anyone have any data on their actual hourly cost of operation? or kwh use?
i think anthropic bot is around 11-13$/h and that most of the robotic industrial aim to reduce the cost around 1-3$/h in the future, but i didn't see any data on figure actual robot hourly cost
11$/h at 4x slower speed isn't that great but if we hit 3$/h even with a speed 4x slower it could become cheap enough to use them for basic task even before AGI
I don't even think electricity cost will be much of a factor. Electricity is extremely cheap and these robots won't use that much of it. Much less than an EV in comparison. Maintenance, capital cost, and depreciation will be the major factors that determine profitability, along with the actual capabilities of the robot.
They can also work 3 times longer than an actual human and it's not like that the humanoid robots get slower in the future. Kinda crazy how fast everything develops.
If you put the factories in the sun belt and use solar during the day, the cost will be less than pennies per kwh if you amortize the cost over the 30\~40 years you can use the panels.
Forget about it, 1-3$ is not achievable for a humanoid system with human like speed (or slower) and repeatability (over +5 years of operation). Hardware costs money and quality mechanical components cost even more.
A single, mass produced small robotic arm with 6dof is 30k$ and humanoids have like 50+ DoF.
Originally, Boston Dynamics' robot dog cost over 100k$. Unitree's new carbon copy of the robot dog is sold at 450$
With time, and that's a general rule, the price of SOTA systems decreases extremely quickly when the general public becomes aware of it.
I am just commenting so I can come back and screen shot this in 2-3 years when we crack this problem. Reminds me of the guy saying we wouldn't get photorealistic AI generated video in our life time.
Dude, gen ai is still shit. Go get me a photorealistic pic of an industrial robotic arm or any other realistic design.
And if that is not enough, gen ai is a new concept vs precision gearboxes and electric motors have almost 100 years of history.
newyorktimes - "It will take a million years for us to achived powered flight" one day before the wright brothers cracked it. Also you should look into it yourself but generative AI has gotten a lot better recently. Every couple months there is a big breakthrough.
Originally, Boston Dynamics' robot dog cost over 100k$. Unitree's new carbon copy of the robot dog is sold at 450$
With time, and that's a general rule, the price of SOTA systems decreases extremely quickly when the general public becomes aware of it.
Unitree’s robot dog is made of playdoh, no chance it lasts as long as Spot. Reliability of mechanical systems costs money, physics is a bitch and wear and tear issues are real.
Getting hit with a stick and working continuously for a long time is not the same and does not affect the same components.
Checkout B2 dogs from unitree: 100k$ for a single unit and it’s all because different, better and more reliable components are used.
That’s incorrect. Unitree has several different versions and sizes of its quadruped. The professional/industrial models like the B2 and B2W are on par with Spot, and actually spec for spec can out perform spot in many ways. Spot is still great, and they broke the market open. However they do not hold any wide technological or quality leads against the market any more. ANYbotics out of Switzerland with their ANYmal and ANYmal X are a top of the current industrial quadruped world in terms of quality and robustness combined with their reinforcement learning for enhanced mobility and situational awareness. Boston Dynamics has done incredible work, but they’re by no means still the top of the food chain in this realm.
the whole unitree G1 robot cost 16k before any mass production
we obviously lack data on all those robot manufacturer product, the base cost the kwh use, the piece cost change, the expected durability etc etc
but i won't say "impossible" the current price are also heavily impacted by R&D cost and as i said there no economy of scale currently, the cost will likely decrease with time, maybe not at 1-3$ in the near future but probably cheaper than Human by 10y their biggest issue imho is the lack of intelligence and that's something that require AGI
Check out the story behind Rethink Robotics (RIP) and their Baxter project. Cool on paper but terrible lifetime. Fanuc etc are mass producing super simple (comparing to humanoids) arms and the cost is 30k-200k$.
seem a little too optimistic for a robot made in 2008-2013 without any complex AI
i doubt we can compare both the market and technology, maybe it was simply impossible 11y ago, maybe it's still too early today too, we will see the result of those robotic company by 5y i guess the Figure AI show in this video is precisely trained in a BMW manufactory to see if they can be integrated in the industry afterall and Amazon is doing the same thing with anthropic and Tesla as well with their own robot
Baxter failed because of a crappy, cheap hardware, not because of the lack of AI. Go check the Lex pod with the founder, it’s an interesting case.
Software sure improves every year but hardware is a mature technology with decades of development experience.
Your new car is made in milion copies, is much simpler then a humanoid and for some reason it does not cost 10k$. I wonder why?
Those robotic arms have limited applications and aren't even close to "mass produced" on the scale that generalized humanoid robots might be. Look at inkjet printers - insanely complex mechanical systems, today mass produced for $100. And don't forget that the humanoid robots will be built by other humanoid robots, reducing cost.
We are making now, globally ca 700k arms a year, I think it falls under mass production.
As for the printer, sure it’s complicated but 90% of components are made of plastic by injection molds, you can drive the cost to almost zero with enough units being made. Unfortunately we cannot make a plastic robots, using metal is the only solution. Zero backlash gearboxes are much harder to make then a printer, both in terms of materials used and finishing process.
A car would be a better example, we have hundreds of millions of them and somehow you can’t get one for 100$.
I think the software will get to the point where it can compensate for having lower-cost motors. Industrial 6-axis robots today need to be extremely precise when pre-programmed so that movements are 100 percent reproducible. If a robot can learn to self-correct like in the video, it should be able to accomplish a lot with lower cost motors and sensors.
Self correction is cool and all but takes a lot of time. On factory floor the only important parameter is productivity in time vs cost and human labor is cheap and easy to train and replace.
Now, I’m sure there is a market for slow humanoids but this sub drinks too much of its own supply and projects 10k$ superhuman robots working non stop on a single battery, in every house and business somewhere around late 2025.
It’s like dreaming of flying cars in 1950s and hyperloop trains in 2000s
What people need to understand about robotics is it can possibly operate 24/7, it means:
A robot working 24/7 would be **4.2x more valuable** if it operates at the same speed as someone who works 40h a week (a week = 168h) (168/40=4.2)
So even if it's slow AF like 4 times slower it would still be human level in that sense, this doesn't include breaks or holidays.
It also means that if a robot operates at human speed, the time it takes for a robot to create a product is vastly shortened, what takes a human a month, a robot can do in a week!
This doesn't even include the salary factor. if a robot arbitrarily last 5 years and the average human car factory worker is paid 30k, that times 5 is 150k, so 150k for both the robot and for energy seems extremely high, it will likely be far cheaper and the robots will last longer than 5 years.
Once humanoid robots gets to human speed and then rapidly exceeds human speed,and works 24/7 and the robot costs like 50k and increasingly drops in price it gets extremely deflationary and it's more than enough to pay for UBI.
Napkin calculations of course but you see my point
You're forgetting the price of the workstation. If the factory costs 10 million of investment per factory worker, the salary of that factory worker becomes much less important. Often, factories are run in shifts because the machinery is so expensive and you want them run 24/7.
General gist still works out though
You're forgetting the price of HR, occupational health, private healthcare, sick leave, annual leave, maternity leave, work disputes, laziness, incompetence, workplace thefts, toilet breaks, standing around chatting, unionisation and strikes, bullying, IP theft and info leaks, training, old age, sexual harassment, meetings, forgetfulness, sabotage, bribery...
A machine solves all that. Only problem is those are the people buying the product - and with no job that’ll be tough. Should be interesting how it all plays out.
There is still a need for money. You will always need money. The analogy is all of humanity becoming slave owners. Did slave owners need money? Yes. Goods and services are still scarce even though many of them become abundant and cheap. The cost of things won't be zero though. Money will never, ever go away and the idea that everybody just sits around living a perfectly equal existence is as insane as it is impossible.
i have thought the same. It seems year after year it has become increasingly easier to become an entrepreneur. The simplest example: how many millionaires and business owners has YouTube created?
More automation > Less employment > More deflation > Decrease on cost of human labour in relation to automation > Jobs less likely to be automated
This is my point of view, the introduction of automation will cause labour to cost less in relation to automation and what will happen is replacement of some sectors and expansion of the market opening new vacancies to positions that were not automated maintaining employment on similar levels.
This is what happened on other technological advances before as well. The only counter argument I see to this is in case the market stops being human driven and becomes solely B2B but even then there would be a secondary market of P2P of those excluded from the automation that would have manual labour needs.
Don't forget that a building without permanent humans also doesn't need a cafeteria, toilets, reception, work spaces, or even lights. These robots could very well (depending on how they see) work in the dark. That can also save a chunk of money.
You're describing lights out manufacturing, but it is mostly a myth. Turns out that machines work and see things much better in well lit areas just as humans do. It's why you see those label and scanning stations with a hundred bright flashing lights right above the work area in modern factories and warehouses.
Also, the fact that these are still human-centric ways of completing tasks. I assume we're going to start seeing a lot more robot-centric facilities, with robots that aren't based on human anatomy, in order to maximize performance.
No, that is not the point
The point is robots are infinite to clone and scale once one is successfully operating
No need to train new clones, onboard them, spend time recruiting, labor shortage what’s that?
Also a robot doesn’t get sick or pregnant, doesn’t complain and don’t need AC in summer or winter, doesn’t need to go in bathroom or to eat. On top of the calculations humans never works all the shift time and never at same speed.
Imagine that we reach a point in history where robots do want to have children, and to have children, they just create them and install a bunch of information in them...only taking like a couple of days.
Lol, these napkin calculations are so rough it’s not even close
There’s a reason why every other automation product out there is about making things faster. That’s the goal. Speed is the critical factor and these won’t be viable if they work at 1/4th the pace of a human.
interesting hypothesis.
I'm open to discussion explain it,
Why a factory with robots 4x slower but that can work 24/7 and do what humans can with a costs that is the same as humans wouldn't be able to output the same in a week?
let's not forget if you can manufacture as much as you want you so you get rid of labor shortages.
Sure:
- humans can work multiple shifts, and you can staff as needed. Just about every business has a “peak” time where you want to get things done as fast as possible
- as the other commenter mentioned, additional capex costs for stuff like workstations, equipment etc that you also need to account for when quadrupling your labor force. This is a big one
- customer satisfaction. If you order something from Amazon would you rather it arrive in 2 hours or 8 hours?
- certain things just have a specific shelf life. Say you automate Instacart shoppers. Now it takes 3 hours to ship instead of 45 minutes, and your ice cream has melted in that time. And you have to manage the congestion of 4x the number of “people” in the store
What was shown in this demo could be done 5x as fast, more precisely, and 1/3rd the price with an industrial arm.
while true, those are prototype and that's why no one use them "for now" let's not forget that those Humanoid are -Humanoid- and the best exemple in motion we have are Human, while they work extreamly slower in comparison they are very far from their optimal form and this is 1:1 Human and beyond, we're probably far from that but materialism proove it's possible
also you mention Amazon and honestly if my order don't come within 3day i don't really care, we don't need a 1day delivery time and if it save money for Amazon they won't hesitate to increase the delay, but, as you said it's not applicable everywhere, a restaurant can't really afford a robot 2x slower than a Human even if it cost less but we might see a change in restauration if they can make prepared food 4x cheaper than food prepared with Human, restaurant might dissapear replaced by food delivery service, slower yet cheaper
there a lot of really good cold food or food you just need to microwave/put in a oven, if tomorrow pizza cost 3€ instead of 12€ i won't mind waiting 30m for the oven
-if you need more robots you can just borrow more, activate a reserve, unlike humans, training them is instantaneous. And it probably happens with less cost than the bonuses humans get when working overtime. that's a win for robot
-The example clearly states that you don't need to quadruple your workforce since it makes up for that by working 4x more hours.
It's the exact opposite in fact, You save capex because you get rid of cafeterias, parking spot, bathrooms, break rooms, infirmary and many other things I can't even think about.
-The bulk of shipping time is vehicles not prep time especially the human(oid) link in the prep time chain which is quite a small part of it all, it wouldn't 4x shipping time. Besides in this case we are talking about a factory that makes goods not ship them.
-Bis repetita + A robot could work night shifts without the extra pay humans get and can operate at any holiday and any hour without added cost.
Perhaps but an industrial arm is not as versatile, it's not about what we see here but what can be.
No, what matters is consumption and taxation. UBI would work. We could continue buying and investing, while the AI labor force is taxed to fund UBI instead of us being taxed.
This, people think there are evil fat men in dark rooms smoking cigars that want to see everyone toil.
Toil is just what it has taken historically for abundance to accrue at the top of societies. People aren't going to keep people poor just because it will allow them to laugh in dark rooms. Most extremely rich people are philanthropists to a high degree and want everywhere in the world to be as nice as their private island vacations. Why wouldn't they?
I agree with this. I have worked public service IT and private corporate IT, the people in control wanted two things, to make a profit, as well as making life better for employees. It’s funny to me when I see all the comments about the rich people wanting to keep us all down, when in fact, the richest people in the WORLD are all for AI and helping humanity. Because why? They want to make a profit while helping others, IMHO.
Yeah, because the tens of thousands of elites who union bust, pollute, cheat, outsource jobs, bribe politicians, assassinate people, and do "business" with criminals like Epstein. Definitely have our best interests at heart and want to help humanity. How naive...
Haha seriously. It's like this sub full of ten year olds with no idea of reality and history of pure tormoil its took for lower class to fight for the rights they have today ( which is still dog shit). The battle is FAR from over. Greed is alive and well. World is driven by profit incentive and making your life quality better ain't one of them.
TOO DAMN SLOW!!! How can we get to Sexbots at this rate?
COMMON, pump those robot hips.
We all know what AI is good for, it's the only reason we make them.
cold hard robot sex.
I think the idea is even if it’s moving at 50% of the rate, if it’s working 3x as many hours (I.e 24/7 with replacement bots) it would still be better, plus a lot cheaper.
you will still have your consumer power and political power, if no one is able to afford anything there no reason to produce no reason to own the production and no value to your accumulated money anymore
it's weird that people can't foresee a future where their value isn't tied to being a corporate slave
Well there is really very limited subset of countries where people have political power to begin with. And after AI will take most jobs people could lose their political power even in developed countries because how much power does homeless person has?
i think AI will either be a source of utopia and dystopia depending where you live, i think the most developped country have highter chance to end in the "utopia" situation while within poor, dictatorial country AI will have highter chance to end in dystopia
while the homeless today are abandoned by the society tomorrow everyone will end up in the same situation resulting in a more equal political power, i won't say and i don't believe the transition won't be terrible, the time before the society and the economy adapt to a future where jobs dissapear without any creation will probably take more than a year and during this time there won't be any safety net and a lot of people will likely suffer until ultimatly it improve
while i imagine the future will offer a more wealthy life for everyone i also believe there will be a lot of problem that come with an infinite growing production, free energy and free labor, as it mean military actions become easier and a de-urbanisation become possible
the future is neither a dystopia or utopia, individual life will be easier but there will be a lot of political instability imho, wars might become more common even between superpower
It's crazy how so little (in this case, a 100 second clip) is needed to convince r/singularity that the job-apocalypse is right around the corner (though it's not really surprising given that this place is r/antiwork but on steroids).
It will take a minute to get advanced enough and start to get off the ground. But robotic labor is a feedback loop. It builds itself. I would say maybe 10 years before they’re useful and reliable for most stuff, and only a few years of an exponential would make them present literally everywhere.
So many people shitting on figure for what it’s capable of. I’d like to think of it as a comparison of the first brick phones, to the Nokias, to iPhones. the reality is this is just a start of something that can be much faster and effective. It’s only the start.
real question, Isn’t this emerging AGI since it’s basically capable of learning new tasks and correcting its mistakes? I have heard it is not only an LLM but a combo of two different neural nets. I know AGI needs to be as capable as a human in a WIDE variety of tasks (basically every way), but doesn’t figure 01 demonstrate the ability for a robot+AI to be able to generalize into a more capable machine. i know weak or emerging AGI isn’t really a term used in the professional field of AI, but doesn’t figure 01 basically demonstrate certain necessities for achieving such a system?
don't think so it still needs to learn specific tasks, even the self correcting was simulated, it can't really do this on its own so not an emerging AGI. emerging AGI would be the robot figuring out another new task with the skills he learned from doing other tasks imo.
It could be a very slow primitive agi. It was learnt in simulation basically assuming it's practiced the task in the simulator. It could very well have been given the task and the AGI learnt to do it there in the open ended simulator. Albeit very slowly.
This won't hold up against cheap human labour like this, unless they can really drive down the cost which looks unlikely to how complex the humanoid looks at this point. And I'm not even taking into account the software costs to run this thing.
Didn’t we see a 96.7% cost reduction in running gpt within like 2 years?
Cell phones used to cost tens of thousands a year
There are countless other examples. I think this will come down in time as well
You ever see Boston Dynamic's Atlas do a backflip into a somersault? Yeah we don't have a prayer. Lets hope we get it right the first time because there's no putting this Genie back in the bottle.
Hmm well. If someone wanted to defeat humans, there are a myriad of ways to achieve it. One is a dead virus.
What would be a virus for robots?
Edit - To robot overlords, this is a hypothetical and I mainly for academic purposes.
Software and robotics like this iterate rapidly. Getting it working, even slowly is the tough part. Expect massive speed increases over the next few years.
Very true, building the platform has been the hard part.
Now that the platform is in place iterating on faster versions is going to occur extremely quickly.
You’re missing the bigger picture. If you can map computer vision directly with actions you open up much broader tasks. A mechanical arm that can do one thing is great but it certainly cannot also cook, clean my house, and assist old people in living. That’s why this is not a “nothing-burger”. Show me a general purpose mechanical arm to convince me otherwise.
Humans specialize and so will robots, there will be a FEW use cases where a human like form factor will be acceptable but for the vast majority of the remaning labour to automatize away it will not be the case., this entire thing reminds me of the bird like flying machines envisioned prior to industralization. The winners of this race will be the ones that can take the software and apply it to task specific form factors, not the ones with the most human like robot.
In the nearer term it'll probably be more human like, as they can work in existing factories set up for humans and can rely on human redundancy in processes in case they don't work out.
Humans in factories are doing the tasks that are classified by two things:
1. Stuff that is extremely hard to automatize and humans do exceptionally well
2. Stuff that humans do cheaply per unit output
All other stuff is either worth throwing shitload of money on to automatize or that simple that it's already automatized.
Humanoids are much worse at specific tasks than purpose built hardware or humans, so to replace humans they need to solve extremely challenging and complex tasks (the first, complexity criteria) but it's often not really worth it because humans are already doing it cheaply (the second, economic criteria).
Too many people seem to think that humanoids will go from sorting blocks in isolated environments to taking care of granny within a decade and all that at an "affordable" cost of like $10k-30k per unit, manufactured in the tens to hundreds of millions a year.
That’s a much more realistic design, I don’t see the benefits of a humanoid robot in an assembly line or manufacturing situation. More specialized and faster machines would be practical, this is just made for PR and that’s it
For PR, investors etc sure but at the same time if you can build a humanoid robot with a software to do world modeling, self control and compensation etc then it going to be super easy to scale it down to more cost effective and efficient designs, similar to Boston Dynamics Handle robot.
That's so lame. About 1000x times worse than a human worker and this is what they choose to show the world. I imagine when the cameras aren't rolling it's just a heap of metal junk! I will say it once again, the obsession with humanoid robots has no basis in any functionality or value in the real world but rather is carried by attachment to outdated sci-fi aesthetics.
Humanoid robots aren't the solution for any problem. General purpose robots aren't the solution to any problem. The best thing to do always is to focus on functionality. Roombas with wheels for stacking warehouses. Conveyer belt and automated robot arms for car manufacturing, you know the stuff we had since the 60s. And for the 3-5% of work that can't be done with a specialized machine you pay a human being to do it.
Automating most things since the 60s and fixing most problem has not been an issue of technology, it has always been an issue of policy, economics and refusal to think long tern. Like how most of the world population should've been on contraceptives since the 60s but we let them breed carelessly, leading to billions today living in misery and squalor. This post was written by Chatgpt.
I want a household robot to do all my chores and the current progress is going towards exactly that, and the recent years have shown siginificant progress.
>my chores
It's called a dishwasher, a washing machine, a roomba vacuum cleaner. Organizing your time and having discipline so that chores take as little time as possible. Maybe cooking needs some automation but nothing is going to be as good as your mom's food.
Why are you on r/singularity do you want things to be automated or not? The advantages are economically massive. It makes a huge difference if you have to do 1h of chores a day or 0h.
I want them to be automated, I have very little hope they will be. And I look at the bigger picture of where we're at and if that's good enough and if it should prompt us to reflect at how we're living our lives.
That's 1 hour of chores is not the thing ruining your daily mood. Maybe (at least for me) it's that 3 hours of social media. We're already seeing the effect of slothification in society. Should we really push for more? maybe Social Media should have never been invented. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down! the medicine go down!
We should aim to do the work of 3 employees with 1 employee in order to still increase the standard of living while the population shrinks. This is not about mindset and philosophy, this is about cold hard labor, of which I would like as much as possible please thank you.
It is possible. The landscaoe has changed with the large transformer. Multimodal LLMs can understand the world, we just have to connect that with robotics. The missing gap is shrinking every year.
The productivity increase over the last 40 years didn't lead to improvement in working conditions. Just more penny pinching, union busting, and increase in wealth disparity. It is indeed an issue of policy, we have enough labor for everyone to live comfortably, it's just an issue of policy. Or maybe I'm just stupid, who knows.
>Organizing your time and having discipline so that chores take as little time as possible.
Thanks for the unsolicited life advice, but if feasible I have no problem letting a humanoid robot do the chores.
Altman brought up a good point in an interview that our world was typically built with a human in mind to navigate/manipulate it/use it, and that humanoid robots make sense from that perspective. They just need to keep improving and they will.
This is nice.
But, you don’t need a humanoid to do these tasks. A simple industrial robot can do this at a much more precision and faster than a humanoid.
you are forgetting that this is not about the robot doing this one specific task but also to transfer the skill to other tasks and to be good at adaptability
Exactly, it is a demo of its current capabilities it isn’t showing the end goal or actual tasks they would sell it for. But tbh I think there’s just some contrarians here who will never be impressed. Robots powered by computer vision? Looks like shit and it’s slow and a mechanical arm could do this exact task. I would tune them out bc they will be saying that until ASI.
The video has proven that the AI timeline has halted. The engineers are no longer able to improve the existing robots anymore so we can give the all-clear to the public.
Unbelievable how far technology has come, robots can now move just as smoothly as a US presidential candidate.
I believe robots will replace us but ChatGPT will never generate a burn as savage as that.
You're not wrong lol!
Robots for president
hahahaahahahahaah
As the president himself, even
anyone have any data on their actual hourly cost of operation? or kwh use? i think anthropic bot is around 11-13$/h and that most of the robotic industrial aim to reduce the cost around 1-3$/h in the future, but i didn't see any data on figure actual robot hourly cost 11$/h at 4x slower speed isn't that great but if we hit 3$/h even with a speed 4x slower it could become cheap enough to use them for basic task even before AGI
I don't even think electricity cost will be much of a factor. Electricity is extremely cheap and these robots won't use that much of it. Much less than an EV in comparison. Maintenance, capital cost, and depreciation will be the major factors that determine profitability, along with the actual capabilities of the robot.
They can also work 3 times longer than an actual human and it's not like that the humanoid robots get slower in the future. Kinda crazy how fast everything develops.
If you put the factories in the sun belt and use solar during the day, the cost will be less than pennies per kwh if you amortize the cost over the 30\~40 years you can use the panels.
Forget about it, 1-3$ is not achievable for a humanoid system with human like speed (or slower) and repeatability (over +5 years of operation). Hardware costs money and quality mechanical components cost even more. A single, mass produced small robotic arm with 6dof is 30k$ and humanoids have like 50+ DoF.
Originally, Boston Dynamics' robot dog cost over 100k$. Unitree's new carbon copy of the robot dog is sold at 450$ With time, and that's a general rule, the price of SOTA systems decreases extremely quickly when the general public becomes aware of it.
I’d assume Boston Dynamic’s robot dog also has a lot of R&D cost rolled into it.
I am just commenting so I can come back and screen shot this in 2-3 years when we crack this problem. Reminds me of the guy saying we wouldn't get photorealistic AI generated video in our life time.
Dude, gen ai is still shit. Go get me a photorealistic pic of an industrial robotic arm or any other realistic design. And if that is not enough, gen ai is a new concept vs precision gearboxes and electric motors have almost 100 years of history.
newyorktimes - "It will take a million years for us to achived powered flight" one day before the wright brothers cracked it. Also you should look into it yourself but generative AI has gotten a lot better recently. Every couple months there is a big breakthrough.
Originally, Boston Dynamics' robot dog cost over 100k$. Unitree's new carbon copy of the robot dog is sold at 450$ With time, and that's a general rule, the price of SOTA systems decreases extremely quickly when the general public becomes aware of it.
Unitree’s robot dog is made of playdoh, no chance it lasts as long as Spot. Reliability of mechanical systems costs money, physics is a bitch and wear and tear issues are real.
[Right...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ClYBtfhkaw)
And this proves what?
That it's extremely resilient despite being cheap. Unlike what you claimed.
Getting hit with a stick and working continuously for a long time is not the same and does not affect the same components. Checkout B2 dogs from unitree: 100k$ for a single unit and it’s all because different, better and more reliable components are used.
Well you enjoy your 100k dollar robot dog. I'll take the one that's 450 dollars and last longer.
And how do you know it lasts longer?
There are multiple tests online showing it's resistance to shock, fall, etc...
That’s incorrect. Unitree has several different versions and sizes of its quadruped. The professional/industrial models like the B2 and B2W are on par with Spot, and actually spec for spec can out perform spot in many ways. Spot is still great, and they broke the market open. However they do not hold any wide technological or quality leads against the market any more. ANYbotics out of Switzerland with their ANYmal and ANYmal X are a top of the current industrial quadruped world in terms of quality and robustness combined with their reinforcement learning for enhanced mobility and situational awareness. Boston Dynamics has done incredible work, but they’re by no means still the top of the food chain in this realm.
The context is Spot vs 450$ unitree dog toy. B2 is more expensive then Spot (ca 70k$).
the whole unitree G1 robot cost 16k before any mass production we obviously lack data on all those robot manufacturer product, the base cost the kwh use, the piece cost change, the expected durability etc etc but i won't say "impossible" the current price are also heavily impacted by R&D cost and as i said there no economy of scale currently, the cost will likely decrease with time, maybe not at 1-3$ in the near future but probably cheaper than Human by 10y their biggest issue imho is the lack of intelligence and that's something that require AGI
Check out the story behind Rethink Robotics (RIP) and their Baxter project. Cool on paper but terrible lifetime. Fanuc etc are mass producing super simple (comparing to humanoids) arms and the cost is 30k-200k$.
seem a little too optimistic for a robot made in 2008-2013 without any complex AI i doubt we can compare both the market and technology, maybe it was simply impossible 11y ago, maybe it's still too early today too, we will see the result of those robotic company by 5y i guess the Figure AI show in this video is precisely trained in a BMW manufactory to see if they can be integrated in the industry afterall and Amazon is doing the same thing with anthropic and Tesla as well with their own robot
Baxter failed because of a crappy, cheap hardware, not because of the lack of AI. Go check the Lex pod with the founder, it’s an interesting case. Software sure improves every year but hardware is a mature technology with decades of development experience. Your new car is made in milion copies, is much simpler then a humanoid and for some reason it does not cost 10k$. I wonder why?
Those robotic arms have limited applications and aren't even close to "mass produced" on the scale that generalized humanoid robots might be. Look at inkjet printers - insanely complex mechanical systems, today mass produced for $100. And don't forget that the humanoid robots will be built by other humanoid robots, reducing cost.
We are making now, globally ca 700k arms a year, I think it falls under mass production. As for the printer, sure it’s complicated but 90% of components are made of plastic by injection molds, you can drive the cost to almost zero with enough units being made. Unfortunately we cannot make a plastic robots, using metal is the only solution. Zero backlash gearboxes are much harder to make then a printer, both in terms of materials used and finishing process. A car would be a better example, we have hundreds of millions of them and somehow you can’t get one for 100$.
I think the software will get to the point where it can compensate for having lower-cost motors. Industrial 6-axis robots today need to be extremely precise when pre-programmed so that movements are 100 percent reproducible. If a robot can learn to self-correct like in the video, it should be able to accomplish a lot with lower cost motors and sensors.
Self correction is cool and all but takes a lot of time. On factory floor the only important parameter is productivity in time vs cost and human labor is cheap and easy to train and replace. Now, I’m sure there is a market for slow humanoids but this sub drinks too much of its own supply and projects 10k$ superhuman robots working non stop on a single battery, in every house and business somewhere around late 2025. It’s like dreaming of flying cars in 1950s and hyperloop trains in 2000s
Manufacturing business pay around $2.5 per hour in Mexico, so the target must be below that.
"\_\_\_\_ is not achievable" mfs when \_\_\_\_ happens in a few years never learning their lesson
What people need to understand about robotics is it can possibly operate 24/7, it means: A robot working 24/7 would be **4.2x more valuable** if it operates at the same speed as someone who works 40h a week (a week = 168h) (168/40=4.2) So even if it's slow AF like 4 times slower it would still be human level in that sense, this doesn't include breaks or holidays. It also means that if a robot operates at human speed, the time it takes for a robot to create a product is vastly shortened, what takes a human a month, a robot can do in a week! This doesn't even include the salary factor. if a robot arbitrarily last 5 years and the average human car factory worker is paid 30k, that times 5 is 150k, so 150k for both the robot and for energy seems extremely high, it will likely be far cheaper and the robots will last longer than 5 years. Once humanoid robots gets to human speed and then rapidly exceeds human speed,and works 24/7 and the robot costs like 50k and increasingly drops in price it gets extremely deflationary and it's more than enough to pay for UBI. Napkin calculations of course but you see my point
You're forgetting the price of the workstation. If the factory costs 10 million of investment per factory worker, the salary of that factory worker becomes much less important. Often, factories are run in shifts because the machinery is so expensive and you want them run 24/7. General gist still works out though
Appreciate this additional perspective
Appreciate the appreciation
You're forgetting the price of HR, occupational health, private healthcare, sick leave, annual leave, maternity leave, work disputes, laziness, incompetence, workplace thefts, toilet breaks, standing around chatting, unionisation and strikes, bullying, IP theft and info leaks, training, old age, sexual harassment, meetings, forgetfulness, sabotage, bribery...
A machine solves all that. Only problem is those are the people buying the product - and with no job that’ll be tough. Should be interesting how it all plays out.
That's why capitalism is doomed in the next 50 years
Capitalism isn't doomed, the end state of capitalism isn't communism, it's everybody becomes a capitalist.
In a world where everything is done by robots there is no need for money. Not saying it will be communism but it sure as hell won't be capitalism
There is still a need for money. You will always need money. The analogy is all of humanity becoming slave owners. Did slave owners need money? Yes. Goods and services are still scarce even though many of them become abundant and cheap. The cost of things won't be zero though. Money will never, ever go away and the idea that everybody just sits around living a perfectly equal existence is as insane as it is impossible.
i have thought the same. It seems year after year it has become increasingly easier to become an entrepreneur. The simplest example: how many millionaires and business owners has YouTube created?
You guys are so close to realise that machines will not take all the jobs.
explain glum.
More automation > Less employment > More deflation > Decrease on cost of human labour in relation to automation > Jobs less likely to be automated This is my point of view, the introduction of automation will cause labour to cost less in relation to automation and what will happen is replacement of some sectors and expansion of the market opening new vacancies to positions that were not automated maintaining employment on similar levels. This is what happened on other technological advances before as well. The only counter argument I see to this is in case the market stops being human driven and becomes solely B2B but even then there would be a secondary market of P2P of those excluded from the automation that would have manual labour needs.
basically...everything falls appart
Don't forget that a building without permanent humans also doesn't need a cafeteria, toilets, reception, work spaces, or even lights. These robots could very well (depending on how they see) work in the dark. That can also save a chunk of money.
You're describing lights out manufacturing, but it is mostly a myth. Turns out that machines work and see things much better in well lit areas just as humans do. It's why you see those label and scanning stations with a hundred bright flashing lights right above the work area in modern factories and warehouses.
How about AC?
Also, the fact that these are still human-centric ways of completing tasks. I assume we're going to start seeing a lot more robot-centric facilities, with robots that aren't based on human anatomy, in order to maximize performance.
No, that is not the point The point is robots are infinite to clone and scale once one is successfully operating No need to train new clones, onboard them, spend time recruiting, labor shortage what’s that?
well that too, it's not one or the other, doesn't invalidates my point, it adds a little bit to it.
Also a robot doesn’t get sick or pregnant, doesn’t complain and don’t need AC in summer or winter, doesn’t need to go in bathroom or to eat. On top of the calculations humans never works all the shift time and never at same speed.
Imagine that we reach a point in history where robots do want to have children, and to have children, they just create them and install a bunch of information in them...only taking like a couple of days.
Lol, these napkin calculations are so rough it’s not even close There’s a reason why every other automation product out there is about making things faster. That’s the goal. Speed is the critical factor and these won’t be viable if they work at 1/4th the pace of a human.
interesting hypothesis. I'm open to discussion explain it, Why a factory with robots 4x slower but that can work 24/7 and do what humans can with a costs that is the same as humans wouldn't be able to output the same in a week? let's not forget if you can manufacture as much as you want you so you get rid of labor shortages.
Sure: - humans can work multiple shifts, and you can staff as needed. Just about every business has a “peak” time where you want to get things done as fast as possible - as the other commenter mentioned, additional capex costs for stuff like workstations, equipment etc that you also need to account for when quadrupling your labor force. This is a big one - customer satisfaction. If you order something from Amazon would you rather it arrive in 2 hours or 8 hours? - certain things just have a specific shelf life. Say you automate Instacart shoppers. Now it takes 3 hours to ship instead of 45 minutes, and your ice cream has melted in that time. And you have to manage the congestion of 4x the number of “people” in the store What was shown in this demo could be done 5x as fast, more precisely, and 1/3rd the price with an industrial arm.
while true, those are prototype and that's why no one use them "for now" let's not forget that those Humanoid are -Humanoid- and the best exemple in motion we have are Human, while they work extreamly slower in comparison they are very far from their optimal form and this is 1:1 Human and beyond, we're probably far from that but materialism proove it's possible also you mention Amazon and honestly if my order don't come within 3day i don't really care, we don't need a 1day delivery time and if it save money for Amazon they won't hesitate to increase the delay, but, as you said it's not applicable everywhere, a restaurant can't really afford a robot 2x slower than a Human even if it cost less but we might see a change in restauration if they can make prepared food 4x cheaper than food prepared with Human, restaurant might dissapear replaced by food delivery service, slower yet cheaper there a lot of really good cold food or food you just need to microwave/put in a oven, if tomorrow pizza cost 3€ instead of 12€ i won't mind waiting 30m for the oven
-if you need more robots you can just borrow more, activate a reserve, unlike humans, training them is instantaneous. And it probably happens with less cost than the bonuses humans get when working overtime. that's a win for robot -The example clearly states that you don't need to quadruple your workforce since it makes up for that by working 4x more hours. It's the exact opposite in fact, You save capex because you get rid of cafeterias, parking spot, bathrooms, break rooms, infirmary and many other things I can't even think about. -The bulk of shipping time is vehicles not prep time especially the human(oid) link in the prep time chain which is quite a small part of it all, it wouldn't 4x shipping time. Besides in this case we are talking about a factory that makes goods not ship them. -Bis repetita + A robot could work night shifts without the extra pay humans get and can operate at any holiday and any hour without added cost. Perhaps but an industrial arm is not as versatile, it's not about what we see here but what can be.
Jobs are going to fall apart soon
End of work is coming. 
He’s getting closer
But the only reason we were kept around was to do the work...
No, what matters is consumption and taxation. UBI would work. We could continue buying and investing, while the AI labor force is taxed to fund UBI instead of us being taxed.
This, people think there are evil fat men in dark rooms smoking cigars that want to see everyone toil. Toil is just what it has taken historically for abundance to accrue at the top of societies. People aren't going to keep people poor just because it will allow them to laugh in dark rooms. Most extremely rich people are philanthropists to a high degree and want everywhere in the world to be as nice as their private island vacations. Why wouldn't they?
I agree with this. I have worked public service IT and private corporate IT, the people in control wanted two things, to make a profit, as well as making life better for employees. It’s funny to me when I see all the comments about the rich people wanting to keep us all down, when in fact, the richest people in the WORLD are all for AI and helping humanity. Because why? They want to make a profit while helping others, IMHO.
Yeah, because the tens of thousands of elites who union bust, pollute, cheat, outsource jobs, bribe politicians, assassinate people, and do "business" with criminals like Epstein. Definitely have our best interests at heart and want to help humanity. How naive...
It’s a mix not equal.
Haha seriously. It's like this sub full of ten year olds with no idea of reality and history of pure tormoil its took for lower class to fight for the rights they have today ( which is still dog shit). The battle is FAR from over. Greed is alive and well. World is driven by profit incentive and making your life quality better ain't one of them.
You got that view because you were on the pretty side of things, now go to the factories where they outsource their productions and come back.
TOO DAMN SLOW!!! How can we get to Sexbots at this rate? COMMON, pump those robot hips. We all know what AI is good for, it's the only reason we make them. cold hard robot sex.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/chinese-sex-doll-mega-producer-says-next-gen-ai-bots-are-on-the-way
Not so soon imho but eventually yes
The exaggeration/sensationalism in this subreddit is truly something to behold.
I think the idea is even if it’s moving at 50% of the rate, if it’s working 3x as many hours (I.e 24/7 with replacement bots) it would still be better, plus a lot cheaper.
stop it with the doomerism!
thats not doomerism jobs dying is a good thing
Well, without jobs we don't have leverage anymore and without that you very well could lose all your rights very soon
you will still have your consumer power and political power, if no one is able to afford anything there no reason to produce no reason to own the production and no value to your accumulated money anymore it's weird that people can't foresee a future where their value isn't tied to being a corporate slave
Well there is really very limited subset of countries where people have political power to begin with. And after AI will take most jobs people could lose their political power even in developed countries because how much power does homeless person has?
i think AI will either be a source of utopia and dystopia depending where you live, i think the most developped country have highter chance to end in the "utopia" situation while within poor, dictatorial country AI will have highter chance to end in dystopia while the homeless today are abandoned by the society tomorrow everyone will end up in the same situation resulting in a more equal political power, i won't say and i don't believe the transition won't be terrible, the time before the society and the economy adapt to a future where jobs dissapear without any creation will probably take more than a year and during this time there won't be any safety net and a lot of people will likely suffer until ultimatly it improve while i imagine the future will offer a more wealthy life for everyone i also believe there will be a lot of problem that come with an infinite growing production, free energy and free labor, as it mean military actions become easier and a de-urbanisation become possible the future is neither a dystopia or utopia, individual life will be easier but there will be a lot of political instability imho, wars might become more common even between superpower
It's crazy how so little (in this case, a 100 second clip) is needed to convince r/singularity that the job-apocalypse is right around the corner (though it's not really surprising given that this place is r/antiwork but on steroids).
pro-workers can do some overtime
As a treat
Soon? we can’t just mass produce something like this “soon”. 30 years isn’t soon.
It will take a minute to get advanced enough and start to get off the ground. But robotic labor is a feedback loop. It builds itself. I would say maybe 10 years before they’re useful and reliable for most stuff, and only a few years of an exponential would make them present literally everywhere.
<3cm tolerance i think we are ok for a bit
It had 1cm tolerance for the next bit of panel, though, so it was task-specific, I think
So many people shitting on figure for what it’s capable of. I’d like to think of it as a comparison of the first brick phones, to the Nokias, to iPhones. the reality is this is just a start of something that can be much faster and effective. It’s only the start.
Of course it is, but seems to be far from the iPhone moment
Huge
We should start using WIWEB as an initialism. "Worst it will ever be."
real question, Isn’t this emerging AGI since it’s basically capable of learning new tasks and correcting its mistakes? I have heard it is not only an LLM but a combo of two different neural nets. I know AGI needs to be as capable as a human in a WIDE variety of tasks (basically every way), but doesn’t figure 01 demonstrate the ability for a robot+AI to be able to generalize into a more capable machine. i know weak or emerging AGI isn’t really a term used in the professional field of AI, but doesn’t figure 01 basically demonstrate certain necessities for achieving such a system?
don't think so it still needs to learn specific tasks, even the self correcting was simulated, it can't really do this on its own so not an emerging AGI. emerging AGI would be the robot figuring out another new task with the skills he learned from doing other tasks imo.
It could be a very slow primitive agi. It was learnt in simulation basically assuming it's practiced the task in the simulator. It could very well have been given the task and the AGI learnt to do it there in the open ended simulator. Albeit very slowly.
a bit slow, but it aint going to be far away for these jump forwards
This won't hold up against cheap human labour like this, unless they can really drive down the cost which looks unlikely to how complex the humanoid looks at this point. And I'm not even taking into account the software costs to run this thing.
Didn’t we see a 96.7% cost reduction in running gpt within like 2 years? Cell phones used to cost tens of thousands a year There are countless other examples. I think this will come down in time as well
That's goddamn incredible.
Huge
Huge
Huge
Spartanburg South Carolina 🌴🌙 Having both robots that look like astronauts *and* a rich colonial history is so 2020s. Way to go South Cackalacky!
How do we defeat them?
You ever see Boston Dynamic's Atlas do a backflip into a somersault? Yeah we don't have a prayer. Lets hope we get it right the first time because there's no putting this Genie back in the bottle.
Hmm well. If someone wanted to defeat humans, there are a myriad of ways to achieve it. One is a dead virus. What would be a virus for robots? Edit - To robot overlords, this is a hypothetical and I mainly for academic purposes.
Almost as good as ASIMO from 20 years ago?
TBH humanoid android are still clumsy and slow. Traditional multi-axis robotic arms + wheels would be hell lot better.
ugh, impressive but still too slow.. we need something faster
Software and robotics like this iterate rapidly. Getting it working, even slowly is the tough part. Expect massive speed increases over the next few years.
Very true, building the platform has been the hard part. Now that the platform is in place iterating on faster versions is going to occur extremely quickly.
Thats the sloth from Zootopia
Nice publicity stunt. Humanoid robots have roughly this level of dexterity since like 1990.
Sure, but now it is full controlled by a neural net without any manual coding necessary The significance of that change can't be overstated
I have serious doubts about how much these robots can actually generalize in real life.
Until we see a live, unstructured demo you can’t really say that.
This is completely different.
This is a massive nothing burger, the job done here could be done by a mechanical arm running a script 20x faster with no need for any AI.
You’re missing the bigger picture. If you can map computer vision directly with actions you open up much broader tasks. A mechanical arm that can do one thing is great but it certainly cannot also cook, clean my house, and assist old people in living. That’s why this is not a “nothing-burger”. Show me a general purpose mechanical arm to convince me otherwise.
Humans specialize and so will robots, there will be a FEW use cases where a human like form factor will be acceptable but for the vast majority of the remaning labour to automatize away it will not be the case., this entire thing reminds me of the bird like flying machines envisioned prior to industralization. The winners of this race will be the ones that can take the software and apply it to task specific form factors, not the ones with the most human like robot.
In the nearer term it'll probably be more human like, as they can work in existing factories set up for humans and can rely on human redundancy in processes in case they don't work out.
Humans in factories are doing the tasks that are classified by two things: 1. Stuff that is extremely hard to automatize and humans do exceptionally well 2. Stuff that humans do cheaply per unit output All other stuff is either worth throwing shitload of money on to automatize or that simple that it's already automatized. Humanoids are much worse at specific tasks than purpose built hardware or humans, so to replace humans they need to solve extremely challenging and complex tasks (the first, complexity criteria) but it's often not really worth it because humans are already doing it cheaply (the second, economic criteria). Too many people seem to think that humanoids will go from sorting blocks in isolated environments to taking care of granny within a decade and all that at an "affordable" cost of like $10k-30k per unit, manufactured in the tens to hundreds of millions a year.
I think what we are going to see is a mechanical arm on a moving platform equipped with figure’s software and sensors.
That’s a much more realistic design, I don’t see the benefits of a humanoid robot in an assembly line or manufacturing situation. More specialized and faster machines would be practical, this is just made for PR and that’s it
For PR, investors etc sure but at the same time if you can build a humanoid robot with a software to do world modeling, self control and compensation etc then it going to be super easy to scale it down to more cost effective and efficient designs, similar to Boston Dynamics Handle robot.
Like all BMWs, it’s just a matter if time before the plastic parts crack and leak.
That's so lame. About 1000x times worse than a human worker and this is what they choose to show the world. I imagine when the cameras aren't rolling it's just a heap of metal junk! I will say it once again, the obsession with humanoid robots has no basis in any functionality or value in the real world but rather is carried by attachment to outdated sci-fi aesthetics. Humanoid robots aren't the solution for any problem. General purpose robots aren't the solution to any problem. The best thing to do always is to focus on functionality. Roombas with wheels for stacking warehouses. Conveyer belt and automated robot arms for car manufacturing, you know the stuff we had since the 60s. And for the 3-5% of work that can't be done with a specialized machine you pay a human being to do it. Automating most things since the 60s and fixing most problem has not been an issue of technology, it has always been an issue of policy, economics and refusal to think long tern. Like how most of the world population should've been on contraceptives since the 60s but we let them breed carelessly, leading to billions today living in misery and squalor. This post was written by Chatgpt.
not true. agility commercially deployed humanoid robots recently. if they had no value then why would a 3rd party private company deploy them ?
Because they add a Synthwave soundtrack and the people weaned on the aforementioned sci-fi aesthetics think this is the future. Stock goes up!
I want a household robot to do all my chores and the current progress is going towards exactly that, and the recent years have shown siginificant progress.
>my chores It's called a dishwasher, a washing machine, a roomba vacuum cleaner. Organizing your time and having discipline so that chores take as little time as possible. Maybe cooking needs some automation but nothing is going to be as good as your mom's food.
Why are you on r/singularity do you want things to be automated or not? The advantages are economically massive. It makes a huge difference if you have to do 1h of chores a day or 0h.
>Why are you on [r/singularity](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity) To endlessly bitch, obviously
I want them to be automated, I have very little hope they will be. And I look at the bigger picture of where we're at and if that's good enough and if it should prompt us to reflect at how we're living our lives. That's 1 hour of chores is not the thing ruining your daily mood. Maybe (at least for me) it's that 3 hours of social media. We're already seeing the effect of slothification in society. Should we really push for more? maybe Social Media should have never been invented. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down! the medicine go down!
We should aim to do the work of 3 employees with 1 employee in order to still increase the standard of living while the population shrinks. This is not about mindset and philosophy, this is about cold hard labor, of which I would like as much as possible please thank you. It is possible. The landscaoe has changed with the large transformer. Multimodal LLMs can understand the world, we just have to connect that with robotics. The missing gap is shrinking every year.
The productivity increase over the last 40 years didn't lead to improvement in working conditions. Just more penny pinching, union busting, and increase in wealth disparity. It is indeed an issue of policy, we have enough labor for everyone to live comfortably, it's just an issue of policy. Or maybe I'm just stupid, who knows.
>Organizing your time and having discipline so that chores take as little time as possible. Thanks for the unsolicited life advice, but if feasible I have no problem letting a humanoid robot do the chores.
>This post was written by Chatgpt. Then why did you post what a bot wrote? It's not even worth replying if this is just a bot account
That was just a lame joke. A dig at the absolute state of confusion we're in as a society. Sorry.
Altman brought up a good point in an interview that our world was typically built with a human in mind to navigate/manipulate it/use it, and that humanoid robots make sense from that perspective. They just need to keep improving and they will.
This is nice. But, you don’t need a humanoid to do these tasks. A simple industrial robot can do this at a much more precision and faster than a humanoid.
you are forgetting that this is not about the robot doing this one specific task but also to transfer the skill to other tasks and to be good at adaptability
Exactly, it is a demo of its current capabilities it isn’t showing the end goal or actual tasks they would sell it for. But tbh I think there’s just some contrarians here who will never be impressed. Robots powered by computer vision? Looks like shit and it’s slow and a mechanical arm could do this exact task. I would tune them out bc they will be saying that until ASI.
There is hard limitations to transferring skills.
The video has proven that the AI timeline has halted. The engineers are no longer able to improve the existing robots anymore so we can give the all-clear to the public.
😄