They still have the hockey stick around as a reminder to Atlas.
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What’s the maximum hip thrusting frequency on one of these? It’s for a friend 😄.
Please - assume - the - position.
“Apparently Gary’s T-shirt looked like an engine cover slot”
They missed demoing it working with hockey stick guy harassing it.
I think the skills are pretty cool though.
Now that’s a harassment i’d like seeing.
That guy didn’t even work there, he just wandered in.
Meanwhile, Tesla is showing off pretend robots to serve drinks to Elon stans. Don’t look behind the curtain.
100% that Optimus can’t even recover themselves after falling down, or even self balance when bump into. They have to clear the line for Optimus to carefully walk toward the crowd lol.
Now, I’ve no love for Musk or his BS but I keep hearing that they were actors in costumes, yet they were actually remote controlled robots, like you might see at a theme park. If instead of trying to pass them off as automatonomous, AI driven robots, they were to market them as surrogates (like the movie) and focused on longer range remote connections for them that would be far less stupid. They might even sell if they weren’t associated with a dumbass.
Teslabot only needs AI control to be a viable human worker replacement. They will release it earlier than they should and there will be problems that they learn through public beta testing(see Tesla autonomous driving.)
Atlas is incubating in an internal beta so it can be exactly what they want to deliver. I honestly think Atlas is good enough to be put in the real world as-is, but I applaud their patience and desire to have as close to perfection as possible.
I expect Teslabot to retail over their $30k estimate, probably closer to $60k at turn-key. Atlas I expect to be closer to $100k or more with support contracts. Teslabot will probably be the hot product for the wealthy to act as a butler or grocery getter when paired with an autonomous Tesla. Atlas will be more commercially successful but a small number of rich nerds would totally get one to play with.
“All we’re missing is the single hardest piece, which we have been failing to make work in cars for years”
Failing to make something work and failing to make it work perfectly are entirely different things.
Autonomous driving works, but it isn’t as good as a human driver at handling abnormal conditions. They really fucked up going all visual instead of combining visual and LIDAR.
Based on my experience with how destructive a robot vacuum can be, there is 0% chance I would let a Tesla developed robot exist in my house.
Can you imagine a Teslabot stepping in shit and dragging that through the house? It wouldn’t even be contained to one floor. It would be everywhere.
I definitely would want an Atlas over the Teslabot even as a surrogate. It would fucking suck to fall down and actually have to leave your house to get back up again.
I like the Atlas better, because I could jump. Also I think it looks cooler.
Wow…that thing is straight up nightmare fuel as it turns to walk back to get another whatever it’s moving.
You will love this. https://youtu.be/29ECwExc-_M
When it stands up, it made me think that RoboCop and the Pixar Lamp had a baby 😱
Normal, if stiff, human range of motion. Until it rotates completely around the waist!
I can do that. Once.
Haha, totally, especially combined with the sounds of its evenly paced steps. I can see myself shuddering at that sound while hiding from them, crawling behind destroyed cars and other debris through dark and grey streets in a dystopian future…
/me snaps out of the daydream
So much uncanny valley creepy vibes when it does that. Like you’re anthropomorphizing and suddenly it snaps you out of it haha.
This is why I say please and thank you when I use ChatGPT…
You should add “love you” after this.
Same! I probably will be replaced just as all the other “meat sacks”, but I hope to at least be given a degree of dignity upon my inevitable demise.
I do it because I know the NSA is listening. Hopefully a little politeness will keep me off the watch list.
It won’t, Sam.
Robot: what are these leg things for?..wooooaaah!
Cool tech, but what’s the intended use case for the end product? Or is there no use case until it’s as good as a human?
Hazardous environments, dark factories, engine rooms in ships when the temperature is 60 degrees C and 180 decibels.
Yeah, but like, you can have robots on rails. Factories are often designed with automation in mind, rather than slapping it on afterwards.
They’re still looking for a purpose for Atlas iirc. While they have Stretch as a loading/unloading robot and Spot as a patrolling/surveying robot, Atlas has been the robot they’re developing for the longest time yet with a specific purpose. I’m assuming they’ll still use Atlas as a researching platform so they can transfer what they learn to making a more refined robot with specific purpose, while at the same time refining it to be as good as a bipedal robot can be.
At the moment it still looks like a technology demonstrator, but with what we saw in this video there are a small percentage of jobs it could likely do today replacing human workers.
My guess is that the task we saw it doing is actually a human job today. The objects being moved from rack to rack were plastic engine covers. The racks are labeled with “Engine covers”. That is WAY too specific to be random. My guess is that they worked/are working with an automotive assembly company to identify tasks that humans do today that a robot could do tomorrow. The auto company likely provided the engine cover parts as well as the racks and described the parameters for the job.
Even if you look at the Boston Dynamics robot and say that a human could do that faster/cheaper/better, consider that the robot works 24/7 with no sick days, vacations, or family emergencies. From a purely business perspective, the robot could be a game-changer for the better. From a societal view, this will have serious negative consequences to the people that our society will need to evolve to change for the better.
Just look at who owns Boston Dynamics and it makes sense.
That’s the rub, isn’t it? From a society view, having manual labor all done by robots is also a positive game changer, as it protects human health with no loss in standard of living, but because we will just lay people off with no support, it will instead plunge our society into despair.
The automation tax that gates/etc proposed to fund UBI/social support networks is making more and more sense.
The automation tax that gates/etc proposed to fund UBI/social support networks is making more and more sense.
I’m all for UBI, but the automation tax is a quagmire.
In this theoretical new tax, tell me what qualifies to be taxed?
- An Atlas autonomous robot? Sure, absolutely. How about instead a hydraulic arm that is controlled by a human? Previously there were 4 humans that moved the widget from A to B, but now they have 1 human operating a joystick for a net loss of 3 jobs. Is that taxed?
- How about an Excel macro? Prior to the macro, there was one person filling in the spreadsheet the entire 8 hour workday. Now that person was replaced with an Excel macro that runs in 5 minutes with one click. That is automation too right? What would you tax? The cost of the person replaced?
- Who pays the tax? A company that buys an Atlas robot after the law is passed? Absolutely. How about a company that bought Atlas robots 24 hours before the law passed? How about the company that bought them a year before the law passed? Now apply the Excel macro automation. Excel macros have around since the 1990s. Are you going to go back to the first macro run and tax every company retroactively? How about if the macro only does part of the work?
Automation tax is a nice idea but a nightmare to try to make in policy. Additionally, it will have a stifling effect on any business efficiency efforts after it exists.
If the tax is based upon workers losing their jobs to automation, it will have a massive knock on effect limiting new hires. A company would be very leery of hiring a worker if they could be accused (and taxed) of automation replacement when that worker is let go.
UBI is needed for power redistribution more than wealth redistribution. Sure, one good reason is the employment displacement from robotics/ai. But a robot tax is far inferior to general income taxes. Beyond your examples, pipes and wires into your home are automation. Machines with human operators are automation as well.
Even if you were to only tax the robot users, what about those who get rich from building yachts for the robot users?
China has a big lead in robotics because nearly all manufacturing is done there. That is there massive competitive advantage in EVs as an example. As a national competitiveness, and consumer prices, measure, incentivizing people to go collect their water from a nearby river, and heating wood from nearby trees, and otherwise committing to full employment through less automated processes, is a massive decline in standard of living.
UBI does let you create your own job. Sales and design will always be needed, even if design is inputs into an AI prompt. Without the disempowerment of warmongering rulership, AI will serve the disinformation and murder needs of that rulership. UBI/freedom dividends funded by taxes on extreme income is the path to make the winners pay for human sustainability instead of human extermination.
Most laws aren’t retroactive. If you do the thing before it’s illegal, then you skated by. That could very easily be the answer here, especially as most all the physical automation is barely existent. If a company deploys now, they don’t pay the tax, but they will when they upgrade models.
As to code automation, same rules apply. Excel macros get by, but I would apply the tax on companies that replace white collar jobs via SaaS or other applications as their core businesses model, or for that line of buisness for vendors that do a lot of things. It would have to be refined as to where you draw the line, but you could.
Most laws aren’t retroactive. If you do the thing before it’s illegal, then you skated by. That could very easily be the answer here, especially as most all the physical automation is barely existent. If a company deploys now, they don’t pay the tax, but they will when they upgrade models.
You’ll need to provide your definition of “physical automation” for the purposes of your argument. As it stands that is NOT clear, which is part of the quagmire of all the Automation Tax approaches.
As to code automation, same rules apply. Excel macros get by, but I would apply the tax on companies that replace white collar jobs via SaaS or other applications as their core businesses model,
What does this mean? If a company is still running on-prem MS Exchange servers for company email, then the law passes, then the company switches to Office365 for email instead, does your law hit that company with an Automation tax? If so, how would the tax be applied? Amount of spend on Office365? Amount spent on salaries of former MS Exchange administrators? How long would the tax apply? A year? Forever?
What I’m also seeing is that all encumbant companies (shielded from the automation tax because they already put automation in place) would have an advantage forever against existing companies trying to make automation changes (and being hit with the tax).
Another loophole I see is companies completely liquidating or selling to a newly formed company so that there are “no jobs lost to automation, because this company from day 1 has always used automation”.
or for that line of buisness for vendors that do a lot of things. It would have to be refined as to where you draw the line, but you could.
I don’t know what this means.
Can you give a concrete example of your Automation tax? Situation before your law goes into place, the law passing, then the Automation tax a company would pay when they make a specific change in your example?
The point with factory work is that you don’t need half of what this robot can do if you change the plan of the factory a bit.
- Flat floors? Just use wheels instead of legs.
- Short distance to cover? Drop the entire torso and head and just be an arm with a camera.
So no I don’t think the idea here is for standard factory work.
The point with factory work is that you don’t need half of what this robot can do if you change the plan of the factory a bit.
So no I don’t think the idea here is for standard factory work.
You’re changing the problem that is being solved. The CURRENT work process is to use a human with all the benefits and detriments of a human. The idea would be to drop one of these Atlas robots in without changing the work or work environment. Perhaps there is a more efficient human doing the work from 8am-5pm and only some work needed from 5pm-8am. An Atlas robot would be perfect use case here. You don’t have to redesign the work or the environment for a human or robot to switch out to do the same work.
What you’re describing is changing the nature of the task or the environment to optimize for a robot.
- Flat floors? Just use wheels instead of legs.
- Short distance to cover? Drop the entire torso and head and just be an arm with a camera.
Boston Dynamics already has that robot. Its called Handle:
As you can see, its a wheeled robot with an arm, but this robot couldn’t do the task that the Atlas robot can in the video because it doesn’t have the fine motor control or fingers to grasp the engine covers, nor does Handle have the ability to deal with those soft pliable racks where Atlas is placing the covers.
Yep, it’s no more than a stress test for a robot to keep it’s balance in motion, coupled with some partnership and a nice PR showcase of what it can do in a humanized scenario that we meatbags can relate to.
Moving stuff in a predictable fashion is easily done with forklift\suction cup robots on rails that can ride floors and climb shelves while being powered from the line 100% of time. Iirc Boston Dynamics did such robots too. Making robots carry stuff around on legs sounds like a c/crazyideas material.
What they can do then though is use this amount of R&D to build a robot that does need all of that. From automatic surgery machines to rescue scouts and, yes, killbots. Both rough terrain and sensitive tasks need a self-regulating system to orchestrate the motion in all these motors right.
They said the same about robots in the 80s, particularly automotive industry robots. They were going to turn society on it’s ear and it was a non-stop news item for some time.
In 1970 there were 1.5 million UAW auto workers. Today there are 400k. source Yes, UAW membership isn’t the only type of auto worker, yes there are other factors that cause auto decline besides robots. However, I challenge you to point to a modern large scale automotive manufacturing factory that doesn’t use robots.
To add your last paragraph - today’s robot may be worse but next year’s robot might not be. And with how far Boston Dynamics (and others) have come in such a short time, it’s not hard to imagine that future getting here soon.
Corporations have shown time and time again they fire people by the thousands as soon as it’s financially viable and since this tech will be implemented quickly across the industry, those ex-employees won’t be able to find work. Governments need to start taking UBI seriously if they don’t want to massive civil unrest.
As much as I cringe at the “come and take it” crowd, a lot of them work these at-risk jobs. They will take their anger at their ex-employee and aim it at the government.
They’re trying to improve them to a point where they can do stuff good. At this point I doubt its much good for anything other than demos and the most basic of tasks
Yeah, but I just don’t see a use case for a humanoid robot, a standard robot arm could do the job in the video. Robots are better when designed for specific jobs.
Current robots are better when designed for a specific job, but that means only corps with enough scale can afford robots
What about much smaller companies that can’t afford to design and build a robot for a specific task? There are thousands of these companies, doing things at smaller scale so not able to automate. However a robot with similar capabilities to a human, that could be trained like a human, and doesn’t cost like an industrial robot, can fill in for a human at all of these companies
I mean in the far distant future… yeah I agree.
But back to preset times, when robots like these are cheap enough for a small company to buy over hiring someone, then it will be cheap enough to buy custom robots too.
But we don’t have the technology yet where a humanoid robot can do humanoid things better than a human.
What you see isn’t an end product. It’s a research prototype, one of many in a long line of future models that are on the path to making a humanoid robot possible.
Organizing engine covers obv.
Cool. And just like the dog robots, I’m sure this isn’t going to be militarized either…
Take my job!!!
