alt Hacker NewsI dont get the investment in humanoids beyond trying to create some kind of stock market bubble again. Factories that have already heavily robotized their production, employ a minimal amount of humans to do niche work. It's going to be immensely difficult to replace that niche work with any kind of robot, let alone humanoids.
These humanoid robots (or generally limbed robots) could be useful for the two sectors that are craving for cheap workers, worldwide: agriculture and construction. Yet all the demos i see are fragile lightweight robots not made for rugged work. That makes me conclude that the whole sector is currently like the Metaverse.
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> I dont get the investment in humanoids beyond trying to create some kind of stock market bubble again.
Our entire world is heavily adjusted towards bipedal humanoid creatures. Having a moving humanoid tool who could replace some of our physical tasks without the need to build additional infrastructure in proximity around it is BIG. Noting your reservation about fragility, even the possibility of cheap construction and agriculture work is VERY BIG.
And not to mention those robots will require an expensive subscription and maintenance contract which I’d imagine wouldn’t actually save money vs traditional labor. Any company that can optimize labor costs pretty much already has to the point of diminishing returns.
The only sector I see any of these selling in any meaningful number is military and police.
They’re probably hoping for some hardware version of the software “bitter lesson”
I think it’s probably also easier to raise money on a humanoid robot because everyone has some intuitive understanding of the form.
Sexbots. That's it, that's the whole thing. And slaves in general but yeah.
Literally crawl, walk, run... fight?
The physical world is currently designed for human interaction, and people who want to make money see the potential to replace humans with property. They'll get there.
"Your scientists were thinking so much about whether they could, they didn't stop to ask if they should".
Imagine LLMs reach their potential and the general field of 'cognitive work' starts to be able to be largely automated. What happens then? I think there's some precedent with the Industrial Revolution. The increased productivity and the like did lead to some 'super farms' and the like, but the real change is that it left a vacuum in the economy. That vacuum was filled by industry such that even the 'super farms' started to be a vanishingly small part of the overall economy.
I think the same will happen with LLMs. They're going to create a vacuum in the economy, on a global level. And I think what will come next is something in the real world (as opposed to the digital) filling it. Humanoid robots might be myopic, but I think it's, at worst, a pretty decent guess. One basic goal would be able to automate typical service jobs, both in terms of normal employment - but also even within households. A low cost highly capable robotic maid would have a massive market.
I'm hand-waving away the dystopia of this all, because I ultimately think humans will still play a key role - but trying to predict what that role may be is impossible from where we're standing. Imagine trying to predict the consequences of mass industrialization when you've lived you're entire life in an agrarian society. There's just no real basis for an intelligent prediction, besides 'way different.'