Comment by sethrin
Comment by sethrin 4 days ago
I have no particular idea whether there's a business case for humanoid robots or not. I would love to have the argument set out well. Perhaps you'd indulge my curiosity.
Comment by sethrin 4 days ago
I have no particular idea whether there's a business case for humanoid robots or not. I would love to have the argument set out well. Perhaps you'd indulge my curiosity.
"My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it)."
How much is "a lot of money"? Not picking on you, happy to let you want what you want, but people often seem to mention laundry, which mystifies me.
I am an adult male in the US. I do not need to dress for work in any way I would not dress anyway. Basically, I do two loads of laundry a week, one for clothes, one for towels and bedding.
This requires about one hour of actual work per week. More if we counted "waiting for the washing machine" and "waiting for the dryer" as work, but I don't.
How much would I pay to remove this hour a week of (really easy) work from my life? Almost nothing. I would not, for example, pay someone $50 to come to my house and do it for me. It's not a problem and doesn't need a solution.
So how much would you really pay for a robot that did your laundry, washed your dishes, and did other "dumb menial labor"?
Reliably? $25k. Having kids means I have less time to do more chores, if I could convert those chore-hours to family quality time, it would be invaluable.
I recognize that having kids too young to do their own laundry could change the calculus.
Maybe there will be a $25K robot that can do laundry before your kids grow up enough, but can't recommend holding your breath.
> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).
The day that:
- displaced workforce issue is solved
- they cost less than 20k everything included, base model
- do all the processing locally in their HW
- are smaller and lighter than a human being (but can reach higher places)
- last 10 years at least
I will definitely buy one. I don't think I'm going to see this in my lifetime though (I'm in my 40's).
> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?
Do you own a Roomba? I don't. It's a huge liability and doesn't do the cleaning I want out of it, even at a sub-$1000 price point. The humanoid robot is clunkier, more of a liability, and will still refuse to do certain tasks.
> Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?
This is called having a live-in maid or a cleaning service. Even in the first-world, where there isn't a disfranchised rural population to provide cheap labor to the middle class (e.g. Philippines, most of LATAM 20 years ago) the service will be cheaper than the price of a vaporware bot [0]. Now, you might say the droid is cheaper if you want a live-in maid in HCOL area, but have in mind that this thing barely can fold clothes and fill a dishwasher (an actual domestic bot). Also it sometimes is actually a dude controlling it remotely.
We would need bots of the level of that awful I Robot movie with Will Smith.
No, I wouldn’t.
For one, I don’t spend a lot of time doing housework. Just organize your life better.
Beyond that, the cost would not be small. Based on current designs, operating costs would be thousands of dollars per month. I would not pay that.
It would require a cloud controlled robot with cameras in my home. Why in the world would I want that.
Finally, I already have dishwashers and laundry machines.
> My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor.
Then why don't you hire a helper for that? You just said you'd pay a lot of money, so money doesn't seem to be an issue. What is then?
I can't speak for the other guy, but as a person who manages humans at work: I'd rather have a robot at home.
1) I live way, way out in the middle of nowhere.
2) Humans are fickle, late, emotional. They have requirements in their own life that conflict with the jobs I want them to do.
3) Taxes. I don't want to deal with this headache. 1099 my cleaner or whatever?
4) In my version, the costs of owning the robot are less than the costs of hiring humans. If that wasn't true, then I'd reconsider. I probably wouldn't buy one until the cost switched like that, unless maybe it was open-source or something.
Here's another way to think about it: Amazon is willing to pay workers to do the job, but they'd obviously rather have the robots do it. The robots work close to free, don't complain, and probably do a better job (at the jobs they're capable of). Why wouldn't they hire a human for that? A lot of the same reasons.
FWIW, I emailed auntanns.com to ask what a combination personal assistant and housekeeper would cost:
> Thank you for inquiring about our services. I'd love to discuss with you further regarding the person you are seeking. Personal assistants do not do housekeeping and housekeepers do not have the P.A skillset to pay bills and make appts etc unless they are an executive level housekeeper. Rates for executive housekeepers range between $60-$65/hr and a minimum of 20+ hours per week, plus PTO, paid sick days and many also seek a health stipend.
It costs approximately $200 for our house to be cleaned once (by humans). We do it about once a month because we don't feel like spending $200 weekly). It would be great to have it ~continuously cleaned but we the cost/benefit isn't there for having a full-time person.
You would pay "a lot of money"?
Like, more than the cost of your house? For something that can't do those things right and has to be supervised? To a company that can't deliver product on time?
The business case for humanoid robots is simple... for lack of a better term, they're robot slaves. Companies or governments can buy them once, pay relatively minimal maintenance fees, and have an army of workers that don't need a salary, never take breaks, never complain, never unionize, and do things faster and more accurately than most humans ever will. Any company that can move to robots, will move to robots.
Imagine the profits companies will have when they can eliminate, or drastically reduce, their single largest expense... payroll. Not only the base pay, but 401K match, insurance, payroll taxes, etc. Poof... gone.
"robot-produced goods should bottom out on price, closing in on the actual cost of materials/energy."
I don't think that's really true, or rather it's variably true along a continuum for different kinds of things. Some things sell for close to the marginal cost of production, others close to what the market will bear.
For two examples, flat-screen TVs seem to be on one end of the continuum, iPhones on the other. Lots of other things are at different points in between. Robots won't eliminate demand for luxury goods, which are not usually near the marginal cost of production end of the scale.
I don't know what it costs Apple to make an iPhone, but if they could cut it in half while people were still willing to pay $1,000, there's no reason to think they'd lower the price.
But why are they in humanoid form? Wheels are more efficient than legs, they have no need for a face. It sure does sound like vibes
It has? I don't think every little thing has. Do I want a robot that has to lift the couch to clean under it, or do I want a robot that can get under the couch?
The part that often gets left unsaid or glossed over is what the transition period looks like. At most we get some Underpants Gnomes claim about unlimited abundance without actually engaging with the substance of what happens if this technology gets built and deployed. What do you imagine the political and economic impact will be if a huge portion of the population is left without jobs and the political reality hasn't caught up to the speed with which the technology gets deployed?
Oh no, but Elon Musk tells us that out of the kindness of his heart we're going to have unlimited abundance. The same man responsible for taking away aid from thousands of the poorest people in the world through DOGE's interruption of PEPFAR and USAID.
With a single sentence from him, he could start saving thousands of lives without impacting his wealth in the slightest. He could do that right now.
I don't understand why my question was so controversial. Oftentimes on this website I feel like everyone is tapped into some polarizing news source that I am not, and so when I ask some (to my mind) benign question it's actually a secret tripwire that everyone is super polarized on and so rather than engaging in my question they all just tell me I am a moron. But I am seriously just asking a question here.
My layman's opinion is that I would happily pay a lot of money to have a robot help me around the house: fold my clothes, do the dishes, whatever dumb menial labor. That seems like a business case to me, unless someone is going to tell me I'm the only one in the world who could want that (but I doubt it).
OP said:
> Humanoid robots? Ain’t nobody made the business case for that. It is pure vibes.
I can't make sense of this. Are you really telling me you wouldn't pay any amount of money to do menial housework? If not, why not?