Low skill, but higher skill than the automation already in place it seems; it says "like having Apollo inspect and deliver components to human production line workers", but there's less expensive and more reliable ways to do that - like conveyor belts and whatnot.
Call me a luddite but it looks like an overly error prone solution looking for a problem to me.
You hit the nail on the head with conveyor belts. I am a robotics engineer and I believe strongly that if done properly, automating the economy can be very good for us ("properly" to me means making sure there is some scheme for collective ownership and collective benefit, for example by encouraging cooperatives to automate), but in my mind this is best done with purpose built machines, not a bunch of very expensive humanoids.
The societal change to do this 'properly' in your terms, how can this be achieved? I've come up with the more or less same solution, but I don't see it happening.
There are incremental approaches but they would require states to promote co-operatives and there are simply no political incentives for politicians to do that.
E.g. government grants/loans, subsidies, or allowing workers to preferrentially buy out bankrupt businesses. And that's not even getting into the more radical ideas like mandating worker ownership for businesses beyond a certain size/age/revenue. Compared to the kinds of subsidies and preferential treatment that already exist for certain industries and businesses, these aren't exactly radical, they just lack a powerful lobby and donor class.
Generally I prefer Richard Wolff’s approach, which is to educate people about cooperatives and promote their development. In the same way that our current government provides all kinds of support for capitalist firms (in this use of the term, this means top down owned and managed), we should provide similar encouragement and support for the growth of cooperatives.
There are side quests like abolishing or curtailing intellectual property restrictions, which concentrate wealth in the hands of the few and make the rest of us dependent on them. (I have a whole philosophy about this but the takeaway is, no intellectual property restrictions don’t do what you think they do, and the economy and investment would work fine and actually much better without them.)
For discussion of the need for cooperatives, see any of many talks or books by Richard Wolff. This is a fine place to start:
Adding to this: there are a LOT of anti-democratic laws on the books, put there by powerful people who don’t want us to have power. Legal efforts to fight those are worthwhile.
There’s also the strategy of building new economic tools that aren’t owned by anyone, via open source. That’s why I work on open source farming robots now. Building technology that can help people lift themselves up can reduce our reliance on the owners of the economy. When they put up roadblocks to our independence we protest, fight them in the courts, and build more tools to get around their control.
It’s a battle that never ends. There is no triumphant moment when everything gets solved - we need to educate, work, fight, and build. Philosophers have been writing on subjects of our collective economic well being for hundreds of years, and we haven’t achieved their dreams yet. But we can make progress one step at a time.
When you think about the manufacturing advances of the past 60 years, this is logical.
Machinists used to require skill. Now they LITERALLY just screw the part into a machine and press a green button. And the pay went from 100k+ to $45k. And the technology went from $75k to $1m. But it's still cheaper to pay a human to push a cart then it is to develop the rest of that technology.
But this is the investment that next level requires. Look at the progression (Google search this) from a Bridgeport, to a Mazak Nexus 6800, and then look at a Mazak Pallettech robot.
The first machine is completely manual. Most have retrofit digital displays and some have retrofit powered axis, but you still have to know what you're doing. The second one is semi automatic, you just need a human to set it up and an even dumber human to run it. The last machine is a robot that you bolt onto the second machine to get rid of the dumb human operator.
All of those less expensive and more reliable ways are already being used to the greatest extent possible. A modern car plant is absolutely crammed with autonomous guided vehicles and conveyor belts and any other means you could imagine of transporting stuff.
Mercedes are probably looking at final assembly for this technology, which is the most labor-intensive stage by a large margin, mainly because you've got to fit awkwardly-shaped parts into awkwardly-shaped places. A humanoid robot can potentially do useful work in this area without having to completely reimagine the final assembly line.
If cheap enough, it may solve a problem for people who don't know that they need to hire engineers to make that conveyor belt, or if they don't know if the conveyor belt will be needed for more than a few months.
If it's general enough, but does simple tasks, that's still a win over 'this is a nutcracker that work only with this precise nut +-1 mm at a rate of _exactly_ 1 nut per hour +-0.1 seconds.' which may be some of the types of machines out there.
You start where you can before moving on harder tasks. A conveyor belt is never going to be able to weld curved joints and be wiring installers in the future.
I used to work for Apptronik, and for several other humanoid projects. These robots are not going to be doing tasks that are at the edge of human dexterity any time soon. They can barely drop objects into boxes.
Edit:
I saw a video a few days ago from Figure where it was putting dishes onto a dish rack at relatively high speed and that was genuinely impressive, possibly the best object manipulation I've seen. But that's still closer to dropping objects in boxes than to the welding and wiring work that I've done.
Fixed machinery already does most of the welding in automotive manufacturing. Changing that to a movable base doesn’t seem like an impossible problem especially if you can use a fixed point on the object and then use relative coordinates like a CNC machine. I could easily see a robot pulling out stamped metal parts, making a couple of welds and then stacking them up.
Wouldn't wheeled robots be better for flat factory floors, if it is supposed to deliver parts? What is the point of the legs.
"Mercedes has started trialing an undisclosed number of Apollo robots at a factory in Hungary. The country has experienced labor shortages for several years as workers migrate to Western Europe, with Audi and Mercedes having both expressed concerns regarding labor supply in 2016."
But every car factory has wheeled robots, and fixed platform robots, and robots running on rails on the ceiling. And everyone is already used to robot dogs being deployed by just about everybody with an innovation budget. The only way left to have press about robots in a car factory is to make them bipedal.
I'm betting that the 'undisclosed number' has exactly one digit, and the robots doing actual work is not part of the reason why Mercedes is doing this
I think if the choice is between spending money now for r&d that enables future free labor or spending more now and forever on human labor it's obvious what choice a capitalist system incentives.
We are rapidly approaching an inflection point where the rules of capitalism don't work anymore. The road bifurcates there and I'm not sure that we are capable of getting the good ending.
Since when are long term profits of any concern? Also, first mover disadvantage. You can just wait for someone else to figure it out and learn from them.
This is clearly a pet project or from the marketing budget.
> We are rapidly approaching an inflection point where the rules of capitalism don't work anymore
I assume this is a reference to a technological singularity [1].
At the point capitalism breaks down, virtually every other social institution does as well. Until we know what that future looks like, and what the new constraints are, it is impossible to put in place a better system.
>We are rapidly approaching an inflection point where the rules of capitalism don't work anymore. The road bifurcates there and I'm not sure that we are capable of getting the good ending.
What are you talking about exactly? Can you elaborate?
>Wouldn't wheeled robots be better for flat factory floors, if it is supposed to deliver parts? What is the point of the legs.
Yeah but publishing videos of humanoid robots is proven to pump your car company stock to the moon. If Mercedes can also buy a cryptocurrency and a social media platform they're golden.
>Raise wages?
No no, you see we need open borders and visa free uncontrolled migration so companies have the upper hand and get to pick and choose whatever they want from the world labor pool until they find complacent workers on their terms, instead of having to pay locals competitively. Otherwise it's considered a labor shortage.
> we need open borders and visa free uncontrolled migration so companies have the upper hand and get to pick and choose from the world labor pool instead of the local one
Hungary is in Schengen. Their workers left for higher-paying jobs. The company can’t move as easily because they already plopped down a plant. (Hungary is also one of the EU’s most migrant-sceptic members.)
I know. I’m just pointing out that an uncontrolled immigration policy is in effect here, and it shifted power to labour. On the other hand, Hungary’s strict international migrant policy appears to weakening labour’s hand by encouraging automation.
Firstly, it's no uncontrolled immigration here. It's controlled by the EU freedom of movement act. Uncontrolled immigration (bringing unlimited workers from outside the EU without restrictions) is what companies would actually want.
Secondly, Mercedes moved to Hungary for cheap labor a while ago, and now that labor has fucked off to greener pastures Mercedes is now bitching that the cheap labor they came here for is no longer as cheap as they want it to be. If it wants to reattain those factory workers in Hungary they should pay competitively similarly to how they're retaining workers at their fabs in Germany. Why haven't they?
It's not a labor shortage, it's sucker/exploitable worker shortage.
>On the other hand, Hungary’s strict international migrant policy appears to weakening labour’s hand by encouraging automation.
Do you see what you're saying here: "If labor doesn't agree to be exploited as their masters demand, then they'll have to be replaced by robots if they can't be replaced by cheaper immigrant workers".
The workers' rights and benefits we enjoy today in the west, especially in Europe, didn't come from labor bending over to the demands of the business owning class, it cam from confrontations and labor sticking to their guns.
> it's no uncontrolled immigration here. It's controlled by the EU freedom of movement act
What is the difference? If Schengen were extended to the world, wouldn’t one describe that as uncontrolled movement?
> now that labor has fucked off to greener pastures(probably to Germany
What effect do you think that had on German wages? The analogy is Germany:EU::EU:world.
> labor doesn't agree to be exploited as their masters demand
You don’t find it curious that the automation is happening in the low-cost plants first?
There are a number of policy differences between Germany and Hungary, from collective-bargaining to legal stability. What’s interesting is how this case lets us isolate how Hungary’s migration policies undermine their workers in an unexpected way.
> didn't come from labor bending over to the demands of the business owning class, it cam from confrontations and labor sticking to their guns
We agree. My point is a collectively-bargaining Hungarian auto workforce would benefit from automating repetitive tasks (or giving them to non-Europeans). This shouldn’t be a conflict or confrontation. It’s turned into one due to Hungary’s politics redirecting anger at virtually non-existent migrants [1].
If you don't understand(or intentionally choose to ignore) the difference, rules and impact between hiring EU workers and non-EU workers, you are not arguing in good faith (against HN rules) and I will have to end the conversation here.
>What effect do you think that had on German wages? The analogy is Germany:EU::EU:world.
Germany and Hungary are EU members with equal rights. If Germans didn't want this they had the chance to veto Hungary's EU membership a long time ago, and unions in Germany could have also have a word on this, BEFORE it happened.
>My point is a collectively-bargaining Hungarian auto workforce would benefit from automating repetitive tasks (or giving them to non-Europeans).
How would that benefit Hungary? If nobody in Hungary wants to work for those jobs Mercedes has, it means they must be shit as workers there have better options. How are you fixing this by importing even more desperate and low skilled people willing to low-ball themselves to take shit jobs? How does that benefit society?
We're not talking about importing caretakers, teachers, doctors, nurses or builders, professions that society actually needs. We're talking about cheap exploitable workers for someone else's factory. Businesses wanting that can fuck off.
Automation is way better than importing unskilled desperate migrants willing to lowball themselves for crappy jobs. Automation builds valuable knowledge and skilled well paying jobs (look at Switzerland). What Mercedes wants here, being a perpetual sweatshop dependent on having the cheapest possible labor is not a good strategy for a western economy.
That would empower labor and reduce profits. Now hear me out, what if you could somehow transmute labor into capital? Then you could actually _own_ the labor and retain _all_ the surplus value generated from it!
I think that at some point AI will enter the domain of repetitive physical jobs, like for example an experienced butcher will train an AI arm that eventually will learn to slice meat correctly since that's an activity that normally works with a reasonably standardized product(the animal carcass).
Keeping that in mind, honestly for me it's hard not to be very skeptical that it would make any economic sense in the next many decades to have an expensive humanoid robot performing tasks with a very low aggregated value like moving boxes one by one. Just because it's a robot performing an economic activity it doesn't necessarily mean it will be productive or competitive.
I don't know about your example, animal carcasses vary a bunch and it would have to be great at not leaving any meat wasted. Maybe like hammering a nail or properly turning screws and checking tightness?
I think it will do well at performing economic activities that don't have real hard time constraints, but just require labor. Ex. moving boxes around from one storehouse to another...leave the last bit of sorting and packing to humans, but now you don't need someone doing the boring work.
>I don't know about your example, animal carcasses vary a bunch and it would have to be great at not leaving any meat wasted.
Cutting meat in practice is an activity that's more complex than it looks and for sure carcasses vary a lot, but even taking in account all their variation they still follow a pattern. At some point I'm sure we'll have robotic AI arms that will be trainable just like chatGPT is, so after being trained by a profession with thousands and thousands of hours, the hypotetical intelligent robotic arm eventually learns to do the job just fine 99.99% of the time and that's enough.
Delivering parts? Humanoid carrying single box feels like massive waste. Throw something pallet sized maybe 1,5m high or even higher that has simple mechanics to drop a box and move multiple of boxes. And then make it move multiple boxes at time...
I wonder what happens if your consumer base has all had their incomes replaced by AI? Who buys your product your now making with it? Does AI just lead to the end of capitalism as we know it?
From a pure game-theory perspective, consumers are important for their potential labor. As long as there is something productive that they can specialize in that might give your group an advantage over other groups --- it is useful to produce and distribute all the things which keep them productive. Maybe 100% of your population will be trained as scientists and mathematicians just on the off-chance they can discover something that AI cannot and give you an edge over other similarly-advanced groups.
If the AI's can truly replace humans to the point where there is nothing useful for your humans to be doing, then it would cease to matter whether or not the rulers produce and distribute the things the consumers need/want. You'd need good enough AI security to handle any unrest which ensues, and protect any natural resources that might be important to you.
If you no longer can utilize any of the labor of your consumers, then the only products you need to make are: 1) The things you personally want, and 2) The things needed to maintain sovereignty against any other similarly advanced groups. Category #1 would be a very small volume, but Category #2 might be industrially more than the entire world's current production of everything, just for your fiefdom. It would be unstable until someone conquered the entire globe, and would likely only need to provide for about 500-5000 people in their "court" to provide for the rulers own selfish social needs.
The mistake you make (and a lot of people also do) is to assume the purpose of the system is to somehow cater to your (the consumer) needs. The purpose of the system is to fulfill the needs of the elite (those who benefit from the system). Average people having a car is a thing because then people will be more productive. But make no mistake, if the rich don't get what they want FIRST then your whole economy goes into recession and what not.
Essentially no academics are part of the upper (ruling) class, except the ones that were born into it (e.g. Jeffrey Laurie or Élisabeth Badinter), or those who moved into academia after retiring from their primary career (e.g. Hillary Clinton becoming a professor of practice at Columbia)[0]
Can you give examples? I believe most of those would fall between "still needs to perform labor for a living" and "could live purely off of accrued capital, no longer needing to perform labor". But I don't know too many university presidents / deans / provosts who personally control enough wealth to have the power to change the direction of their society - they control truly large amounts of power only through their official appointments, and they themselves serve at the whims of those that rule them.
> most of those would fall between "still needs to perform labor for a living" and "could live purely off of accrued capital, no longer needing to perform labor"
You’re still confusing wealth with power. Plenty of people who never need work again are not elites, e.g. Steve Wozniak. And plenty of elites don’t have enough saved to survive extended periods of not working, e.g. many in television or politics.
> don't know too many university presidents / deans / provosts who personally control enough wealth to have the power to change the direction of their society
Larry Summers.
They don’t wield wealth as power. They wield influence. Same as how a U.S. Senator need not be wealthy to be powerful; if anything, they wield their power to produce wealth.
I think people tend to underestimate how awful the shaky interim period might be. Before everyone signs on to some sane way to address this sort of thing.
> Does AI just lead to the end of capitalism as we know it?
This reminds me of Marinetti predicting electricity will usher in a post-scarcity world [1]. (Like, students will be hooked up to outlets to learn faster, electricity in the ground will make crops grow faster, flying cities will make land scarcity a thing of the past, et cetera.)
In retrospect, most of these "technological post-scarcity utopianism" predictions fell flat because they did not account for enclosure.
For example, automation may increase worker productivity but that doesn't benefit the worker but the owner: the worker may actually be worse off because the owner will now likely fire workers due to the reduced labor need and the resulting reduction of available jobs suppresses wages. On the other hand, some jobs where workers would outperform automation will be underpriced to the point that it's not worth paying someone a livable wage for the quality advantage over an automated process at a fraction of the cost so those jobs go away too.
Or for food production we may be producing an abundance but as the total need is limited, instead of reducing prices because of the increased supply, we end up instead importing out of season produce from the other side of the world, min-maxing convenience food for appeal/addictiveness and destroying unsold goods to avoid lowering the market price.
Or for drugs we literally value the sanctity of patents over the lives of people in underdeveloped countries who couldn't afford the medicine in their lifetimes (cf. the refusal to suspend/discount COVID vaccine patents for poorer countries to allow them to produce generics to vaccinate their populations).
Almost any article on automation has a sentence about freeing highly skilled workers for more valuable tasks. Along with the talk of tight labour supply it comes across as disingenuous when the value is replacing the cost of low skill workers.
Not in the near future. And given my town has a weeks-long waiting list for electricians (and very few young people taking up apprenticeships), that sounds terrific.
People’s working lives are 50 years or so. If the near future arrives in ten years that’s near enough to derail people’s careers.
An electrician is in most cases already not doing that well (otherwise those apprenticeships would be full).
Replacing them will be terrific for people employing electricians like you. Not for electricians trying to accumulate their own capital through labour.
> If the near future arrives in ten years that’s near enough to derail people’s careers
We aren’t a decade out from electrician robots.
> electrician is in most cases already not doing that well (otherwise those apprenticeships would be full)
My electrician takes his family on ski vacations in Japan. In many communities, young people simply don’t want to go into the trades.
> Not for electricians trying to accumulate their own capital through labour
Agree. But at the point we have electrician robots we have also eliminated a lot of other tedious (and dangerous) labour. A house full of servants becomes lower middle-class reality.
It doesn’t need to be a decade. It can be 40 years and it’s still going to be a problem for someone trying to pay off a house.
Google says there are a million electricians earning an average of 60k in the US (I guess mostly not going on ski trips to Japan on that salary). That’s 60bn a year on the table for anyone who can automate that work. How long would you bet it will be before it’s automated? I’d say not ten years but I’d be surprised if it were not done in fifty.
This is great for anyone who has sufficient capital to afford housing, food, and energy. Long term decreases in real salaries means people are more dependent on state / company / family gifts. People without access to this have bad lives. Question is how generous the gifts will be.
I'll never understand this fascination with humanoid robots. It smacks of our innate narcissism, which lead to hilariously ironic and pervasive belief systems like "God made MAN in HIS image!" (surely not the other way around!)
Meanwhile the whole world already operates on incredibly precise high-tolerance robots doing low skill and repetitive tasks as well as extremely "high skill" tasks like painting/manufacturing cars or milling metal.
And we have wheeled robots like Autostore.com for other automation tasks.
A humanoid robot exists only to tickle our perverse self-centric obsessions, and namely: news sites, news consumers, and executives.
I guess it depends on where you draw the line on what is a humanoid.
The world we've built for ourselves is for humans. If you need a robot to flip a hotel room for the next guest it may not need real legs but its probably gonna be column shaped with some arms. That's humanoid to me.
Not trying to single out a hotel maid as low skilled, just trying to use an example of a common task in a very human environment
Why build a system today which uses HTTP as its transport protocol for communication? It's not the most efficient or robust, right? It's because there's a robust ecosystem and toolchain around HTTP as a transport protocol.
Making humanoid robots, while vain on the surface, does kind of make sense. If it's humanoid, it can be a drop-in replacement for a lot of human tasks using systems designed for human hands and feet. It's just a matter of training for the tasks.
You wouldn't task an ED-209 with cleaning an office building. You'd end up with dirty stairwells.
Cool, now we just need to continually redefine "low skill" as whatever AI and robots are capable of doing, and we've got an all-purpose justification for laying people off.
Step 3 is "profit!". While step 4 may be "widespread suffering and social unrest", we can just redefine our process as ending at step 3, and it's no big deal.
All problems can be solved by taking the right perspective!
I like to quip that the most complex nanotechnological products in existence are all created by unskilled labor--not that I want to devalue your mother's nine months of work. :p
Just wait until police become "low skill." Then we have a serious and potentially permanent problem where AI-robot police efficiently enforce property rights while everyone else starves to death or is killed fighting the police.
Call me a luddite but it looks like an overly error prone solution looking for a problem to me.