Ask a plumber what he thinks about reaching places human reach. Nature tested what exactly? Birds and spiders are sub optimal?

But this is all based on the idea we need generic robots when we really need specialized ones.

It's like skipping making kitchen blenders and vacuum cleaners and instead building a robot that will be mixing stuff manually or using a broom.

Manufacturing, where 90% of the process is generally automated has countless specialized ones. It would not make sense to put generic ones there, because humans really are doing very specific work in manufacturing.

1 is the real reason. 2 is really down to things like a big brain and opposable thumbs. Our trunk/legs are evolved for persistence hunting and long distance walking - activities that drive approximately 0% of the economy at this point. If robots didn't have to navigate an environment built for bipeds, other configurations would be far more reliable/efficient.

For instance: a quadruped base can be statically stable in case of power loss - a biped really can't.

> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).

The day that:

- displaced workforce issue is solved

- they cost less than 20k everything included, base model

- do all the processing locally in their HW

- are smaller and lighter than a human being (but can reach higher places)

- last 10 years at least

I will definitely buy one. I don't think I'm going to see this in my lifetime though (I'm in my 40's).

And another thought: if the robot can do housework, can it do factory work? Fieldwork? Lawn care? What else can it do with zero modifications?

That expands the market greatly.

> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?

This is called having a live-in maid or a cleaning service. Even in the first-world, where there isn't a disfranchised rural population to provide cheap labor to the middle class (e.g. Philippines, most of LATAM 20 years ago) the service will be cheaper than the price of a vaporware bot [0]. Now, you might say the droid is cheaper if you want a live-in maid in HCOL area, but have in mind that this thing barely can fold clothes and fill a dishwasher (an actual domestic bot). Also it sometimes is actually a dude controlling it remotely.

We would need bots of the level of that awful I Robot movie with Will Smith.

[0] https://www.1x.tech/order

No, I wouldn’t.

For one, I don’t spend a lot of time doing housework. Just organize your life better.

Beyond that, the cost would not be small. Based on current designs, operating costs would be thousands of dollars per month. I would not pay that.

It would require a cloud controlled robot with cameras in my home. Why in the world would I want that.

Finally, I already have dishwashers and laundry machines.

You couldn't pay me any amount of money to have a robot in my home if it's controlled from Elon Musk's data center.

And I'm a former Tesla FSD customer, so I should be the ideal early adopter for this product.

Do you already pay a human to do this work?

> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor.

Then why don't you hire a helper for that? You just said you'd pay a lot of money, so money doesn't seem to be an issue. What is then?

> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?

Do you own a Roomba? I don't. It's a huge liability and doesn't do the cleaning I want out of it, even at a sub-$1000 price point. The humanoid robot is clunkier, more of a liability, and will still refuse to do certain tasks.

You would pay "a lot of money"?

Like, more than the cost of your house? For something that can't do those things right and has to be supervised? To a company that can't deliver product on time?

I agree with everything you've said. To me the next question is: If nobody has a job, who will buy all the robot-produced goods?

But why are they in humanoid form? Wheels are more efficient than legs, they have no need for a face. It sure does sound like vibes

The part that often gets left unsaid or glossed over is what the transition period looks like. At most we get some Underpants Gnomes claim about unlimited abundance without actually engaging with the substance of what happens if this technology gets built and deployed. What do you imagine the political and economic impact will be if a huge portion of the population is left without jobs and the political reality hasn't caught up to the speed with which the technology gets deployed?

Oh no, but Elon Musk tells us that out of the kindness of his heart we're going to have unlimited abundance. The same man responsible for taking away aid from thousands of the poorest people in the world through DOGE's interruption of PEPFAR and USAID.

With a single sentence from him, he could start saving thousands of lives without impacting his wealth in the slightest. He could do that right now.

The market exists, does it make financial sense to fill it? Are there enough johnfns out there willing to buy enough of them at high enough of a price to justify the mind-boggling capital required, not to mention the opportunity cost?

A robot vacuum costs thousands of dollars (will about a thousand) and they don't work very. There is no way that you are going to get a machine that is orders of magnitude more complex down to that price point any time soon.

A business case is not just a matter of a willing buyer. It is a buyer and a vendor who can agree on a price that works for both. You may have agreed but the physics of the matter mean that there is nobody to take the other side.

You already have machines that do the laundry. Put clothes in, they come out clean. Have you ever tried manually washing clothes? All you have to do is take them out and fold them.

Humanoid robots are a lot of sizzle-- they promise all sorts of flexibility, at the cost of hugely higher cost/complexity/unreliability.

If you can scope your problem to some degree, you can probably make some purpose-built automation that won't look like a human, but will do the job competently and cheaply.

I see the demos with the robots carrying boxes and think "okay, why not just use a conveyer belt?"

The market for that exist but the execution to get that product is beyond hard. Compare full self driving after all these years where are we? It’s still not a real thing. It’s still just a limited experiment. The cars have only speed and steering angle to manage. What do you think about “full self driving robots”? There is a business case for them but in the near term you cannot make one good enough for the tasks you want. Safety is a big issue on top of making the robot useful. You don’t want it hurt anyone.