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A house keeper? No. Imo the use case is for jobs that are easy, necessary, and low utilization where you mostly pay people to be present and available but not actually doing anything. The value here is the ability to scale up and down quickly. Can’t do that with real humans.

The ease of swapping different expertise in to the same body as needed could also potentially be useful.

> If you say yes, ask yourself why even bother reshoring manufacturing at higher cost and with trade barriers.

Mostly the reasoning to onshore things is to ensure independence on manufacturing critical resources despite the competitive disadvantage; not a jobs program.

How do you scale up and down with $20k robots that have to be operated by individual humans?

A human has to be paid for being present. A robot can be remotely activated as needed. If you need 5 minutes of labor somewhere over an 8 hour period, you can pay for 5 minutes if labor by having a person that jumps between bots.

Wow, when you put it like that I realised there must be a market for this kind of thing, given that cost and speed of operation are incremental changes that will plausibly improve over the midterm.

So you'll have upper-middle class people own a robot and whenever they want a task done they order it from basically a call-centre somewhere in the world... reminds me of the etymology of "robot" - from the Slavic for "slave"...

You're right there are ethical issues, but hardly new ones for this context. In response to your question,

> Should employers be able to outsource low-skill physical labor to actual humans abroad to circumvent wage and immigration laws?

This is a very pertinent question ethically, but this already undergirds our current globalized society, where the the clothes most of us are wearing, the coffee we've been drinking, much of the food we've been eating today, and so on, are produced exactly by such labor. This is the way the world works, for the time being. And it's unfair. But these robotic possibilities don't add to the unfairness in my view, although they definitely would give it a new twist. Given current trends I wouldn't bet against increased twistedness..

At $20k or even $5k, the alternative is still having a real human do the job better, faster, and cheaper.

But real humans are protected by labor laws. Foreign remote gig workers are not.

If there will be mass deportations of people working illegally in the US, having mechanical puppets for low paid international laborers to operate seems like it'd be enticing to a business owner that can no longer pay illegal workers but wants to keep labor costs down. They could rent a fleet of them during the seasons they need bodies.

Maybe - $20k is a bit steep, but I would certainly pay a large premium to have my housework done without needing to employ a stranger to actually work in my home.

You would rather employ 1k strangers - who are on the other side of an Internet connection - but still control a physical robot in your home that can observe and carry out any action that a human could do? In what way is it actually better?

You could geofence the robot with indoor positioning so that even if the operator tries to open a window or a door for accomplices, the robot would not be able to reach any doors and windows. You could also have separately controlled curtains and blinds, and before the operator connects to your robots all of those are closed. Now the remote human has no way to even see out of the windows to tell where your house is at.

Vs a real life human stranger in your house that could steal stuff and let accomplices into the house.

Far easier to have activity monitoring and logging, alerting and pausing on anything suspicious. The rogue operator will then be investigated and terminated, or even arrested, if need be.

This is just a strawman. Tesla is developing an autonomous robot, not a remote controlled one.

It’s not obvious that they have any chance of delivering an autonomous robot

Why not? Because they’re going to run out of money before the development is complete? Because developing such product is impossible?

Because it’s a difficult, unsolved problem and there’s no evidence that they are making progress on it.

The robot can’t take anything out of the home or bring anything into it. The operators are not locals with any connection to the local community. They don’t need a key to my property.

I'd rather have specialized robots that do a particular thing well, rather than some crappy humanoid robot that can't do anything well. Being humanoid shaped just limits them to being worse than humans at human things.

I already have a dish washing robot. And one that washes and dries my clothes. Can you imagine if you had a humanoid robot that was in your laundry room scrubbing your clothes manually in a tub and then taking them out and hanging them up on clothes lines? That is what you get with humanoid robots.

Would you rather have a tiny vacuum that parks itself in the corner and disappears, or some 6 foot tall thing with arms and legs pushing your Hoover around all day?

That seems to me to be a limited vision. The existing, specialized robots (dish washer, vacuum, etc) would be controlling by a master AI, which would potentially be within or also coordinating the humanoid. The humanoid robot itself would actually help with things the others can't handle, such as loading the dishwasher or carrying the vacuum up/down the stairs. And waiting humans at a party/bar/dinner for example, instead of inventing even more specialized robots for each.

Reads like the opinion of a guy whose wife does all the laundry

You don’t seem to be serious, but your Optimus would be used for tasks that can’t be automated otherwise.

Folding, sorting, and putting away clothes is a time consuming daily task in a house with young kids, that cant be done by any robot that isn’t humanoid.

Clearing the table, scraping dirty plates, putting condiments back in the fridge, packing away uneaten food as left overs, rinsing the dishes, loading the dishwasher efficiently, then unloading the dishes and putting them all away in the arbitrary places the go, are all tasks to that cant be done by any robot that isn’t humanoid in nature in some way.

The amount of pen caps, dropped food, discarded clothes, school bags, shoes, partially assembled legos, couch cushions, books, and other random bulky items that end up on the floor of a house with young kids makes the idea of robotic floor cleaning being a solved problem laughable.

My assumption is that an Optimus home assistant will be an order of magnitude cheaper than manual labour, which means it will be accessible to people who can’t currently afford a cleaner/maid but whose lives would be improved by having help with the daily workload of life.

This brings up two thoughts, I wonder if the advent of robots will lead to more gender equality as women currently bear the a significantly higher percentage of the domestic work load.

Also, autonomous robots are going to make even harder to convince my kids to clean up after themselves :)

> "Folding, sorting, and putting away clothes is a time consuming daily task in a house with young kids, that cant be done by any robot that isn’t humanoid."

I don't understand what about that task needs it to be humanoid?

It obviously needs various abilities that humans have - being able to move around, being able to control multiple "limbs" to manipulate the clothes, etc. But why couldn't it look like R2-D2 rather than C-3PO? Why couldn't it be a flying drone that has 4 clothes-folding arms? Or... whatever non-humanoid design could be conceived that works best?

The only "need" for it being humanoid would be if the kids (or adults, or animals) found it more acceptable to be around.

The human world is generally designed for the human form. You don’t need four arms to do most tasks, but you often need two. You often need fingers to manipulate objects in specific ways. You can’t realistically fly while safely doing mundane tasks. You probably need legs to traverse areas. You generally need your hands at the height level of a typical adult.

The limitations of R2 are pretty obvious if you try to imagine it. there’s probably some optimizations that could be made but it’s a sensible start imo

You've described reasons that a humanoid is a good form factor for creating a general use robot, but still nowhere close to the claim I replied to that sorting/folding/putting away clothes "cant be done by any robot that isn’t humanoid".

But even your reasons for preferring a humanoid are all reasons why humans are better than current-technology non-humanoid robots, not unarguable facts that humans are the ultimate design. As a couple of examples:

> "You probably need legs to traverse areas."

Even if legs are definitely needed, the animal kingdom shows that human legs are far from the only choice. Why only two? Why not legs that are 90% of the height of the robot rather than human proportions? Why not legs with the equivalent of 20 knees rather than 1 knee, or legs that feature wheels that are sometimes used, or...

> "You can’t realistically fly while safely doing mundane tasks."

Not if you were to take any existing consumer drone and add robot arms to it, sure, but there's no scientific reason it can't be made with future improvements to technology. We already have drones that can automatically avoid bumping into things, and that can counter the effects of wind to stay in the same position, and we have drones that would be safe to walk into (ones with covered blades, where the only injury risk is it flying into you hard enough). There's no reason that a future version couldn't be just as stable hovering in the air while doing something as being on the ground - it just needs to extend its stabilisation algos so that it's not just countering the wind, but also pushing in whatever directions required to counteract forces caused by whatever its doing. And it also doesn't even have to be flying while doing the task, it can fly to the clothes, then unwind its leg (or legs) and stand there while doing its work, or...

Humanoid is obviously appealing for the simple fact that, if it's developed to the point that it has the same (or better) physical abilities as a human (including balance etc) then we know it can fit into anything humans do because we already do it, and because we've built a world around us for human-shaped people. But thinking there couldn't be alternative form factors that are just as good if not better is just lacking imagination on the subject of what technology will be able to do in the coming years - especially when not talking about a general purpose "can do anything a human can do" robot but about specific tasks (such as the clothes sorting & folding that we're discussing).

That claim is pointless. People are not going to purchase a dedicated clothes folding robot. The point of a humanoid robot is general problem solving. That is the whole value prop.

Obviously you can design better forms for specific tasks, but people don’t want some zany futuristic world populated by dozens of task specific robots.

Nobody was arguing there should or shouldn't be a robot that only folds clothes. The subject you replied to be about was whether or not a robot for the purpose HAS to be humanoid to work or not. You've just been arguing different points.

But even for general purpose robots, my points above stand that future tech will mean plenty of non-humanoid shaped robots could be just as effective as general purpose robots as humanoid ones.

Mining. War. Sewer cleaning. Tons of jobs where it would help not being actively in the call of duty, and where precision isn't as much of a priority.

Teleop is used already in these applications. But a human form factor is not required.

A human form factor is not required or optimized for any specific task, but it does generalize which is potentially very useful.

Maybe. But if it is a worse design for tasks A, B and C and harder to build, why not go with the simpler and more specialized design for each separate task? Is the economy of scale really that much better with the general design? I’m not convinced.

If you’re talking about industrial tasks then you want efficiency and precision. If you’re talking about mundane variety of tasks then you want generalizeability.

Having a robot bake A cake and then wash the dishes. Not sensical to build a custom bot.

I’m still not convinced a human form factor is the best solution there. Why not fixed articulating arms at the laundry/sink locations instead of bipedal robots that must maintain balance and locomotion between the spots? Maybe if that were possible to do perfectly, but the engineering effort to get there is enormous compared to tech we’ve already had on assembly lines for decades. I’m not even saying we that we absolutely shouldn’t explore the tech, I’m just questioning if it’s objectively the best solution. A humanoid robot wouldn’t completely remove the need for human effort involved in eating or getting dressed and undressed… so is it really a problem that we need to physically place dishes or clothes in a certain spot ourselves for them to be dealt with?

Nobody wants mechanical arms attached to their sink and every other object that may require work. Mind you they may not want an android in their home either.

Laundry and washing dishes is not just “putting things in a spot”. Perhaps you don’t fold your clothes or separate your clothes or scrub dishes but many people do. Even loading the dish washer is fairly annoying when it’s a large crowd. Cooking is of course a huge one.

The question is really just how much would you pay for a 24/7 live in maid that can cook, clean, repair, etc. with a real human you’re paying them for availability. With a remote operated robot you’re paying for just the labor hours and none of the downtime.

It seems kind of fucked up but I do think the economics could work. People do have servants today. I tend to imagine such a service would be cheaper than a servant even at $20k up front cost. I do agree the bipedal legs seem unlikely be cost effective.

If I could pay $20K once and then never have to worry about doing any household chores ever again, I'd be whipping my credit card out at light speed.

If it's a robot that needs to be able to work in any room, including navigating stairs, I'd think being bipedal is the simplest way to achieve it. Maybe make it tripedal to make walking/balancing easier.

Housekeepers in a lot of places charge $50+ per hour

This is beyond Elon Musk and Tesla. How much will they cost in a few years? Has someone watched "Robot & Frank (2012)"?.