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Comment by pedrogpimenta | Hacker News Reader

Think about this. Think about where we got, as a people. This is out of this world. I don't want to get into if you like it or not or think it's good or not, no. Anyway you feel about Tesla, Musk, mass production, automation, whatever, just stop for a moment and think how the heck did we get here? I was amazed. I know some folks are used to these kinds of environments, but me? It looks straight from a 80s or 90s big sci-fi movie. It's mesmerizing.

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Compare with 1936 Chevrolet factory, itself a feat of industrial automation:

https://youtu.be/8bT6txm4RpA

It's nice, now if only we could get to the "have machines do our work" part instead of the "make rich people richer" thing.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive, and likely go hand-in-hand.

Still, there is no robot that can take a LEGO instruction booklet, a pile of bricks, and build the actual model.

I mean - that's definitely a specialized robot we've not yet built, but I think all the components exist to do it if someone actually bothered to put it together. Scanning a lego instruction booklet to assemble a 3D model of the desired outcome seems extremely reasonable - and assembling legos is clearly within the realm of possibility.

Now, we don't have a general AI that you could just hand a pile of legos and a booklet to and we almost certainly won't have one of those for a number of years - but that task isn't out of the realm of reason for a specialized solution.

I'm not so sure about that because meanwhile, Amazon is struggling to build a robot that can pick and place orders, and so they still have many humans in the loop.

Given that a LEGO sorting robot exists the hard part is done on that front.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-lego-sorter/

This is pretty cool though

https://nerdist.com/article/brickit-app-scans-lego-builds/

I believe the hard part would be the reading of the booklet - operation robots or similar should be able to build with LEGO given that simple LEGO robots can build simple LEGO sets.

Is that because the instructions are meant for human consumption or because of a shortcoming in the robots themselves

The robot itself. One could build a gripper meant specifically for LEGO pieces, but a general grasper like the human hand is still out of reach (ha) of robotic design (for now).

Or a robot that can separate recyclables.

you just provided ML/AI next toy challenge

It's Tesla's shareholders that got there, we, as a people, didn't.

Leave money out of it for a moment and recognize that this is a monumental step toward cessation of use of fossil fuels by humankind. I cheer for ITER with the same fervor.

Nobody else gave a shit about EVs until Tesla did it on a large scale. I don't own a single share of TSLA or one of their vehicles (yet) and I am happy for this and will benefit from it, because I am a human living on Earth.

Don't be a hater.

This has nothing to do with the claim that we, as a people, got somewhere with this factory, when it is the shareholders that own and control the IP that made it possible, along with the physical machinery. It's not a public service that we, as a people, are responsible for in that sense.

It's not even that. It's the fact that something like this exists, has been invented, all of it.

One needs to give the governments that gave incentives, subsidies, and related such things to Tesla a bit of credit too.

I think that's being a little unfair. Tesla's factory isn't particularly special, it's like every other car plant out there. They're building on centuries of industrial development. Heck, the biggest 'cool toy' in the Tesla factory is made by an Italian company. So 'we' did get to this level if industrial capability.

I would have made a similar comment if the same claim was made about another car company's factory. That biggest machine is also likely the IP of the Italian company's shareholders, as well.

Its an Italian company that design and built the machine special on Tesla request for Tesla specification. The machine was quite a bit larger then other machines they had done before. It was first installed in the US and produced cars for export and the domestic market.

Its not like Tesla went down to the local market and picked up a few toys and put a factory together.

By your standard no company in history would be 'particularly special'.

It's an impressive thing they have built. Everyone involved should be commended for their hard work and achievements.

However, Tesla and all of its operations, including the factory in the video, is part of a broader context. They don't exist in a vacuum. None of this would have happened without that broader context.

What about all the people employed by Tesla and all the people who are buying Tesla cars? And the planet benefits from getting closer to sustainable transport.

We, as a people, are not just those who can afford to participate in the luxury car market.

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