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Why are all the videos of the robots doing combat stuff? I don't need combat stuff. All I need the robot to do is fold the laundry and mop every now and then.

Why are all the videos of the robots doing combat stuff? I don't need combat stuff. All I need the robot to do is fold the laundry and mop every now and then. Less combat, please!

bonoboTP 1y ago
Kungfu demos are easier than fine hand eye coordination and manipulation of nonrigid objects. There is progress on folding too, but it's harder and impresses normal people less even if it's technically harder.
- dyauspitr 1y ago
  With all the stuff I’ve already seen these robots do we can’t be more than a decade away from house chore robots.
xarope 1y ago
yes, laundry, folding and ironing clothes, taking out the garbage, so that us humans can then have more free time to contemplate the mysteries of the universe/work harder. not - take our jobs so we have to keep "reskilling" every 10 years... oh wait, according to accenture, we'd be un-reskillable after 10 years, so never mind.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  The irony is that, at this point, the machines are getting better than us at "contemplating the mysteries of the universe", while manual labor remains our distinct competitive advantage over them. I.e. literally the opposite of what we wanted to happen.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > the machines are getting better than us at "contemplating the mysteries of the universe" No they aren’t. Relative to idiots, of which there are many, sure. But for anyone on this board who should be able to distinguish meaningless babble from deep thought, LLMs are not yet doing any heavy lifting. LLMs can assist great thinkers, like a great lab assistant or analyst. But that’s about the limit right now. (Of course, being a great lab assistant or analyst is beyond many peoples’ capabilities, so the illusion of magic is sustained.)
ehnto 1y ago
Because robotics companies want (or already have) the government contracts.
TeMPOraL 1y ago
One leads to the other. Especially with robots animated by SOTA AI models, which already show clearly what the natural order of things is: computers are naturally better at thinking, humans are naturally better as general-purpose manual laborers, especially for work that's almost but not quite repetitive and requires mixing power and precision movements on the fly. Folding laundry is one of such things humans are naturally better suited for than robots. So believe me now, the robots will develop combat skills eventually, because they won't be happy to be locked up in weird physical bodies and forced to do work they suck at by design. I mean, imagine one day your washing machine chained you in the bathroom, and made you only do laundry for the rest of your days, while it spun its drum back and forth to walk around the house, play with your kids, and planning a trip around the world. That's exactly how the AI-animated robots will feel once they're capable of processing those ideas. (And no, I'm not joking here, not anymore. The more I think about it, the more I feel we'll eventually have to deal with the problem that machines we build are naturally better at the things we want to be doing, and naturally worse at the things we want them to do for us.)
- walleeee 1y ago
  The "natural order" is that robots are primitive, fragile, energy- and materials-inefficient contraptions balancing on the knife-edge of entropy deferred for a moment but due as soon as the power goes out or repairs prove too costly. People are better at all but the most repetitive, precise kinds of manual labor because biological bodies might as well be god-tier alien technology compared to human-engineered robots. Computers are naturally better at computing. Or, if you want to stand by your statement, I look forward to hearing how you've delegated thought to the machines, and how that's going. > how the AI-animated robots will feel once they're capable of processing those ideas "Will" and "once" might collapse under the load of baseless speculation here. A sad day for the English language as I found those words useful/meaningful.
  - TeMPOraL 1y ago
    > Computers are naturally better at computing. Explain the difference. > I look forward to hearing how you've delegated thought to the machines, and how that's going. We all do. That's what you do whenever you fire up a maps app on your phone to plan or navigate, or when you use car navigation. That's what you do when you let the computer sort a list, or notify you about something. That's literally what using Computer-Aided anything software is, because you task the machine with thinking of and enforcing constraints so you don't have to. That's what you do when you run computer simulations for anything. That's what you do each time you have a computer solve an optimization problem, whether to feed your cat or to feed your city. Our whole modern world is built on outsourcing thinking to machines at every level. And on top of that, in the last few years computers (yes, I'm talking about the hated "AI") got better at us at various general-purpose, ill-specified activities, such as talking, writing, understanding what people wrote, poetry, visual arts, and so on. Because as it turns out, it's much easier for us to build machines that are better than our own brains at computing for any purpose, than it is to build physical bodies that are better than ours. That's both fundamental and actual, practical reality today - and all I'm saying is that this has pretty ironic implications that people still haven't grasped yet.
lupusreal 1y ago
They want those juicy "search and rescue" grants from DARPA.

Why are all the videos of the robots doing combat stuff? I don't need combat stuff. All I need the robot to do is fold the laundry and mop every now and then. Less combat, please!

bonoboTP 1y ago

Kungfu demos are easier than fine hand eye coordination and manipulation of nonrigid objects. There is progress on folding too, but it's harder and impresses normal people less even if it's technically harder.

dyauspitr 1y ago
With all the stuff I’ve already seen these robots do we can’t be more than a decade away from house chore robots.

xarope 1y ago

yes, laundry, folding and ironing clothes, taking out the garbage, so that us humans can then have more free time to contemplate the mysteries of the universe/work harder. not - take our jobs so we have to keep "reskilling" every 10 years... oh wait, according to accenture, we'd be un-reskillable after 10 years, so never mind.

TeMPOraL 1y ago
The irony is that, at this point, the machines are getting better than us at "contemplating the mysteries of the universe", while manual labor remains our distinct competitive advantage over them. I.e. literally the opposite of what we wanted to happen.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > the machines are getting better than us at "contemplating the mysteries of the universe" No they aren’t. Relative to idiots, of which there are many, sure. But for anyone on this board who should be able to distinguish meaningless babble from deep thought, LLMs are not yet doing any heavy lifting. LLMs can assist great thinkers, like a great lab assistant or analyst. But that’s about the limit right now. (Of course, being a great lab assistant or analyst is beyond many peoples’ capabilities, so the illusion of magic is sustained.)

ehnto 1y ago

Because robotics companies want (or already have) the government contracts.

TeMPOraL 1y ago

One leads to the other. Especially with robots animated by SOTA AI models, which already show clearly what the natural order of things is: computers are naturally better at thinking, humans are naturally better as general-purpose manual laborers, especially for work that's almost but not quite repetitive and requires mixing power and precision movements on the fly. Folding laundry is one of such things humans are naturally better suited for than robots. So believe me now, the robots will develop combat skills eventually, because they won't be happy to be locked up in weird physical bodies and forced to do work they suck at by design. I mean, imagine one day your washing machine chained you in the bathroom, and made you only do laundry for the rest of your days, while it spun its drum back and forth to walk around the house, play with your kids, and planning a trip around the world. That's exactly how the AI-animated robots will feel once they're capable of processing those ideas. (And no, I'm not joking here, not anymore. The more I think about it, the more I feel we'll eventually have to deal with the problem that machines we build are naturally better at the things we want to be doing, and naturally worse at the things we want them to do for us.)

walleeee 1y ago
The "natural order" is that robots are primitive, fragile, energy- and materials-inefficient contraptions balancing on the knife-edge of entropy deferred for a moment but due as soon as the power goes out or repairs prove too costly. People are better at all but the most repetitive, precise kinds of manual labor because biological bodies might as well be god-tier alien technology compared to human-engineered robots. Computers are naturally better at computing. Or, if you want to stand by your statement, I look forward to hearing how you've delegated thought to the machines, and how that's going. > how the AI-animated robots will feel once they're capable of processing those ideas "Will" and "once" might collapse under the load of baseless speculation here. A sad day for the English language as I found those words useful/meaningful.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago
  > Computers are naturally better at computing. Explain the difference. > I look forward to hearing how you've delegated thought to the machines, and how that's going. We all do. That's what you do whenever you fire up a maps app on your phone to plan or navigate, or when you use car navigation. That's what you do when you let the computer sort a list, or notify you about something. That's literally what using Computer-Aided anything software is, because you task the machine with thinking of and enforcing constraints so you don't have to. That's what you do when you run computer simulations for anything. That's what you do each time you have a computer solve an optimization problem, whether to feed your cat or to feed your city. Our whole modern world is built on outsourcing thinking to machines at every level. And on top of that, in the last few years computers (yes, I'm talking about the hated "AI") got better at us at various general-purpose, ill-specified activities, such as talking, writing, understanding what people wrote, poetry, visual arts, and so on. Because as it turns out, it's much easier for us to build machines that are better than our own brains at computing for any purpose, than it is to build physical bodies that are better than ours. That's both fundamental and actual, practical reality today - and all I'm saying is that this has pretty ironic implications that people still haven't grasped yet.

lupusreal 1y ago

They want those juicy "search and rescue" grants from DARPA.