• theneverfox@pawb.social
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    1 day ago

    The overhead on the robot is mostly maintenance, which is a humanoid skill. If the robots can maintain each other, or build each other, someone just won capitalism

    • Archangel1313@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Over time, maintenance costs on machines tend to increase. They all have a practical limit on profitability, before that cost exceeds their contributive value. Then they need to be replaced.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        1 day ago

        And if the machines are the ones building new parts, that, like many other things, goes out the window. They can even recycle and refurbish parts

        • Archangel1313@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          That’s pure science fiction. It will never happen. Training people to do various manual tasks is always cheaper than using robots. Automation involves dedicated, task-specific machinery that improves on existing (manual) methods. People are always there to fill in the gaps in what those machines are capable of. We provide that required versatility.

          Replacing people with people-shaped robots to do the exact same job that people do, is the opposite of efficiency. There is no improvement involved. It’s literally a lateral shift, with an enormous price tag attached to it.

          • theneverfox@pawb.social
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            1 day ago

            I don’t know what to tell you, other than it’s already happening. Once the first robot builds a second, it’s over. You can buy one that can physically do light tasks for $8k, this summer Amazon started using robots for deliveries and has been using them for packaging for longer

            It’s not science fiction, it’s now an engineering problem, one that is progressing quickly

            • Archangel1313@lemmy.ca
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              1 day ago

              Lol! Dude. It isn’t “already happening”. Where are you hearing that?

              And are we still talking about humanoid robots, or are you talking about drones and automated roller carts? Because they do have those, but there’s no way they are able to repair each other or build more of themselves. What they do have, is as I said, very task-specific and non-intuitive. If even one variable is out of place, the whole system goes off the rails, and an actual human being is required to put things right again.

              • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                24 hours ago

                No, I’m talking about automonous humanoid robots specifically. The rollers and shelf bots have been around for years

                NVidia also just released a big suite of tools to train AI for robotics, it’s basically a huge physics sandbox where you can train and test models at scale before real world testing

                Boston dynamics and others are currently writing/lobbying regulations for bipedal robots so that they can meet safety requirements - current safety standards require an emergency shutoff switch, but bipedal robots fall over if they don’t balance, which isn’t particularly safe

                This is happening, and quickly. None of them have the dexterity to machine parts, but the range of tasks they can do is rapidly expanding

                • Archangel1313@lemmy.ca
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                  23 hours ago

                  Lol! This isn’t “happening, and quickly”. Boston Dynamics has been working on their humanoid robots for decades, and they’re basically at the same stage they were at the beginning.

                  It’s just a gimmick, my friend. Not a viable alternative to human labor. They don’t perform tasks “better” or “more efficiently” than people. It isn’t even a matter of them improving over time. You simply don’t invest in new technologies that promise to do the exact same thing as the old ones.

                  • theneverfox@pawb.social
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                    23 hours ago

                    Lmao… That’s a wild take. Boston dynamics has been steadily improving this whole time, they were the first to really crack bipedal locamotion. Not just walking, running and flipping. Carrying loads. Kipping back up to their feet

                    You can, right now, for $8k buy a humanoid robot that can run, and be controlled to do whatever else. That’s insane

                    And you can get shelf stacking humanoid robots that work commercially. These exist and are for sale

                    Amazon is currently field testing humanoid robots that deliver packages from the truck to the door.

                    Your knowledge is very dated, friend.