Imagine LLMs reach their potential and the general field of 'cognitive work' starts to be able to be largely automated. What happens then? I think there's some precedent with the Industrial Revolution. The increased productivity and the like did lead to some 'super farms' and the like, but the real change is that it left a vacuum in the economy. That vacuum was filled by industry such that even the 'super farms' started to be a vanishingly small part of the overall economy.

I think the same will happen with LLMs. They're going to create a vacuum in the economy, on a global level. And I think what will come next is something in the real world (as opposed to the digital) filling it. Humanoid robots might be myopic, but I think it's, at worst, a pretty decent guess. One basic goal would be able to automate typical service jobs, both in terms of normal employment - but also even within households. A low cost highly capable robotic maid would have a massive market.

I'm hand-waving away the dystopia of this all, because I ultimately think humans will still play a key role - but trying to predict what that role may be is impossible from where we're standing. Imagine trying to predict the consequences of mass industrialization when you've lived you're entire life in an agrarian society. There's just no real basis for an intelligent prediction, besides 'way different.'

A LOT of real humans still assemble machines across the globe. Probably also what you have at home.

There are plenty of YouTube videos available were you can see how many hands a rice cooker is going through.

And we talk about a real robot costing 5 figures being able to shown what it should do and then it just does it 24/7.

It will fill the gap of no automatisation to full automatisation.

Besides that, in theory it would also allow the remote-gig economy: A robot at home, a helper sitting somewere else.

Take some random problem: You want some automatistaion for painting a wall. What do you do? You buy the full automat from a special company which comes with its own support contract, and fllow up costs.

Now you buy one 5 figure robot, explain to them that they should paint the room and they will do it. Not today, but do you think this will take 50 years and is a non solvable problem? I don't.

> I dont get the investment in humanoids beyond trying to create some kind of stock market bubble again.

Our entire world is heavily adjusted towards bipedal humanoid creatures. Having a moving humanoid tool who could replace some of our physical tasks without the need to build additional infrastructure in proximity around it is BIG. Noting your reservation about fragility, even the possibility of cheap construction and agriculture work is VERY BIG.

And not to mention those robots will require an expensive subscription and maintenance contract which I’d imagine wouldn’t actually save money vs traditional labor. Any company that can optimize labor costs pretty much already has to the point of diminishing returns.

The only sector I see any of these selling in any meaningful number is military and police.

They’re probably hoping for some hardware version of the software “bitter lesson”

I think it’s probably also easier to raise money on a humanoid robot because everyone has some intuitive understanding of the form.

Sexbots. That's it, that's the whole thing. And slaves in general but yeah.

Housework is the obvious use case.

Literally crawl, walk, run... fight?

The physical world is currently designed for human interaction, and people who want to make money see the potential to replace humans with property. They'll get there.

"Your scientists were thinking so much about whether they could, they didn't stop to ask if they should".

Also hand washing!

It was a team of robots. One has battery for three or four hours.

I don't think it really addresses the article's concerns about long-horizon tasks or complex object manipulation. The objects were just bags and boxes, the manipulations were very simple, and each task was a few seconds long.

There still seems to be questions around if that was faked. (scorch me if I'm wrong I last looked at this a month ago)

> When we see humanoid robots actually out in the wild for sale at retail, they are going to come very very quickly, at scale.

Building factories and other robots is trivial. Just go and watch videos of any modern factory.

What's nigh impossible is doing complex interactions requiring finesse, "human touch", and at speed.

Even if you build a million robot-building robots, not a single one of them will be able to fold clothes, for example.

> So, the first 1,000 robots will only be used to build the next robot factory, which also will be used to build the next really big robot factory. When we see humanoid robots actually out in the wild for sale at retail, they are going to come very very quickly, at scale.

This is one of the dumbest ideas I've read here. Seriously; do you honestly believe, that we will be able to linearly scale all of the materials that go into robots?

You can't have a factory without motors, aluminum, steel, copper, quality control, CNC manufacturing, precision bearings, ball screws, harmonic drives, semiconductors, batteries, and skilled people to design, install, and maintain all of it. Every one of those is its own supply chain with its own bottleneck, and almost all of them are already constrained and at risk.

If anything, I would bet you $500 we will not be able to jump to the robotics age because we don't have enough skilled humans on this earth, due to the excitement about not training them because of their imminent replacement. That's before geopolitics - do you think China, if we actually built working humanoid robots, wouldn't immediately claim all supply for themselves and lock down the supply chain? Of course they would, it would be stupid not to. In the event of a working humanoid robot, every single dependency needs to be onshore, or it's not scaling.

> they just have to be good enough on a narrow set of tasks to be worth the trouble

Depends on the context. If they are to work around human beings, particularly in the home, then they must be safe... to work around humans.

If a humanoid robot hits a human being, knocks one over, or even falls down on top of one -- especially a child, who is more fragile and whose movements are unpredictable -- then the industry as a whole faces a huge setback. Just look at what happened when a "self-driving" Uber ran over and killed a pedestrian in Arizona.

As someone early in their SWE career (hopefully), I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Knowledge work as a career seems like it’s becoming a less viable option with every advancement. It’s hard to predict the future, but sometimes I wish I took the med school route and just pursued tech as a hobby.

> Number one is that humanoid robots are probably a dead end.

Our shape is very flexible.

It's probably not the end-all most flexible format out there, but whatever format we end up with will probably be more similar to a human than to a 6df robotic arm mounted on a car. (It will probably have legs, for a start, not wheels.)

The evolutionary mistake that allowed us to walk on our feet and use our hands enabled us to build tools, conquer our environment and tackle hard problems. A humanoid robot provides a good blueprint for creating a robot that can do anything.

A solar field robot can only do one thing. A humanoid robot with a software model that allows it to install solar fields and then switch to a new model is a much more compelling use case. Eventually you're going to run out of solar fields to install, then you need a solar field repair bot, a solar field cleaning bot, etc. General purpose robots that can switch models to perform different tasks is not a dead end, but definitely a very hard problem.

> It is the fault of evolution that we don't have wheels but we don't have to repeat that mistake.

With wheels you can't climb up a steep mountain. Hands and feet allow to hold tight.

With wheels you can't hold as much. Feet can be used as a replacement for an arm for some functions when arms are broken.

If a wheel is partially broken it's close to impossible to use. If a foot is broken I can walk on heel or toes only and bypass some issue.

It's not the best solution for many things, but the flexibility is a big win.

That flexibility isn't needed with machines, though. I can have many machines, I can replace machines, ... so I can optimize for the use case.

And sometimes the use case might be to simulate a human to trick instincts, which recognize "humans" subconciously. Be it in health care or be it an army of machine soldiers walking towards an enemy.

> I think if we want to pilot autonomous robots it will be factory floors and other rote tasks. Maybe installing solar fields or something. Let them achieve a perfect safety record in someplace with more risk tolerance then take the next step.

No, these autonomous robots will be used by the military as soldiers. There will be no attempt to achieve a "perfect safety record". These soldiers are already here, pay attention to what is happening in Ukraine.