Your humanoid robot servant: a new hope for AGI! (A Guy Instead)
Your humanoid robot servant: a new hope for AGI! (A Guy Instead)
Humanoid robots are the next prospective tech bubble. Venture capitalists put $6.1 billion into humanoid robots just in 2024. [Yahoo!; Bloomberg, archive] The New York Times was bowled over by 1X’s…
I don't want a humanoid robot servant, I just want a phone that is actually built to last and a dishwasher that actually washes the dishes.
The NYT article talks about how a technician in a call center is operating it now, and whilst operating, their systems are gathering information to guide the robot in future un-manned tasks. Much like an LLM analyzes thousands of essays in order to "write" it's own, so to will these robots analyze thousands of hours of technician-guided activities in order to do it autonomously in the future.
Very interesting, and very much the same as how they "taught" self-driving cars to operate. One can imagine that if efforts continue in these fields, it's only a matter of time before we actually do have fully automated robot butlers, that only need the occasional reboot, or technician support. This would be a massive boon to literally every service industry, from transporting patients in the hospital, working in a warehouse, assembly techs, to waiters and waitresses. Shit, how soon until they deploy them on the battlefield?
Considering they have robot cafes operating in Japan already, we could see this happen sooner than we think, if the companies choose to share all their training data, that is.
The only question that remains, is would this lead to a new era of prosperity and free time, or would this just be another tool to further enrich the entrenched capital?
The only question that remains, is would this lead to a new era of prosperity and free time, or would this just be another tool to further enrich the entrenched capital?
Does anybody seriously ask this question? I mean the answer is a given.
I mean, yeah, you're right. However, the amount of jobs that robots like this would displace is astronomical. Like, the U.S. trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in the United States, so if ever we were to get truly automated trucking, the job losses would be catastrophic to millions of Americans. One can assume that something would have to be done to help ease the transition, likely in the form of stimulus checks and subsidized education. But that's just for one industry.
These autonomous robots could be deployed in seemingly every industry, resulting in the potential loss of hundreds of millions of jobs (assuming widespread adoption and construction, that is). One would think that in order for society to continue, vast socialist reforms would have to be undertaken. The alternative would be something akin to having a couple people with the wealth and power of todays superpower nations, while the rest of humanity lives in abject squalor. I'd like to think that humans wouldn't let things get that bad...
but even as I type that out I know it's a lie 😥 ugh. Fucking humans, man.
