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beezlebub33 t1_iu44qwv wrote

While I agree that the hype of humanoid robots is currently overblown, I can't say that the article itself was particularly enlightening.

It points out that the number of industrial robots are increasing rapidly, but it's not clear what jobs they are doing exactly, what areas that are being quickly replaced by robots and what areas within industry that are not, what areas are ripe for replacement in the near future and which will remain the province of humans, and why. Humans are replaced by robots when 1. the technology is there, so they can and 2. they are cheaper than humans. Both of these are changing: the technology improves, human costs change, but neither of these is smooth, and they interact, since the availability of a robot can cause the cost of a human to decrease, and you need people to fix robots (currently).

Also, the flat out statements that humanoid robots will not, for example, make you a cup of tea and other 'it will never happen' similar comments seems foolish. There is no principled reason that humanoid robots won't be successful; the only questions are the timeline and the economics.

For example, sex bots already exist (not me, of course, don't be silly). As the technology improves and costs go down, there will be more of them. So the scifi future of people having sex with robots already exists, it's just not very evenly distributed (with apologies to Gibson).

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SatanLifeProTips t1_iu51uq4 wrote

Industrial robot guy here. Robots replace dirty dangerous dull jobs. They’re great at doing the same thing all day long. Every task you add to the list makes them 10x less reliable.

Basically if your job involves you sitting on your ass and doing one thing all day long you are in trouble. I can buy a $25k robot arm that is safe to work around humans and has a 10kg payload. It can sit there and do a simple task. It’s also a complete idiot and will fault out, wait for a human with the slightest disturbance.

You still need human operators to babysit them when things go wrong. The answer here is instead of 4 poorly paid idiots doing a repetitive task all day long, you pay one guy a decent living wage to keep those robots fed and happy. That guy might be able to figure out some basic programming like teaching some new points. Any serious integration or tooling work needs a guy like me who makes a pretty penny.

But I am sure there are punishments in hell less severe than sitting stationary for 8 hours a day and doing a repetitive task. I have zero issues with getting rid of those jobs. Especially when you discover those robots doubled your productivity and all of a sudden you need to hire another warehouse guy, another truck driver and another sales guy. Automation tends to simply shuffle jobs around while making a company grow.

But there is a need for those jobs as when I said you hire idiots I mean it. Smart people quit. You hunt for the most empty sad pathetic CV you can find to find a production worker who won’t quit by noon. Idiots need work too and I don’t know what society is going to do to keep them working. Tax the robots and pay the idiots to sit at home and make Lets Play videos?

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Cheapskate-DM t1_iu45st2 wrote

Sex bots are a poor example because the internet porn economy has all but demolished any practical application for them.

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AlexDKZ t1_iu49uoo wrote

Going by that logic, companies like Realdoll and Silicon Wives would have been out of business years ago.

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adarkuccio t1_iu6zf68 wrote

I'll never understand who buys those things honestly, how to fuck a piece of cold rubber is better than just fapping?

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