My theory would be that some western people are very disquieted to see China take the lead in various technological fields. When I post in r/futurology on Reddit I constantly observe this in China related comments and discussion.
It’s disappointing that politics and xenophobia are even a factor in such discussions. As a society, we were always going to make humanoid robots, the question was if we would be ready for them by the time they arrive? Unfortunately, I don’t think we are ready and we’ll likely use them for profit. But that doesn’t take away from the benefits that they can provide. If we can have these assist the sick and elderly, that would be wonderful for society. I just don’t see the downside of this article being posted, at the very least it opens up the floor to discussion.
I’m surprised more people aren’t aware of how rapidly robotics are currently developing. The same LLM AI that is capturing public attention with generative art and ChatGPT is equally revolutionizing robots.
Here’s an illustration of it. This is the closest I’ve seen yet of a mass-market-priced and extremely capable robot that could sell in tens of millions around the world. This looks close to the type of robot you could bring to many workplaces and get to do a wide range of unskilled work. How long before we see fast food places fully staffed by robots like these? At the current rate of development that seems only 2 or 3 years away.
Not sure where you draw the line here, 20 minutes of training, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year? What interval of training inherently makes someone’s labor magically “skilled” and therefore more valuable and worthy of better treatment?
We could just decide that all labor is valuable and treat people with dignity. The “skilled” and “unskilled” workers have significantly more in common than “skilled” workers do with their bosses.
Because it takes a special kind of person to stand in one place for 8-12 hours repeating the same repetitive motion every day for years. I don’t have the patience for that shit
Interesting response. I got my CompTIA A+ cert so I could have more options, and applied at over 150 jobs before I got an interview. I’m very aware of how fortunate I am, but it wasn’t like I just walked away from factory work easily. I worked in five different factories before I got into tech, and I’m making less than I was before. But my skills are better in other fields for sure
LMAO, that’s a MADE UP job. It literally doesn’t exist. The amount of mandatory safety training from working in any factory environment excessedes that. That’s before you can start learning how to use the production software and automation that the company uses to measure productivity. Finally you have to do the actual task and learn the processes and exceptions that have made it so that the job isn’t cost effective to automate in the first place.
Now that’s a big company environment. Big companies are the only ones with the economies of scale required so that your can even have employees that only do one thing. At a small company everyone has to wear many hats and there is no such thing as an person that does only one job “you could learn in 10min”
It’s easy to imagine “unskilled labour” when you make it up in your head. What sucks is when you then use it to dehumanize and underpay real humans because of your made up fantasy of unskilled labour.
Obviously someone that hasn’t spent much time in a factory and don’t know what they are talking about.
Sure you got to go through all the safety requirements but that’s not a skill.
I’ve seen job were people load material into a machine and people box finished good, or people destroying WIP, or people moving material, or picking up WIP.
You are just confidently incorrect. A skilled job is something where you are trained and/or have experience in and it takes a long time to teach and learn. Unskilled is were you can grab people from the street and get them working within a day.
Surely you can see why based on supply and demand and cost of training both for the person and the business that unskilled pays less. Why should they be paid the sane as skilled work? It doesn’t make sense.
Yes, when you dismiss everything these jobs require as “not skills” then anything can be unskilled labour. Yeah of course working safely in an industrial environment isn’t a skill, even babies can do it, that’s why conservatives everywhere are trying to bring back child labour!
Well if you change the definitions of things then anything can mean anything.
I don’t know what you expect. The fundamental reason unskilled labour is paid less is because basically anyone can do it. You can call it whatever you want but it won’t pay the same amount as skilled labour, or whatever you want to call that.
If they could learn that quickly and perform the job that fast, that’s a skill. Could everyone get up to speed and start producing things that quickly? I’ve worked plenty of factory jobs. Most of them aren’t simply pressing a button mindlessly, and your speed is a factor. Work faster, produce more, you’re employing a skill others may not possess.
Not everyone no, some people have severe mental and physical disabilities.
Everyone that showed up could do the job in that amount of time from what I understand. Some people left because they didn’t like it and some people had issues with authority or we lazy and wasn’t asked back. But there was a revolving door or temps coming through and no one seemed to struggle.
there is labor that can* be done with extremely little skill. Think vacuuming a large flat room with nothing valuable on it, that task could be done (more or less) with a robotic vacuum. Entire jobs might not be fully replaced but labor demands can be greatly reduced.
*not necessarily done well, but done to minimum standards
You know what it means, god dammit. There’s jobs anyone can fake with a week of training and there’s jobs that need six years of school to not kill people.
The strange thing about fast food places is that there’s no “train of food” where you just have to order in a screen and a robotic line makes your food. I’d say it’s one of the first places that could do that.
We’ve seen a few robot restaurants open in the past few years. I wonder how they’re getting on. I remember at least one was a failure because it needed humans to supervise everything.
Food is just unpredictable. What shape is lettuce?
Word on the street is that robots that can chop and sautee carefully provided ingredients themselves are probably coming, but that’s more evolution than revolution. The big space to watch is AIs taking your order in a more human way.
What’s the use case, though? There really isn’t much benefit to humanoid form robots outside of looking good to human aesthetics. Much of what robotics and automation would be good for don’t actually require humanoid forms.
None of these robots can take my job. Until you get one that can do customer service, and then operate in a warehouse running a forklift then I get worried.
Navigating human environments. Imagine a team of these robots toting moving boxes down the stairs of a third floor apartment and loading them into a truck.
Yes? A triped robot would have just as much ease navigating human environments, while having much more stability. Same logic applies to arms and joints - there’s no real reason to limit it to what humans have, it would likely perform much better in other configurations.
A total inability to fall over or navigate any terrain regardless of roughness isn’t a benefit? Increased manipulators would also increase productivity / capability, probably much more than making up for increased cost.
Your argument is essentially that the human form is the best possible one imaginable, which I find highly doubtful.
My argument is that humans have built our cities to be navigated best by the human form, so that in that environment it is the best form. In most terrains a quadruped form is better.
Current prices are meaningless. It’s not mass production or retail pricing. I doubt the components actually cost more than a few hundred dollars. It’s an extremely limited niche market and prices are based on what will get them the most return on their R&D budget, not anything resembling production cost.
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