Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

samlinnfer 18 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I really want to see that robot door-opening, shirt-folding, orange-peeling and sandwich making competition. It would be like the housework championships. If your robot works it would sell like hotcakes right there.

edit: realised there's a part 2: https://generalrobots.substack.com/p/benjies-humanoid-olympi...

	▲	wwwtyro 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Also hand washing!

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vessenes 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a recent essay on robotic workers that does not mention Figure’s 24+ hour livestream of a robot doing package management on a live assembly line.

The real reason it’s hard to assess where we’re at with industrial robots is that some of the people who’ve gone hardest at it are secretive, and also believe in power law scaling. So, the first 1,000 robots will only be used to build the next robot factory, which also will be used to build the next really big robot factory. When we see humanoid robots actually out in the wild for sale at retail, they are going to come very very quickly, at scale.

Figure and Boston Dynamics sold out next year’s production runs almost instantly sometime last year; I think it’s just incredibly hard to overestimate the impact humanoid robots are going to have on the global economy.

	▲	troupo 5 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> When we see humanoid robots actually out in the wild for sale at retail, they are going to come very very quickly, at scale. Building factories and other robots is trivial. Just go and watch videos of any modern factory. What's nigh impossible is doing complex interactions requiring finesse, "human touch", and at speed. Even if you build a million robot-building robots, not a single one of them will be able to fold clothes, for example.
	▲	throwitaway222 41 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		There still seems to be questions around if that was faked. (scorch me if I'm wrong I last looked at this a month ago)
	▲	gjsman-1000 34 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> So, the first 1,000 robots will only be used to build the next robot factory, which also will be used to build the next really big robot factory. When we see humanoid robots actually out in the wild for sale at retail, they are going to come very very quickly, at scale. This is one of the dumbest ideas I've read here. Seriously; do you honestly believe, that we will be able to linearly scale all of the materials that go into robots? You can't have a factory without motors, aluminum, steel, copper, quality control, CNC manufacturing, precision bearings, ball screws, harmonic drives, semiconductors, batteries, and skilled people to design, install, and maintain all of it. Every one of those is its own supply chain with its own bottleneck, and almost all of them are already constrained and at risk. If anything, I would bet you $500 we will not be able to jump to the robotics age because we don't have enough skilled humans on this earth, due to the excitement about not training them because of their imminent replacement. That's before geopolitics - do you think China, if we actually built working humanoid robots, wouldn't immediately claim all supply for themselves and lock down the supply chain? Of course they would, it would be stupid not to. In the event of a working humanoid robot, every single dependency needs to be onshore, or it's not scaling.

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tootie 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have a few thoughts. Number one is that humanoid robots are probably a dead end. It's movie stuff. It makes me think of Henry Ford saying customers want "faster horses". It is the fault of evolution that we don't have wheels but we don't have to repeat that mistake.

Secondly I think robot butlers are a bridge too far. The article explains pretty well why the spatial reasoning is problematic but so would things like battery life. And there'd be zero margin for error. The first time a robot steps on someone's cat or, god forbid, baby there will be a massive backlash. They have to be perfect. We accept LLMs hallucinating once in a while but a physical robot in your home cannot ever be wrong.

I think if we want to pilot autonomous robots it will be factory floors and other rote tasks. Maybe installing solar fields or something. Let them achieve a perfect safety record in someplace with more risk tolerance then take the next step.

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AlexandrB an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Moravec's paradox remains undefeated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox

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mdberkey 34 minutes ago | parent [-]

As someone early in their SWE career (hopefully), I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Knowledge work as a career seems like it’s becoming a less viable option with every advancement. It’s hard to predict the future, but sometimes I wish I took the med school route and just pursued tech as a hobby.

	▲	maigret 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Med school has its own issues and is a very demanding learning and career path. Lots of stress, long shifts etc. I am very impressed by the people doing it but it’s not for everyone. Anyway, who can predict the future? There are still lots of things to do in IT in the age of AI - actually, more than before. The question is most whether you like writing software and doing planning and bug fixes all day for the next decades.