work for highly predictable high speed tasks where dexterity is not an issue, like PCB pick and place.
