zlacker

>>meetpa+(OP)
I’m optimistic about humanoid robotics, but I’m curious about the reliability issue. Biological limbs and hands are quite miraculous when you consider that they are able to constantly interact with the world, which entails some natural wear and tear, but then constantly heal themselves.

>>baron8+cy
It does either get very exciting or very spooky thinking of the possibilities in the near future.

I had always assumed that such a robot would be very specific (like a cleaning robot) but it does seem like by the time they are ready they will be very generalizable.

I know they would require quite a few sensors and motors, but compared to self-driving cars their liability would be less and they would use far less material.

>>marinm+2B
The exciting part comes when two robots are able to do repairs on each other.

>>fragme+tK
But this still has a massive cost. Replacing or repairing an actuator isn't cheap, in material and in time of unavailability.

>>ta988+MR1
To maybe get a little carried away with the sci-fi for a minute, why does the Actuator need to cost anything?

When the tree of costs that make up a product are traced, surely all the leaf nodes are human labour? As in, to make the actuator, I had to pay someone to assemble it and I had to buy the parts. Each part had a materials cost and a labour cost. So it goes for the factory that made the fasteners, the foundry that made the steel, the mine that extracted the ore.

Shudder to think of how to regulate resource extraction in a future where AI humanoid robots are strip mining and logging for free.

>>jacoba+KW1
> When the tree of costs that make up a product are traced, surely all the leaf nodes are human labour?

What about energy, real estate and taxes?

Even at the extreme end of automation, if you want iron ore, you need to buy a mine from somebody, pay taxes on it, and power the machines to extract the minerals and transport them elsewhere for processing.