I wonder how far away we are from humanoid robots that can perform most unskilled or semi-skilled work? Cleaning, factory work, stacking shelves etc etc
When you look at this it doesn't seem that far away.
I would also guess that if Chinese manufacturers can make and sell hatchback cars for 10,000 dollars they will be able to make robots like this for less.
When that day comes, we will very quickly have a new type of society and economy, though who knows what that will look like.
Helix's humanoid robot has been updated to perform generalized household tasks for which it has not been trained before.
byu/lughnasadh inFuturology
14 Comments
Is that figure 2 or a new robot?
I understand the crying of those who think AI may kill us. I disagree but I understand.
I don’t understand the people who are afraid of social change.
I’m ready for this. As long as they can make the robot NOT squish all those cookies.
I think there is more of an existential dread around robots. Because these companies have made it pretty clear they care about making some extra cents on the dollar, especially if they can replace human, paid, labor.
They don’t seem to be developing these robots to do anything besides take away the most menial tasks. So what are those members of society suddenly supposed to do when the work they’ve been doing their whole lives is gone.
Will the government suddenly be nice and decide that we need Universal Income, Universal Healthcare? Have they ever before? No! They don’t have a plan to account for people with no jobs, they will just let them fall into the abyss of society.
[deleted]
This is creepy AF but also really cool. Robots are just going to take some getting used to.
I know Figure have said they are targeting 2027 for domestic bots and theres at least one other company with a similar timescale.
And looking at that new video I think they will be there or there about. First generation ones are clearly going to be a bit slow but that hardly matters when you set the task and walk away.
At that point the only thing keeping any jobs safe will be the remaining refinement needed to allow a domestic customer to grab plumber.exe off the app store in 2 – 4 years time. That’ll be it for the services jobs everyone thinks will be safe, the industrial ones are already starting to be directly replaced and the white collar jobs will start going around the same time.
The whole basis of the social contract is going to have to swing round to governments basing their income on extracting value from the AI and robots somehow to spread around society so that as they scale, and then make the economy larger than it could ever be under human labour alone that society actually benefits. I’ve not seen another way to address it.
Awesome! Now, stop letting all the cold air out of the fridge.
I personally believe we are still a VERY long way away from this.
The video is cool and all, but… This to me looks like a video from 20 years ago where they showed a car “self-driving” already, and we all got excited.
And we didn’t really notice that the car that was driving was one single, super customized car, on a single, oval shaped track, in perfect weather and perfect lighting, with no other traffic, no pedestrians, and all it had to do was drive repeatedly in that one oval. And here we are, 20 years later, and… still no self driving cars.
Those robots are VERY slowly doing incredibly trivial tasks in a super controlled environment after that demo was painstakingly set up by engineers for those super specific scenarios.
Something as simple as adding two more grocery items, or moving the fridge 3 inches, or any even TINY change there would certainly completely break the demo.
We are a loooong way from these being household robots.
we’re getting closer to true autonomy in robotics soon they might handle complex real world environments with minimal human input
guess i should start learning how to hunt and gather since robots will have careers ….
they will end up like Marvin, the depressive robot. With brains the size of the universe, relegated to do stupid mundane tasks. so sad…
I like how the intro took longer than it would have taken for a human to put away the groceries
This is what my son wants to study in college. It’s cool, great application for warehouses. Pretty far off from household applications- like food prep, dusting, laundry, folding clothes. My job is safe for now.