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 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 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 1 day 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 1 day 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.