isn't it always easier to build factories machine first ?
same as the idea of building self driving cars enabled tracks with sensors and all instead of trying to resolve self driving cars in the wild.
Where humans still reign supreme is in two areas: assembly and work in human-centered environments.
So, it's a lot easier to have a human welder do welding inside a Hyundai-built ship because the interior of the ship is designed for humans to walk around.
Likewise, it's easier for humans to work with machines on assembly, because humans are flexible and assembly lines typically need to be rapidly reconfigured for different production runs.
A purpose-built facility excels at maximizing throughput for mass produced parts (paperclips), but doesn't work well for lower-volume integration tasks (cars, ships, etc.).
So I assume that the idea is that humanoid robots could fully replace some of these temporary roles (or allow a single human to operate several robots), maintaining flexibility while a new production line is optimized, and then easily moved off to another.
He seems to have a mostly surface level of understanding of what goes on at his companies, which is all a CEO needs. But it doesn't justify all the people I see idolising him as some sort of technical God. I heard he's a master of PoE, too ;)
Doesn't have to be humanoid specifically but a roaming robot based on biological patterning is so much more capable for retooling.
If you stick with the human first design, you miss out on enormous potential efficiency gains.
Can humans work alongside such humanoids safely? I mean, even with no spectacular failures, imagine the humanoid carrying heavy items and dropping them on a real human.
If we can't trust a gimballed robot arm, I can't see why we would trust these guys.
They use high gear ratios on their motors, which means they are extremely stiff and they have much more inertia in motion than you would expect even from their large size and weight. The rotor in the motor is rotating at tremendous speed and its kinetic energy goes with the speed squared. If the arm hits you it will keep going, and if it pins you against something you will not be able to push it even a centimeter.
Humanoids use lower gear ratios and, of course, are not bolted to the floor. I would much rather be bumped by a humanoid than a factory arm.
I am sure that Boston Dynamic robots have AI ,so we don't need humans but lets assume so for this moment. And they can be controlled (let's say with VR?) with Humans.
and those humans can be from different countries. So a US factory with workers from China?
Doesn't most of these takes 200 ms still so it's 200 +200 which is close to 400 which might be manageable?? Though I don't know anything about this.
Likewise if every truck has 85cm cube boxes in it, you don't need humanoids you can purchase a solution. But the Boston Dynamics robots, just like human workers don't care that the boxes are a bit different, within reason. The robots are less adaptable than humans, but they're much more adaptable than previous non-human approaches.
So Boston Dynamics sells fifty companies their $1M robots (example, I have no idea of actual prices) meanwhile a custom robot costs $1M because of the extensive design and engineering work for each such custom robot. If you were buying a lot of them they'd be cheaper, but you aren't and they know this custom design won't suit the next customer.
If you were conjuring into existence arbitrary environments, Boston's humanoids lose, but the reason they picked humanoids† is that in these environments the existing workforce are humans. Humans don't mind the weird ledge needed because of a legal change in 1896, or the uneven weight distribution in the boxes, they adapt and so can Boston's robots. Humanoids couldn't fit down a 6cm diameter pipe, a custom robot could, but, since the people doing the job last month were humans it's not in a 6cm diameter pipe, the humans doing it required an access hatch, and the humanoid robot can operate that hatch too.
† You can make a similar argument for the canine robots. People already use dogs so more of our world is tweaked to make it suitable for dogs.
Never has the future been brighter and darker at the same time.. lets see.
If I imagine I run into a factory full of "thinking" (current LLM level top of line benchmark) humanoid looking robots who are collaborating on tasks dynamically as needed... In my book that is as dystopian as it gets and has nothing to do with the current level of automation that's happening, that's a whole new level.
You’ve got manipulators on hand to do the swap, controlled environment, minimal downtime, etc.
There is nothing dystopian about this image. Human being weren’t designed, evolved, nor destined to be a worker in a factory. Their absence in factories isn’t in and of itself a problem.
The dystopian part is how the wealthy and powerful will chose to use the fact that so much can be automated. I doubt they’ll be willing to use it to create Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
Many people don't realize that the average real wages remained stable over the last 30 years either lol. You can buy more subscriptions and other useless gadgets but the basics are the same (cars) or higher (rent/building). You're in a blind spot because you're in the top 30%, go ask the bottom 70%...
Even if everything was "stable adjusted to inflation" it would hardly be a win, and definitely not something to cheer for or call "progress", that's 30 years of stagnation with a few bells and whistles
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/blog_...
https://inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2023/1...
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcX...
not if you have wage growth that exceeds inflation.
In my book that is as dystopian as it gets and has nothing to do with the current level of automation with robots that's happening, that's a whole new level. Production efficiency is one thing, but not far and the DOD or someone else on the other end of the world has some creative ideas how to use that to "make the world great again"...
They absolutely haven't.
In the 1960's, getting a car to 100,000 miles was an achievement; now, the car is just getting broken in.
> In the 1960's, getting a car to 100,000 miles was an achievement; now, the car is just getting broken in.
The average car reaches 160K miles before end of life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity.
So by 100K miles, 50% of cars have already lived two thirds of their life.
