The Tame Apple Press has welcomed the news because it means they might not have to worry about writing embarrassing stories about sweatshop condititions at Foxconn. Foxconn makes iPhones, so this means they will be made by robots.

At a press briefing in San Francisco two days before Ng’s Landing.ai venture was introduced, he demonstrated an example of using AI for visual inspection in a factory’s quality control efforts.

In many factories, workers look over parts coming off an assembly line for defects. Ng showed a video in which a worker instead put a circuit board beneath a digital camera connected to a computer and the computer identified a defect in the part.

Ng said that while typical computer vision systems might require thousands of sample images to become “trained”, Landing.ai’s system would take only five training images, making it easier to adapt to different tasks in a factory.

Ng said Landing.ai had been approached by investors but had not accepted outside capital yet. Foxconn is Landing.ai’s first strategic partner. Ng said the startup has been working with Foxconn since July, but he would not elaborate on the nature of the collaboration or which of Foxconn’s customers it might involve.

He said he understands that his firm’s technology is likely to displace factory workers but that Landing.ai is already working on how to train workers for higher-skilled, higher paying factory work involving computers.

“I would love to help displaced workers gain the skills they need to succeed”, Ng told reporters.