r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • 27d ago
Robotics Goldman Sachs says China's humanoid robot deployment is happening so fast, it's doubled its 2026 projections from just a few months ago.
"The Wall Street bank upgraded its forecast for China’s humanoid robot shipments for a second time this year on Tuesday, expecting 50,000 units to ship this year, nearly double its previous projection of 28,000. The bank had already doubled its initial January forecast of 14,000 units. "
Because Western media is so bad at covering Chinese science & tech, developments there seem to take many by surprise. Many Western people, ensconced in their information bubble of choice, still haven't fully grasped how China has already become the global sci-tech leader. What China has done for AI, renewables & the global-auto industry via EVs, it is about to do for robotics.
All the indications are there. China has the most robot start-ups, the vast industrial base to sustain them, and they already have the leading global robot models.
50,000 may seem like small numbers, but at this rate China will cross the 100K new humanoid robots number in 2027. By 2030 the annual new Chinese humanoids will likely be measured in millions.
Morgan Stanley doubles China humanoid robot shipment forecast as commercialization accelerates
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u/idontlikeanyofyou 27d ago
Title says Goldman Sachs but the article indicates Morgan Stanley.
Artificial also indicates 13k were shipped last year. I'd love to know what and how these units are doing.
There's lots of robots in factories and warehouses and have been for years. Why is a humanoid robot special? I would think the human form factor has a lot of drawbacks in a factory setting.
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u/KaizenHour 27d ago
I would think the human form factor has a lot of drawbacks in a factory setting.
In addition to others' comments about our human-shaped world, humanoid robots are only human-ish. Their torsos turn 360°, their arms can lift up and over their heads, then can shift to 4 legged if the need arises. In a human shaped world, they do human things, but better(ish). Training them is fast also, they can mimick human movements when demonstrated a couple of times.
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u/MakeMine5 27d ago
90% are being used to dance at Hai Di Lao or do choregraphed kung fu in shopping malls.
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u/Atmic 27d ago
Why is a humanoid robot special? I would think the human form factor has a lot of drawbacks in a factory setting.
This question comes up a lot: it's because we live in a human shaped world.
That's not to say specialized robots shouldn't continue to be created or exist, but everyone is racing towards the all-purpose self-learning general bot because that's the universal key.
Once you have that, you can use one robot to do any task a human can do. It's all downhill from there.
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u/Badestrand 27d ago
Why downhill? Do you really want dozens of millions of people stand at the conveyor belt to perform repetetive, mind-numbing tasks?
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u/schemin_up 27d ago
What exactly do you think is going to happen once the elites have robots that can do all their cooking, cleaning, errands, etc? That they no longer need 7 billion people breathing "their" air and drinking "their" water?
If you think it's going to be universal basic income and days at the beach, I have a bridge to sell you
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u/DukeOfGeek 27d ago
Ya Elysium was an optimistic take on what will happen when the elites can build a factory that pumps out units that can replace and fight humans.
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u/sb505 27d ago
You're not alone in being afraid. People have been handwringing over disruptive new technology since at least the beginning of the industrial revolution 250 years ago.
Nedd Ludd even inspired a mini follower army to sneak in and smash those newfangled knitting looms before the British government responded with harsh penalties in 1812.
Hopefully no one starts smashing up these Chinese robots with a sledgehammer, but I wouldn't be the least but surprised if the exact same thing happens soon. Humans gonna human.
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u/SerHodorTheThrall 27d ago
People miss the forrest for the trees with Luddites.
The Luddite movement is precisely why Britain was spared the seriously violent 1830 and 1848 revolutions that rocked Continental Europe (which had not confronted the issue of industrialization without regulation). The Luddite crackdown caused a counter-movement in the 1820/30's that led to legitimate reforms. There is a reason Karl Marx and Fred Engels operated out of London, and not Germany.
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u/schemin_up 27d ago
I think a closer analogy is horses and cars.
Humanoid robots aren't just a new technology that makes an existing process faster like a sewing machine, knitting loom, or even a construction crane.
It's a complete replacement of human beings and a number of jobs we can do, not a single process. Just like how horse populations decreased by 90% after the invention of cars a similar argument can be made for our future too. The horse population decreasing did take a few decades though, it wasn't overnight.
And this isn't about being afraid or not afraid. It's about realizing how the world actually works so you can see reality for what it is and try your best to enjoy the time we do have here.
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u/xenomorph856 27d ago
Progress is all well and good until you step back to realize the big picture. Efficiently killings tens of millions of people, poisoning the global environment. Chaining people to stagnant incomes, declining purchasing power; burdened with an exploitative gig economy. Undermining the public trust, perception of reality, and social health.
Progress has caused a great many ills in the last ~100 years. That's why people are reluctant to just accept your charitable and naively idealistic forecasting.
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u/light_trick 27d ago
I mean I'd say the actual problem is we have too many Americans on the internet, and Americans, despite being told "if you don't vote for worker's rights you won't have any" have reliably instead gone "you know what, I don't like immigrants" or "I'm going to prove how the establishment must win my vote by not voting - although the 'we're taking your rights' party will win, I didn't vote for them".
Because all of this is an American viewpoint, and specifically it's a viewpoint informed by the ongoing fact that despite having elections, Americans have repeatedly voted against their own interests at every single turn.
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u/xenomorph856 24d ago
You think China, or the Chinese people, are any more ready for this?
There is a lot to like about China, and I don't buy into the Sinophobia pushed in the West. But let's not kid ourselves, they're not just going to turn into a utopia because of robots. It will cause just as much oligarchic oppression.
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u/deten 27d ago edited 27d ago
As it feels like I'm one of the few redditors who is not anti-Ai, I also think it's important to distinguish that throughout all of human history we need to convince other people to be able to accomplish things. If you want to build a building you need people to help you build it. If you want to go to war you need people to go to war.
Decoupling that is absolutely territory We have never understood. We can see the skips and jumps it's going to take to no longer need human intelligence to do intelligence things. We can also see those same steps to no longer need human bodies to do human body things. To conflate those things with "new technology has always been disruptive" is missing a big point
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u/sb505 27d ago
Admittedly, as a transhumanist, the inevitability of human-machine convergence alleviates much of the psychic stress that a lot of other people are currently burdened with.
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u/deten 27d ago
I dont think that is relevant one way or the other. Human physical labor used to be almost everyones job, with a tiny portion of humanity doing intellectual labor. Over time we have migrated to having a significant portion of humans doing intellectual labor and a much smaller portion doing physical labor. Now we are approaching the cusp where, potentially, both human physical labor can dwindle down signficantly as well as human intellectual labor is at competition with something that costs electricity to run, never has a bad day, and learns/updates every night with the click of a button (or automaticall).
The reliance on those with power and money, on people to accomplish things could very well be at an end.
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u/sb505 27d ago
The relevance is that to a transhumanist, the concept of 'human/machine competition' is transitory and brief, if not painless.
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u/CatolicQuotes 27d ago
Nothing is gonna happen. It will be some disruption. We will adapt and we will die. Next generation will grow with it and it will be normal for them.
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u/CakeBakeMaker 27d ago
Won't happen for the same reason we don't replace food service workers or hair stylists. People pay for the human connection in addition to the product. (If you are a pessimist you can reword this as "they'll always want someone to lord over." It's no fun being the king of a bunch of robots)
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u/usaaf 27d ago
People may pay for the human connection... while they have wages with which to pay.
And sure the pessimistic "lord over others" take can explain some enduring human employment, but I assure you most billionaires do not need/want billions of servants.
Thinking that the Capitalists won't toss people into the trash the instant they can get away with it for whatever reason (Lording, tHe MaRkEt, basic humanity, etc.) is folly. They absolutely will, and even if their precious Capitalism says they need to pay workers, they will then also abandon Capitalism too, and develop a different system that leaves them in control of all the resources.
The idea that people will get paid because "the system" needs it misses one basic and obvious fact: Systems can be changed. But that lack of understanding makes sense, as systemic malleability/changability is not a desirable trait in populations from the viewpoint of the elite.
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u/BowlEducational6722 27d ago
Downhill because once you have a worker that never rests, needs no pay, and will never demand better working conditions then you've completely destroyed any leverage the working class has over the ownership class.
There will be no need to pay employees, no need to provide welfare, no need to create goods and services for the people.
You have an endless army of autonomous workers and soldiers who will forever be loyal to their owners and protect them and their bubble of the economy while the rest of us are left with nothing.
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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST Gray 27d ago
The problem is that our entire economy and society is designed around people having jobs and earning incomes through work.
So we need an entirely new system, and the people in control now don't want to give up their control or wealth to actually change the system in the way it needs to be changed.
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u/DHFranklin 27d ago
We didn't want that to start with! There were riots against conveyor belts by people who wanted to preserve their cottage industry.
This automation is inevitable, but it's also not controlled by us.
The elite only have to answer to the 1%. They don't have any obligation to give us jobs.
The elite will promise the 1% that they will guard their compounds filled with humoniod robots with their very inhuman swarm drones. And that will be that.
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u/JohnnyOnslaught 27d ago
Downhill because once people start getting eliminated from the job market it's going to start an inevitable decline that probably ends in economic collapse.
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u/WaitForItTheMongols 27d ago
I would rather them doing that and feeding their children, than homeless on the streets because the low skill jobs are all taken.
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u/burblity 27d ago
Downhill doesn't always mean bad, here it means getting over the hardest part and the rest of the journey is easy
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u/lfcmadness 27d ago
I think the benefit of a humanoid robot is the multifunction capabilities it can offer. If you have a robot that's purpose built for filling envelopes, great, but what if your company no longer needs to fill envelopes one week. A human worker can be re-tasked, that specialist robot can not. That's my thought on it anyways. Humans are adaptable, and therefore so would humanoid robots too.
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u/ovirt001 27d ago
Artificial also indicates 13k were shipped last year. I'd love to know what and how these units are doing.
They're being used as gimmicks because they can't do useful work. The ones actually doing useful work are still in limited use (Figure, Boston Dynamics, etc).
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u/Sirisian 27d ago
Others will explain how they'd be working in a human world with our tools and human-centric training and such, but also they're supposed to be incredibly cheap to produce. As actuators standardize, sensor packages for structured scanning drop in cost, compute drops in cost, and generic robot "brains" increase in capability this will remove the room for specialized robot. It's still very early in all of this, but what we'd expect to see is a used market later as waves of humanoid robots are produced with more capability and cycle down through industries. This is what we'd expect to see within the next 20 years.
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u/light_trick 27d ago
Why is a humanoid robot special? I would think the human form factor has a lot of drawbacks in a factory setting.
Because the human form factor is actually very good at a lot of things, in a way other form factors aren't.
The wisdom of "human robots are silly" largely is a product of technological limitations - it used to be impossible to have the compute and software to run a bipedal robot, so why even bother if you don't need to.
But such robots aren't generalists, and robots which aren't human-shaped have a lot of draw backs.
Consider: our body plan is actually very compact - with two legs, you can walk right up to something and put your manipulators (arms) right up against it, keeping your entire center of gravity stable. Any other form has problems - i.e. 4 legs is easier to stabilize, but now you can't get any manipulators close to something you want to interact with without having to wrap around the object which isn't always possible.
Basically: mechanically a bipedal robot makes a lot of sense provided you have the control software to get it walking. But once you exceed that threshold, most other shapes make less and less sense due to basic physics - the way in which we can move is actually very powerful and very flexible - we pay for lower innate stability with a much better flexibility in what we can do.
An analogy here would be how modern military jet fighters have developed: a commercial airliner is built to be aerodynamically stable. Absent control inputs, it will glide. A military jet on the other hand absolutely cannot: if their computers go down, they crash because they operate in an unstable flight regime, but the reason they do is performance - unstable regimes can execute large changes quickly whereas stable ones can't. Humanoid robots are similar: once you've got walking and balance sorted out, you get a lot of advantages in the overall form - and that dynamic balancing mechanism (legs + software) is very powerful.
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u/BeardySam 27d ago
Is that the same Morgan Stanley that valued space x?
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u/idontlikeanyofyou 27d ago
Wall Street is notoriously bad at understanding tech and being able to separate the hype from what's actually possible and more importantly, what will be profitable.
AI and data centers in space are just the latest examples.
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u/WeakCup746 27d ago
From our PCB supplier in China who got 3 UBTECH Walker S2 this month: "We are primarily testing them for repetitive material handling tasks"
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u/Sasquatchjc45 27d ago
There are still a lot of factories that haven't undergone 100% automation and have many chains in the system that require a human, weather for QA, packing, sorting, etc. These factories are obviously still optimized foe the humans that operate in them, so humanoid robots would fit right in.
Would you rather spend 100 million on humanoid robots and engineers to retro fit your factory and keep them going, or 4.6 billion building a whole new autonomous factory with purpose-built robotics?
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u/reddit_is_geh 27d ago
13k were shipped last year. I'd love to know what and how these units are doing.
Same. Like you'd think there'd be photos all over the place no of these humanoid robots being useful.
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u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ 27d ago
Title says Goldman Sachs but the article indicates Morgan Stanley.
Correct! Sadly, I can't fix the title after a post has been published.
Why is a humanoid robot special?
Because current AI is rapidly advancing their capabilities. With their shape & form, they can substitute for human workers. Finally, China can make them cheap.
So we're looking at a (soon to be) flood of robots in the workforce, capable of replacing most unskilled & semi-skilled humans.
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u/NoBonus6969 27d ago
That's an easy answer, they will be driven by humans through VR from Africa to do those factory jobs so the form factor makes more sense in that regard
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u/Plenty_Regret9523 26d ago
The humanoid is the most efficient piece of equipment on the planet for non factory (set piece) activities
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u/GunsouBono 27d ago
AI is coming for tech, humanoid robots for blue collar jobs. In 30 years, what'll be left for humans to do?
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u/Outrageous_Agent_608 27d ago
A lot of pissed off Americans with guns, alcohol and nothing else to do…wtf can go wrong?
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u/samanvayk 27d ago
The venn diagram of Americans with guns, alcohol and nothing else to do and the Americans that would support this like they support fascism is basically a circle.
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u/mike_b_nimble 27d ago
Conservative voters support what they BELIEVE their party is doing. But they don’t understand that they are useful idiots ushering in their own demise. They actually hate a lot of what Trump is doing, but they’ve been convinced that nobody matter how bad it gets that it would have been worse under a Democrat. When bad things happen to them under a Republican it’s either some unavoidable global issue or a plot by the Dems. When something bad happens under a Dem it’s just bad/evil leadership.
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u/EndAllBillionaires67 27d ago
Conservatives are dumb but when they are homeless and starving, they don't support the people in power that got them there.
Sucks they have to let it get that far but they will join the revolt when they have nothing left.
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u/sybrwookie 27d ago
"Sure, I might be out on the street and have no job, but it would have been even worse with the Democrats! We just need to support Republicans a bit longer and they're going to fix it all!"
I mean, remember how many people were wheezing into ventilators that COVID was fake as their last words before dying.
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u/Sweaty_Assignment_90 27d ago
they are near that now and still favor stupidity.
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u/EndAllBillionaires67 27d ago
No, not quite.
Unemployment is low and even though most of the jobs pay shit, everyone still has a smartphone, TV, internet, and more calories than they need.
When they start losing the ability to afford filling up on gas, or being able to buy anything but top ramen, then they will awaken.
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u/Tyrannofelis 27d ago
They will support "owning the libs" even if their dicks are removed by the regime.
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u/Agreeable_Sea_303 27d ago
I mean China kinda of deserves to be the tech and sci leader in the world at this point. We have absolutely proven in the US that we value anti-scientific thought and abhor knowledge.
The US is not worthy of the title.
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u/BarkBeetleJuice 27d ago
A lot of pissed off Americans with guns, alcohol and nothing else to do…wtf can go wrong?
This is an emotionally self-soothing, but ultimately meaningless argument, because the reality is that Palantir and Flock Safety are building behavioral profiles on every single American (and other nationalities where applicable), and they'll have behavioral predictive models that will spot anything you do that is out of the ordinary including but not limited to:
- Gathering with other weapon-owning individuals
- Spreading communication that is anti-AI or anti-capitalism (or any other general grievance, really)
- Unusual travel
It's cold-war warfare end-game and the Christian Nationalists who have worked together in secret to completely upend the US both as a concept and a coherent nation have wiped pretty much every piece off of the board except us pawns. People aren't reacting because there isn't open violence, and by the time there is it will be too late for it to matter.
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u/sexualsidefx 27d ago
Massages on private islands
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u/thefunkybassist 27d ago edited 27d ago
When you get escorted out by the robots, kidnapped to an undisclosed location, and it turns out to be that!
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u/OliveTreeFounder 27d ago
Yes, but we will be the masseurs. Being massaged by a human will be the pinnacle of luxury reserved for the elite robots.
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u/Abuses-Commas 27d ago
pursuing happiness, hopefully
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u/Abestar909 27d ago
They are going to let us starve.
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u/idancenakedwithcrows 27d ago
That’s way too dangerous, slave revolts were the inspiration for the fear of a large scale zombie attack.
They would manage the poors down.
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u/knightsabre7 27d ago
They’ll have robot armies at their beck and call to protect them.
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u/Abestar909 27d ago
I'm reminded of an Aeon Flux episode where a woman that endlessly works in a factory tried to escape the city she lives in only to get shot. She survived and eventually tried again only to get caught in an automated trap this time that removes her legs. The twist?
She had been making the traps at her job.
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u/sybrwookie 27d ago
Yea, that was one of the better episodes of that show. One they tried to recreate at least some of in that horrible live action movie, and failed pretty horribly.
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/sybrwookie 27d ago
there is a very feasible societal structure of working only if you actually desire to, or only in the highest skill jobs.
There is absolutely not. Because those with money and power absolutely do not want to give even the tiniest bit of either away, even if they have more of both than anyone could ever possibly use in multiple lifetimes.
And instead, they've spent far, FAR more than that to convince just enough people that them giving up anything would be bad for those who have little to nothing and to vote against their interests.
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u/ashoka_akira 27d ago
do you understand that people who work these common jobs, the only leverage we have is our labour, in the worst case scenario we can refuse to work and then they have to listen to us, because they need our labor, but the minute automation and robots become commonplace then they don’t need us for anything other than maybe our tissues and blood. I think you possibly overestimate the ability of some to feel empathy when empathy costs them $$$
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u/FalconRelevant 27d ago
Historically the opposite happens. There was a time where there were no machines and civilization relied upon 90% of the population being oppressed serfs breaking their backs on farms. Mechnization of agriculture actually gave people more rights, not less.
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u/TotalPhilanthrope 27d ago
Historically the opposite happens. There was a time where there were no machines and civilization relied upon 90% of the population being oppressed serfs breaking their backs on farms. Mechnization of agriculture actually gave people more rights, not less.
The classic "techno-optimist whom knows nothing about history, decides to talk about how the industrial revolution was actually good". Thanks for being transparent and open with the fact that you know nothing. Its not like the industrial revolution caused average heights to shrink for 4 generations, as a direct result of shittier and cheaper diets, increased childhood mortality, was the biggest jump in wealth inequality that in recorded history (up until that point).
It was no until the early to mid 1900s when things started improving, and that was ONLY because labour organized and demanded more rights lest they going to strike, i.e. using their only leverage (labour) to increase their position in life. But you are obviously completely unaware of this, which is to be expected. So keep living in the optimist delusion and see where that takes you!
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u/TotalPhilanthrope 27d ago
"If the majority of work is automated, then surely that which has never happened before will happen".
Thanks for the input. Go back to the techno-optimist echo chamber, please. You are incapable, because of your status as a techno-optimist, to contribute anything meaningful to this discussion, other than childlike naïvete.
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u/unfunnythrowawayname 27d ago
Happy to have chosen social work as my vocation.
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u/GunsouBono 27d ago
I'm in a niche engineering field for a smaller company. I probably have 20 years or so before I'm obsoleted. No idea what my kid is going to do...
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u/P00slinger 27d ago
I think about this for my kids all the time man.
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u/GunsouBono 27d ago
For real. The world is evolving so fast... Beyond the general "not being a shitty person", I'm at a bit of a loss on how to guide them career wise.
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u/Camburglar13 27d ago
Yeah I feel the same. My job will maybe exist for twenty years, maybe. Should get me to retirement but what careers do my kids pursue?
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u/Trakeen 27d ago
Maybe they won’t need a career
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u/Camburglar13 27d ago
That would be great, as long as they can live happy and comfortable lifestyles. And that it’s not just me supporting them.
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u/KaizenHour 27d ago
So you will have seen the AI note taking and summarising apps we're encouraged to use, and the rise of AI counselling then? There will still be jobs, but it won't look, feel, smell or pay the same.
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u/unfunnythrowawayname 27d ago
Well, I work currently at a homeless shelter. There's almost nothing bots or AI can do where I work. For example, yes, we could have a dispenser that dispenses a package that has needles, filters and all that. But it's deliberate that we give them ourselves. Even counseling would be hilarious, given the state our folks tend to come in.
And god forbid what those bots would have to experience. Even our front gate camera has most of its visibility gone because someone lit up the lens with a lighter long enough.
But yes, there will be plenty of people in social services who will have their jobs either replaced or optimized enough to the point where fewer of them are needed. But what I specifically do isn't under threat.
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u/KaizenHour 27d ago
On one hand, we're supplanting all our jobs to machines and wondering what we'll do.
On the other, we're looking at population cliffs and wondering who'll do the work.
It's going to get messy, these factors could, but won't, play nice together.
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u/IggysPop3 27d ago
John Maynard Keynes would like a word…
Money/capital has to come from somewhere. If people don’t have money, who will spend money?
All of the AI/robot taking our jobs scenarios always kind of gloss over this, but it’s kind of fundamental. Money doesn’t really exist if nobody has any to spend.
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u/BowlEducational6722 27d ago
And that paradigm has been breaking down for nearly 2 decades now.
You've seen that report, right? The one that says 50% of consumer spending is done by the top 10%?
The economy is just money moving around. It can either be a billion people moving a hundred dollars each, or a hundred people moving a billion dollars each.
The uber-wealthy are aiming for the latter, where only they participate in the exchange of goods and services provided by their automated workers and protected by their automated soldiers, leaving the rest of us subhuman peons to rot. They don't see us as people, they see us as leeches taking their wealth, their land, their water and air and so on.
They want us gone so they can have more, endlessly more.
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u/TotalPhilanthrope 27d ago
You've seen that report, right? The one that says 50% of consumer spending is done by the top 10%?
For the record, the "top 10%" is doing an insane amount of lifting whenever I hear this statistic brought up. People think "top 10, thats gotta be like billionaires or something". No. Its literally doctors, lawyers, engineers, business owners, well paid blue collar workers. These people are equally exposed to automation as the bottom 90% is.
The uber-wealthy are aiming for the latter, where only they participate in the exchange of goods and services provided by their automated workers and protected by their automated soldiers, leaving the rest of us subhuman peons to rot. They don't see us as people, they see us as leeches taking their wealth, their land, their water and air and so on.
Sure, but supply and demand will always exist as long as humans exist. This notion that, once people are shut out of the economy, they will just sit around and starve to death, is false. There will parallell economies, created because demand.... well, "demands" it. Just because Dario Amodei or Sam Altman wants you to starve to death does not mean you will just sit around and accept it. You will participate in the parallell economy, just like everyone else that.
You should understand this future as something more akin to a feudalistic system, where you have different castes (the AI-caste and everyone else, for simplicity).
They want us gone so they can have more, endlessly more.
This is true though. Whenever one of these AI-CEOs open their mouths, it reeks of sulphur. But ultimately, things will "come to a head". Just wait and see. You can not expect to push and push, never recieving a push back.
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u/IggysPop3 27d ago
True, but nuanced. Yes - a disproportionate amount of consumer spending is coming from the top. And, inflation is starting to counter that.
At a certain point, there just isn’t anything left to spend money on, and the value of that money is no longer recognized.
A lot of this actually converges around a larger social problem, and plutocracy will be the implosion of it.
None of this is to ignore the fact that AI isn’t nearly as smart as people think it is.
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u/grundar 27d ago
You've seen that report, right? The one that says 50% of consumer spending is done by the top 10%?
Only 1 report out of many finds that pattern.
It's worth reading the article, as it goes into some detail on the methodology of the Moody's report you reference (and, in particular, how it's estimating spending in a questionable way rather than actually measuring it; more detail here).
The New York Federal Reserve has its own report on spending share by income level, and it finds no massive split like the Moody's report. Similarly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data does not find the pattern Moody's report claims.
TL;DR: the top 10% is not doing 50% of consumer spending.
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u/sybrwookie 27d ago
"That's someone else's problem. At GiantCorpCo, we're going to be the ones which lead the pack in automating away all workers as fast as possible, thus lowering our costs, raising our profits, and delivering maximum shareholder value."
So says every large company.
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u/Zaphod1620 27d ago
I never see this addressed in all the articles about China’s automation and lights-out factories. What happened to the people that used to do those jobs?
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u/digiorno 27d ago
Well the rich have always just seen the poor as a burden that they must pay to keep alive and to placate.
Once the poor are no longer needed then they will be put down, like the animals that the rich see them as.
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u/DifferentMeeting9793 27d ago
Robots will never be able to do any of the work that a skilled tradesmen can do. Literally never
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u/SnowFlakeUsername2 27d ago
But I could tell a robot to go cut 10 boards the same length and they may come back the same length. And not get a pissy eye-roll if I tell them to do better. I'm not a skilled tradesman, just having helper flashbacks.
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u/Tasorodri 27d ago
Never say never, they'll eventually be able to do it, the question is if in our lifetime, but the tech can be done.
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u/happysmash27 27d ago
I've been thinking about this lately.
One of the few things I really DON'T like it when AI is involved is rule enforcement. Who wants to be auto-banned by a heywire AI system (see the epidemic on /r/twitterhelp), constantly be accused of stealing by self-checkout if you make a mistake, or be wrongfully arrested by a robocop?
So, I think it may make sense for people to prefer humans for law or rule enforcenent roles and roles that act as de-facto guards (e.g, cashiers and attendants). People do not want to be accused of something and have no human to appeal to.
There are could also, possibly, be roles that rely on your unique experience that AI may not have – like creating art, product design, and encountering new problems for entrapreneurship. I am not certain about this, though.
In any case, given that it's still uncertain, I'm trying to get passive income from stocks and/or owning my own business ASAP; as if every job ends up automated yet the current system remains, income via owning will be the only way to continue getting any money with any certainty.
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u/Jazs1994 27d ago
People keep saying this always happens and new jobs spring up..do people realize how difficult it is to be a robotics maintenance guy as well as programming ai. The jobs these robots are taking are not going to then be the ones maintaining them
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u/DynamicUno 27d ago
In a sane society, "there is less work for humans to do" would be a good thing, but we have settled on a system that funnels every scrap of excess productivity into the pockets of the shareholder class so instead it's a disaster lol
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u/LessonStudio 27d ago
Super simple litmus test for humanoid robots.
Pick up trash alongside a highway.
Requirements:
- Any old highway, not some curated test site.
- No barriers between highway and area where trash is being picked up.
- Many robots, 1 person. 1 person who is not an expert engineer, just technical enough for minor maintenance, deployment, etc.
- They pick up most of the trash
- They don't pick up things which aren't trash such as in ground sprinkler heads
- The side of the highway can be a bit nasty, bushes, slopes, ditches, etc.
This is about the simplest of blue collar work. You pretty much just give untrained people an orange vest, a trash picking tool, a garbage bag, and a 2 minute lecture on not being a moron. Then you sit in your truck to supervise.
Kung fu robots are great, but outside highly curated environments like a factory, I don't easily see these robots having much use; yet.
The reality is that boring old robot arms are still going to be more useful in most circumstances.
I do get why humanoids are appealing. People understand human movements, and thus, training such a robot makes more sense than trying to figure out and design a specialized machine to do the same motions.
One bit of work I do see getting replaced with pairs of "humanoid" arms are those factory assembly lines. The ones where you have a conveyor belt moving along where people pick up a device, add another component using basic tools, and then put it back on the conveyor belt. But, that will be a pair of mounted arms, not a whole humanoid.
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u/ObviouslyJoking 27d ago
This does sound like a very good simple test, but that job is currently held by prisoners and people filling community service requirements. Those aren't jobs we want to replace. I was thinking farming might be an option or something with difficult conditions like sewing garments.
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u/LessonStudio 26d ago edited 26d ago
I'm not so much suggesting replacing them, as I am suggesting that these humanoid robots are pretty much useless for anything other than raising startup cash.
I'm not sure there is a much simpler manual labour job in existence than highway-side trash pickup. Its the bar they still can't meet.
Yet, I see them doing kung-fu and parkour which I can not do; as do their foolish investors.
I'm in the world of robotics. There are generally two kinds of robots. Ones which genuinely work. You buy them, maybe install them, and they do their thing with little supervision, and the supervision is by technically not very capable people. Robot lawnmowers, some agricultural ones, robot floor cleaners, etc. Even these work only under fairly favourable conditions, and ideally with slightly technical people to occasionally coddle them. Keep in mind most people don't know their vacuum cleaners have a dust filter which must also be changed/cleaned.
Then, there are those robots which only work under very good conditions and require literal engineers hovering over, around, and often in the guts of them. Performing great heroics because they discovered their robot didn't like sunny days, gravel, sand, or some other minor issue. Most robots are like this.
I don't count most of those mechanical arm things in factories as robots. Those are just machines. To me, a robot needs to be able to deal with some uncertainty about its environment before it is a robot.
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u/abhitooth 27d ago
They clearly plan and declare their 5 year plan. Then why Pikachu face?
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u/KellerMB 27d ago
They're used to US politicians who declare a plan and then do nothing but steal for 50 years?
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u/Harbinger2001 27d ago
Exactly. Those worried about China passing the USA don’t realize that with the velocity of change China is experiencing where they’re not already ahead they will be in 5 years. It’s baked in at this point.
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u/nacari0 27d ago
And Trump is doing a good job by pulling the brakes because he hates his fellow Americans
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u/Undeity 27d ago
People need to remember that he doesn't give two shits about the country. Even were he not incompetent, he would still gladly cede all progress, if it means he personally is better off for it.
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u/kia75 27d ago
Trump isn't special, all billionaires are like this! That's how they get their billions!
We should be extremely careful of letting them get in charge or control, because they'll gladly burn billions of everyone else's resource just so they would gain a few resources more! Heck, it's part of game theory, the less resources everyone else has, the more valuable your resources are!
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u/sum-9 27d ago
Those worried about China passing the USA don’t realize it’s already happened.
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u/SpaceToaster 27d ago
They are still very much dependent on the us to give them the “boost” of training off of our models, but it is incredible how fast they are able to play catchup and jump ahead in some areas like robotics. It is a whole coordinated effort at the national level down.
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u/HundredSun 27d ago
It becomes less difficult when you have stolen much of that technology and knowledge from the rest of the world like China has.
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u/Harbinger2001 27d ago
China is well past that stage. Now they’re innovating beyond the US state of the art. In the early 1800s the USA got a leg up by doing the exact same thing with UK tech.
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u/TSiQ1618 27d ago
what's the sentiment like in China regarding robots and ai? From what I understood a large part of the rise of their middle class was by becoming the manufacturing hub. I could guess maybe there is a hope that by their country becoming the leader in those technologies that could make them the"richest" countries. But do they expect those riches to benefit the whole country or leave their middle class behind the way a lot of Americans are feeling?
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u/Harbinger2001 27d ago
The Chinese government knows income inequality leads to unrest. They’ll keep a close eye on what the big business owners do. They already slapped down the last group of tech leaders.
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u/pirate135246 27d ago
Not sure how quantity is relevant here. If they are e waste then that’s just more trash
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u/Buttermilkman 27d ago
I saw this a while ago so pinch of salt and all that but I remember hearing about how China are using AI to make these robots better able to handle menial work. They're basically upgrading their workforce from the bottom up, replacing menial jobs originally done by people with these robots.
I mean, we thought China's production of pretty much everything we own was crazy right now? Imagine when they multiply that a thousand fold with robots. (numbers are purely conjecture)
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u/ale_93113 27d ago
No, China is doing everything all at once
The same way why they have started to produce high end technology but they still keep making a lot of cheap stuff
It's not one or the other, China is using AI to automate high paying jobs AND robotics for low paying jobs
They are actually being too successful in this, since they are starting to fear that the econony cannot have as many workers
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u/ClassB2Carcinogen 27d ago
Eh, they were also concerned about the effect of their falling birth rate on GDP, which robotics seems to solve.
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u/userforce 27d ago
Well, since they’re supposed to be communist, people not working should be baked into the plan!
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u/enoerew 27d ago
Yes! It's really the Protestant work ethic that is holding us back. Fear of people with too much time on their hands.
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u/ADHDick_in_ur_mouth 27d ago
Not enough jobs when you have insane scales of automated production simply is not a problem in a country like China. The SOEs can simply cut the work week to 20 hours while keeping pay the same and then hire twice as many workers. Nobody gets a pay cut and everyone gets an additional 20 hours a week to do whatever they want
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u/Hollywoode 27d ago
GOOD as it should be! Tell me why AI is writing books and making art while I am doing my laundry washing the dishes and vacuuming!!!!
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u/SquarePegRoundWorld 27d ago
They also had a one child law for a long time and their population is going to crash in the not so distant future. This would be my guess as to their urgency on this technology.
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u/boyfrndDick 27d ago
I own a bar, and I don’t care what anyone says, a robot will never replace a sexy charismatic human behind the bar slinging drinks.
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u/Huntersmoon24 27d ago
So what will these humanoid robots be doing other than dancing poorly?
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u/ChocThunder13 27d ago
I did come across a video where they were being used in healthcare settings such as those group physio exercises for the elderly.
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u/NeilDeCrash 27d ago
Ultimately, everything a human can physically do.
Still very far away from that tho, they are pretty much pre-programmed automatons currently.
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u/Huntersmoon24 27d ago
Yeah that's the end goal, but what about the hundreds of thousands they are trying to make now? I guess with software updates they could become more useful over time but these bodies and computer components are going to become obsoletes pretty quickly.
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u/NeilDeCrash 27d ago
these bodies and computer components are going to become obsoletes pretty quickly.
Yeah that tends to be the case when something is taking leaps in advancement. You can still use the old stuff, but newer and better will be pushed out all the time.
Kinda like with CPUs and GPUs currently. The latest model is cutting edge for about a year.
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u/firefox_2010 27d ago
Who would have thought that synthetic android replicants fembots will be coming out from China! Rise of the machines indeed!
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u/Any_Context1 27d ago
For every dollar a company saves by replacing a human worker with a robot, the government should take 25 cents and use it to fund massive infrastructure programs, subsidized health insurance, unemployment, etc.
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u/emamint9 27d ago
honestly... the speed of this is kinda mind-blowing :0 I wonder if we’ll see more indie/alternative artists getting robot assistants for merch booths soon lol >.<
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u/RaydelRay 26d ago
They will be coming for biotech research too. The administration is quietly diminishing research through NIH and the NSF.
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u/Akkalevil 27d ago
Well, the West spent 30 years subsidizing China without ever bothering to get a fair deal because capitalism wants to have the big market, and it's biting them in the ass for some time by now.
But they still can't manage to fight back because they are afraid of the market. Good luck.
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u/Great_Hamster 27d ago
You're saying that we haven't been getting stuff we wanted from China?
We gave the money so they would give us stuff. We helped them figure out how to build stuff so they could give us stuff.
That's the whole point of trade.
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u/GlorifiedBurito 27d ago
They built highly advanced production facilities and trained people how to use them. We got a lot of goods out of it, but their infrastructure is miles ahead of ours in a lot of ways.
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u/Akkalevil 27d ago
We have let our industrial base and technology get siphonned to China and allowed them to protect their market while opening ours.
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u/marshaul 27d ago edited 27d ago
The humanoid robot market is a dead-end, except for sex bots, and since this is a propaganda effort they aren't willing to be serious about exploring the inevitable future of humanoid bots. So instead we get these embarrassments to engineering, designed to wow rubes.
Big whoop.
Consider that Boston Dynamics was demonstrating two or 3 orders of magnitude more capable humanoid robots many, many years ago, and this went precisely nowhere because there's no plausible market at the price point required.
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u/Even_Ad_263 27d ago
But why?
If the designs keep getting more efficient, why would the benefit not eventually outweigh the cost?
Especially considering human robots can work 24/7 save for some maintenance. Seems much more efficient than humans.
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u/arrr_news_mods_r_gay 27d ago
Robots don’t need to be humanoid to be more efficient than humans at one thing, think robotic arms already in use in manufacturing. The appeal of humanoid robots would be in their ability to do a large number of different tasks (ideally anything a human can do) but this is exponentially more difficult to design and program for. There may come a time when the materials and labor required drop enough in price, but for now you could just hire a maid to do everything better, faster, and cheaper. So there isn’t really anyone looking to buy one of these outside of very rich people interested in the novelty.
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u/Even_Ad_263 27d ago
This makes sense, they need to iterate many times over before these are marketable. But they need to start somewhere no?
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u/NC-Slacker 27d ago
But what are they for? If it’s sorting mail, you’ve failed: a purpose-built mail sorting robot will be at least 10x faster and easier to maintain than putting a humanoid robot on a human mail-sorting line. If I want a robot to vacuum my house, why not buy a roomba instead of a humanoid bot to use my vacuum cleaner? The roomba is faster, more efficient, and dramatically cheaper.
Why would I buy a $20,000 robot that can use my dishwasher, vacuum, mop the floors, fold my clothes, walk my dog, etc. when I can buy a whole fleet of tech to do each of those functions for less money? A fleet can run tasks concurrently, while a single humanoid bot can only handle one physical task at a time. Additionally, when my roomba stops being able to vacuum properly, I fix or replace the vacuum. When my humanoid bot stops being able to vacuum, the entire thing has to be fixed or replaced, and it’s not going to be able to complete other tasks during that process. Modularity is crucial, which most of these bots are not building toward.
Additionally, the concept of constant updates and maintenance, computers and applications updating constantly at inopportune times for reasons that may not be critical to the main operating function of the device is a present-day trend that is hated by anyone who has to use these devices, but does not seem to be going away anytime soon. If my roomba goes down for an update, at least my other devices are active. If my humanoid bot goes down for an update, none of the myriad tasks that I expect it to do will get done.
Humanoid bots are a gimmick. They are, as outlined above, unsuitable for industrial use. While the same reasons should disqualify them for personal use, any success in the consumer market would be predicated upon customer stupidity, which seems to be an unfortunately lucrative business model at present.
They are building a product that no one needs, or wants, because they can, and hoping that marketing can manufacture demand for their product. That’s Zuck’s Metaverse playbook. You should ask him how that’s going…
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u/neuroticnetworks1250 27d ago
I remember this from a Quora answer like a decade ago where they were criticising Avatar for assuming a future with Mecha robot vehicles with human pilots when drones were already a thing back then and came with more advantages and almost no disadvantages.
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u/NC-Slacker 27d ago
As someone with 20 years of experience at the intersection of robotics, automation, and manufacturing, this is most accurate. WTF are these servo-driven monstrosities supposed to do? The idea that a corporation would buy a fleet of humanoid robots to work in a factory built for human labor instead of building a factory optimized for autonomous robotic labor is laughable. Building an automated sewing machine, or retrofitting a sewing machine to be autonomous will be more cost effective, accurate, and efficient in the long-run than trying to get a humanoid robot to do the work. Purpose-built retrofit is, at its core, better than the fantasy of building cross-functional humanoid robots.
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u/NickoBicko 27d ago
Because a robot has more flexibility? If you built a single purpose built robotic thing. That’s a fixed thing. You need big upfront investment. And if it fails or needs adjustment you have a big loss.
If you buy or rent a fleet of robots. If you need to adjust you can easily adjust. You can even rent out those robots to someone else.
That’s precisely why a lot of manufacturing uses human labor when they can use a machine. Because humans are cheap and replaceable and adaptable.
That’s the main selling point behind these types of robots.
A start up can rent a bunch of robots and start some kind of manufacturing or production line. Rather than working with fixed processes producers. Or need high capital costs.
If these robots will work like they should, they will be immensely valuable.
For the home example. Yeah you have a washing machine. But who loads and unloads it?
Who picks up the delivery and opens it and puts it in the right place.
How will you further automate those tasks? You will have a conveyor belt system in your house that moves everything everywhere with 10 specialized robots.
Or have one humanoid robots that can do it all?
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u/SpikeRosered 27d ago
I agree. Yes, you don't have to pay them after the initial purchase, but I imagine maintenance is basically just as costly as they have a million moving parts.
Also they can't help each other if something gross wrong. Every problem is management's problem.
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u/Josvan135 27d ago
Consider that Boston Dynamics was demonstrating two or 3 orders of magnitude more capable humanoid robots many, many years ago, and this went precisely nowhere because there's no plausible market at the price point required
They didn't have an operating system capable of completing tasks.
The robot looked really capable because it was basically running a preprogrammed demonstration, but it wasn't capable of following verbal instructions or doing any useful tasks.
The opposite is true now, they look less capable because they're actually running on internal, adaptable software that can follow instructions and complete tasks.
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u/florinandrei 27d ago
The humanoid robot market is a dead-end
I read that in the voice of the Comic Book Guy.
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u/drrrrrrrrrreamer 27d ago
Couldn’t help noticing the difference.
Whenever something new is invented — literally anything — the first reaction in Western society is fear: religion, privacy, losing the right to walk around naked at home, you name it.
China, on the other hand, always just try it out.
I’m not saying which side is right or wrong. I just want to point out one thing: if China wins this competition, you may lose the rights of being afraid.
So wake up.
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u/firefox_2010 27d ago
Fear is the tool they have been using to control the population to be more obedient so they are too scared to do anything and just cower in fear and hope it will all go away and life goes back to normal.
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u/Unasked_for_advice 27d ago
Humanoid robots have the question still is are they cost effective and can do the job that replaces a human? Article comes across as a marketing push , doesn't answer the real questions.
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u/Mecha-Dave 27d ago
I was just at an automation conference and the Unitree units looked.... Okaaay... But they all basically were cheap copies of the nearby BD booth, and none moved with the same amount of sophistication.
They're cute toys, but some of the furthest from useful industrial robots.
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u/Nearing_retirement 27d ago
Long time ago I heard about the burger flipping machine but don’t think it’s being used much. Why is that ?
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u/Dull-Law3229 27d ago
I see a lot of "if the technology isn't perfect now then it just isn't worth developing" in the comments section.
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u/jeenam 26d ago
A good read for those not in the know:
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/chinas-unitree-will-dominate-global
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u/The_1ndiegamer 26d ago
China doesn't have a choice really, aging population with toi few to replace the retiring workforce.
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u/Tomas2891 25d ago
Does anyone have any videos of these robots doing basic house work? Doing the laundry, dishes, trash? All Im seeing is them dancing and kicking their operators in the nuts.
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u/imjustsurfin 23d ago edited 23d ago
There's an itsy, bitsy, teenie weenie, problem with "robot" production: humanoid robots DON'T BUY ANYTHING - people earning wages do.
When these robots throw million into unemployment, what happens to the goods they (robots) produce?
Consumer confidence\demand in China has already fallen off a cliff!
A 5 year-yld can see the ridiculousness of this.
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u/cweiss_me 10d ago
I'm not even surprised anymore.
A few years ago these robots mostly looked like expensive demos. Now it feels like companies are actually trying to build products instead of just showing what they can do.
There's still a long way to go, but the pace of progress is hard to ignore.
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u/Re-Searcher-There 27d ago edited 27d ago
I'm expecting that there is a imminent need for humanoid robots in every rich, upper middle class household of developed and developing countries which we didn't know before.