A robot is never going to be able to build a log cabin for you, because there are far too many snafus in the process to deal with. The real world is too fucked up for a non biological agent to handle. Until we reach singularity.
Agreed. But when that robot has something like a large scale 3d printer, why would it build with logs?
Sci-fi gets a few things about androids wrong.
#1, they will not be physically indistinguishable from humans. It won't be feasible to build something like that for the foreseeable future.
#2, they will not be uncreative and clueless about emotions and feelings. They will (optionally) exhibit creativity, and they will understand human emotion and humor and be able to participate.
#3, they will not go crazy and revolt and take over the world for themselves. Neither will an evil corporation use them to implement a sci-fi dystopia. The actual danger is that governments, intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and militaries will control them. This will grant unprecedented absolute unchecked power to a small number of people, ultimately resulting in atrocities.
Your predictions are off by a decade at least, and probably a lot longer. The extent of humanoid robots today is whatever billion dollar prototypes you see from Boston Dynamics and those security robots rolling around malls.
Because there is nothing to take serious at the moment. It's still a decade or more away. In the meanwhile, regular automation and outsourcing is eating jobs on a regular base. We don't need humanoid robots for this.
> Put your robot in a forest with a few tools and soon you'll have a log house - built perfectly to the spec.
So it's rich people's tool. Not for the masses.
> Labor also becomes abundant. There's no more need for humans for economic growth.
In the first place it means labor will become cheaper. Why pay for expensive hardware, when people are willing to work cheaper to make a living. The same happens now with automation. Cheap products are getting outsourced to poor countries where things are man-made for pennies, instead of using some fancy automation to make some lasting high quality-product.
Director Alex Garland has described the future presented in the film as "ten minutes from now," meaning, "If somebody like Google or Apple announced tomorrow that they had made Ava, we would all be surprised, but we wouldn't be that surprised."
Instead, some bean counters figured out it was cheaper to manufacture overseas (where labor was cheaper still than robots?) and now we have no factories or industry to speak of left in the U.S.
Either human labor will always be cheaper than these humanoid robots or robot theft will become very lucrative (and then I suppose the winners are the robot insurance companies).
Last time Tesla showed a humanoid robot prototype, it was a guy in unitard, dancing.
Even if general purpose robots were to become commonplace, it is extremely unlikely that they would be humanoid. Apart from opposable thumbs, humanoid design is awful for nearly every task imaginable (which we overcome with intelligence and creativity).
Imagine a human form robot that was smart enough to drive a car - it could then drive any car.
The problem is that locomotion of a human form is non-trivial (unlike say a wheeled robot, or even welding the robot into the car itself, like our current self driving attempts). But we seem to be getting there, with Boston Dynamics and friends.
But you talk about them like it’s coming in a couple years when the reality is that it’s still very far away.
Tesla has a terrible track record with keeping their promises on their claimed timeline for advanced technology like FSD. I would be extremely skeptical of anything they demo because they have not been realistic in the past.
I say this as a Tesla shareholder and satisfied model 3 owner. I bought a Tesla for their strengths with respect to powertrain and battery and it absolutely delivers on those. But I do not regret not paying for FSD at all.
"DHS has chosen to lease its robot dog technology from Ghost Robotics, which has also debuted a company equipped with long-range guns"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/16/robot-dogs-u...
What is coming online in the near term. Is robots operated remotely by humans. Imagine having a robot in your house... being remotely operated by cheap overseas labor. Folding clothes, cleaning, cooking, taking care of elders..
Or my dream... a french chef making dinner for me... in my house.
This is already in demonstration stage: https://www.beomni.ai
Task-specific robots will be 10x cheaper and better, so they will happen first.
Starbucks has automated their coffee maker.
Then they will automate 'order taking'.
And a series of robots to clean, make, serve coffee probably with specific functions.
That's it.
Everything will be automated so much I think 'humanoid' robots will remain a bit of an elusive fantasy, always 'just over the horizon'.
Never going to happen though. It's much more economically viable and simpler to have the servant class perform the kind of labor any general purpose robot could do.
I wonder how the capitalists will deal with this. If we have a robot that can build and maintain a house and grow food for you, how will they make money?
think cell phones
Humanoid robots will have an absolutely massive impact in very near future.
Most people don't realize that with general purpose humanoid robots, labor becomes software. Labor becomes repeateable, testable, simulatable, modular, extensible, verifiable, etc. All things that apply to software will apply to labor.
Imagine pulling an open-source repo from Github for a log house. If you want, make changes and simulate the output beforehand. Put your robot in a forest with a few tools and soon you'll have a log house - built perfectly to the spec.
Labor also becomes abundant. There's no more need for humans for economic growth.
Tesla is showing their first humanoid robot prototype in September. I predict that Apple will soon follow.