> This is what robotics should be used for.

I disagree. We should use robotics to extend our reach into hazardous environments, enhance our physical capabilities, or to provide a steady handling of things where it's absolutely needed - doing laundry in my household is none of these.

Folding laundry takes me 10 mins every 10 days. I organize my closet once in a while according to my sense of fashion, and now I'll just need to keep that structure. I don't always like to do these chores, but I have no issue in acknowledging them as part of my responsibilities. Why would I even automate[0] that?

Robotics is costly, and I see no way how that would change anytime soon. That isn't a flaw of some kind either, it's rather just one of the limitations that needs to be accounted for, neglecting that would be detrimental to the future I envision.

Don't get me wrong, I love robotics with a passion, as engineer I like to tinker, and I'm a big admirer of FESTOs bionic research[1]. It's just that the field suffers from an "overpromised and underdelivered" aura as far as I can remember, and I remember the presentation of ASIMO[2] 26 years ago.

Some people would like to see the field hyped up, focused on the consumer like every other field in tech, probably for financial gain, but I personally see the value in its downplay. To be honest, I love these reality checks, as I see them as a valuable part of the learning process all together - a journey for what it means to automate, and what it means to define as human natural chore.

[0]: https://xkcd.com/1205/

[1]: https://www.festo.com/us/en/e/about-festo/research-and-devel...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO

Sure but the robots that extend our capabilities often start by replicating our current capabilities, even if those are as simple as folding clothes. It provides a baseline for the next generation of robots that can do more.

You could replace "robotics" with "AI" in what you wrote above, and it would sound like what people were saying about llms when they first came out. Not trying to glaze one way or another but historically this take is outdated.