Great, we have few resources, but they are used to create expensive robots, we really won’t live to see 2100.
Anyone who’s a fan of mecha anime or games already knew this. The human body is a comedy of errors masquerading as a marvel of bioengineering. We’re just fish who forgot how to swim and learned how about economics.
But in the short to medium term, there are much more reliable, efficient, and cost-effective platforms that can take over in these situations: robots with arms, but with wheels instead of legs.
I never understood why the first generation of robots can’t just be on wheels. Even if it needs to go up and down stairs often, it’s still easier to have legs just for stairs and resort to wheels all other times.
The article also thinks battery life is an issue. IMO too many things have batteries, why can’t it just rely on a power cord. Sure that won’t work in some situations, but damn it it can fold my laundry.
Think of it like grandma. She can fold your underwear for you but needs to go sit down every half hour
Yes, more specialized robots for now. When it’s harder to build for a human to do the job, build for a robot to do the job.
At some point in the future, it makes sense to combine the features of different types of robots into one form that can step in to human jobs
Can it hurry up and ruin the AI hype, too?
It is always cheaper to use human labor, where a humanoid form is best suited to do it. Automation is best implemented in situations where the human form doesn’t work best.
always
Currently
Yeah, no…“always”. Technology like humanoid robots, is never going to get cheap enough to replace low-paid manual labor. That’s a marketing lie that tech CEO’s like to use, in order to drum up more investment capital.
Considering that humanoid labor often works in tandem with actual automation…the idea of robots using machines to accomplish tasks that a human could just as easily do, with far less overhead…makes no sense.
The only way automation is effective, is when it exceeds the limitations of what the human body can accomplish. Designing it with the same basic limitations doesn’t improve on anything.
The overhead on the robot is mostly maintenance, which is a humanoid skill. If the robots can maintain each other, or build each other, someone just won capitalism
Yeah, no…“always”. Technology like humanoid robots, is never going to get cheap enough to replace low-paid manual labor.
That’s definitely not a rule. Just because so far we managed to keep manual labor dirt cheap doesn’t mean it always have to be like that. Tariffs, migration policy, social programs and so on, all affect the cost of labor. Move all the production back to developed countries while limiting immigration and the costs of labor might increase to the point where humanoid robots make sense.
I’m not saying that this will happen, only that we definitely can’t say it won’t.
I didn’t know we were in the presence of a psychic with a crystal ball!
My mistake, you’re right about everything!
It’s kinda dumb to make predictions about limitations on future technologies. If history is any indicator, predictions of ‘impossibilities’ almost always turn out mistaken.
That’s not to mention that manual labour should not be low cost. But that’s an entirely different discussion.
No, man. History is the indicator here. They’ve been talking about automation replacing people for so long now, that the idea has become more myth than fact. In certain cases, for certain jobs, it works…but it costs enormous amounts of money. In almost every practical instance, that cost is prohibitive.
Most places will weigh their options, and simply decide to keep hiring people for those jobs, since they don’t have to rely on either a massive influx of investment, or take on the burden of securing enormous loans. In almost every way, it is cheaper to hire people to do the work that people are good at.
Did you know that elevator operator used to be a job that people had to be employed to do? No one says hiring a person to operate an elevator is more cost effective than installing a push button system for people to do it themselves. The cost really wasn’t prohibitive to move away from human labor here.
This is not the only case, I’m just bringing up an example. The thing is, when a job is replaced by technology, you don’t even think about it anymore. Yes, there are also jobs that CAN be replaced by technology, where the tech is more expensive… but that’s not the rule, that’s just the leading edge.
But did the elevator operator get replaced by a humanoid robot pulling the lever of a formerly human-operated elevator?
That’s what they person before you was referencing. In most situations a simple computer-controlled mechanism is enough. If that’s not enough, a non-humanoid robot trumps a humanoid robot. And in situations where a humanoid shape is really necessary, human labour is really cheap.
Humans don’t have their shape because it’s the perfectly ideal form, but because evolution always only iterates on what it has.
Btw: automatisation happens because either using a full human for a simple task is overkill (e.g. your elevator operator example) or because humans really aren’t the optimal shape (e.g. using a robot arm to lift a car during production). If a humanoid shape is required, humans will do the job.
Did they replace the elevator operator with a robot that looked just like an elevator operator? And did they make that robot stand inside the elevator, and pull the lever, just like the old elevator operator would?
No. Of course not.
Because that would be insane. Replacing a person with a robot that does the exact same thing that a human can do, is pointless. It doesn’t improve anything. It doesn’t save you money. It isn’t more efficient. It’s just a very expensive gimmick.
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