Comment by api

Comment by api 3 days ago

8 replies

The only places it does is where humans can't easily go: space, underwater, hazardous industrial sites, etc.

It can occasionally make sense for high skill stuff where the shortage is people who can even do it, like remote surgery.

In your house? That's silly. It'd be 100X more expensive and complicated than just hiring a housekeeper so you could... hire a remote housekeeper?

TylerE 3 days ago

Except the remote house keeper can be in some super locl 3rd world country where the prevailing wage is a few bucks a day.

  • duskwuff 3 days ago

    That's a pretty profoundly dystopian concept. If the only way this technology is viable is as a way to exploit labor at a distance - count me out.

    • XorNot 3 days ago

      That's not necessarily exploitation: a worker in another country paid a far lower rate in absolute terms may in local terms be earning good money.

      If that job is "monitor the remote robots from a desk" then that's likely also a fairly good job.

    • decimalenough 3 days ago

      The person in a third world country is not a slave, they're doing the job for a few bucks a day because it's still better than other options available to them.

    • Saline9515 3 days ago

      What is the difference between being a teleoperator in India for a californian family robot, and being a software dev for a company selling SaaS products to the US market?

    • api 3 days ago

      There's an indie sci-fi film called Sleep Dealer about this. It's not bad.

    • TylerE 3 days ago

      We're living in a dystopia.

    • mrguyorama 3 days ago

      This is the reality now. It is the entire point of globalized labor.

      Global trade right now is literally about exploiting labor at a distance.

      Our shit didn't get made in China because they were inherently better at making shit!