alt Hacker NewsThe end goal is to have these things be general purpose do all sorts of jobs everywhere. Civilization is designed around human anatomy, so if you want to replace humans with a drop-in robot replacement in as many places as fast as possible then a humanoid robot is how you’re going to do it. It’s also probably more cost effective to design 1 robot that does everything, than design 1 robot specialized for 1 task. Specialized robots will fill in gaps, but humanoids will be the vast majority of the AI-based robot workforce.
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I don't know why this keeps getting repeated. Honestly I'm taking the exact opposite bet and am going to work on making it as easy as possible to build specialized robots and machines.
People seem to misunderstand how easy it is to build a humanoid robot and how hard it is to program robots in general. Even if you build a humanoid robot that is perfectly general purpose mechanically, you will still need to program it like a computer that just happens to have arms and legs.
Why does Hyundai need "general purpose" bots, do they want to create a robot civilization? They don't need a robot to "do everything", they need robots to efficiently make cars. What do you even mean "do everything? Does it need to take the bus home and make love to its robot wife, walk its robot dog around the block? It doesn't need legs, you have drunk the koolaid, snap out of it. AGI isn't around the corner and your fantasy robot world isn't real.
This, and ease of transition. I imagine if you're buying a robot for a factory/complex/rig/jobsite, you would want one that can access anywhere a human can. You can't just rebuild a factory for a couple robots