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Comment by tomw1808 | Hacker News Reader

Quite dystopian thinking how a full factory and beyond could be run completely in the dark, just robots running around doing their thing. Faster, stronger, more accurate, never tired, never sleeping. Add in a small nuclear battery like the one from Betavolt coming up and mass produce it. And you have an autonomous "thinking" thing in the physical world capable of almost anything that humans are capable. Endless possibilities...

Never has the future been brighter and darker at the same time.. lets see.

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For overnight shifts, it's been a thing for a long while --- the term to look for is "lights out manufacturing"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lights_out_(manufacturing)

100%, I have family in manufacturing and this isn't anything new. Most current manufacturing plants already run on effectively a skeleton staff vs 50 years ago.

yes, they do, that is true, however that's with [some]-axis stationary robots. Not humanoid robots literally running around. The best we can do right now afaik is that robot-dog-like thing which can overcome obstacles and be equipped with sensors. Nothing human like.

If I imagine I run into a factory full of "thinking" (current LLM level top of line benchmark) humanoid looking robots who are collaborating on tasks dynamically as needed... In my book that is as dystopian as it gets and has nothing to do with the current level of automation that's happening, that's a whole new level.

Safety standards in terms of programming and logic an OSHA are going to have to change a lot before that happens:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62286017

Nuclear battery? Why not have the robots recharge themselves? They could coordinate their shift changes in a staggered fashion (unlike human shift changes) so that the line never stops moving.

Battery swapping makes more sense in a 24/7 factory using humanoid robots than most other operations.

You’ve got manipulators on hand to do the swap, controlled environment, minimal downtime, etc.

Those betavolt batteries are about as powerful as a potato battery. Seriously, they both have power output measured in microwatts.

> Quite dystopian thinking how a full factory and beyond could be run completely in the dark, just robots running around doing their thing.

There is nothing dystopian about this image. Human being weren’t designed, evolved, nor destined to be a worker in a factory. Their absence in factories isn’t in and of itself a problem.

The dystopian part is how the wealthy and powerful will chose to use the fact that so much can be automated. I doubt they’ll be willing to use it to create Fully Automated Luxury Communism.

In practice, it will be used to liquidate us: at best, we get the mass-fabbed social housing and a minimal dole to keep us from revolting; at worst, they leave us to die on the streets like we currently do to the mentally ill and the medically bankrupt.

Why is it dystopian? This is how you keep cost of stuff low. Many people don’t realize that prices of cars have remained stable over last 20-30 years (beating inflation), because we outsourced and made a global economy work for us. Similarly the ‘cheap robot factory’ will output more and should cost less. Maybe we get a 20k car in next few years…

> Many people don’t realize that prices of cars have remained stable over last 20-30 years (beating inflation)

Many people don't realize that the average real wages remained stable over the last 30 years either lol. You can buy more subscriptions and other useless gadgets but the basics are the same (cars) or higher (rent/building). You're in a blind spot because you're in the top 30%, go ask the bottom 70%...

Even if everything was "stable adjusted to inflation" it would hardly be a win, and definitely not something to cheer for or call "progress", that's 30 years of stagnation with a few bells and whistles

https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/blog_...

https://inflationdata.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2023/1...

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcX...

>Even if everything was "stable adjusted to inflation" it would hardly be a win, and definitely not something to cheer for or call "progress", that's 30 years of stagnation with a few bells and whistles

not if you have wage growth that exceeds inflation.

If I imagine I run into a factory full of "thinking" (current LLM level top of line benchmark) humanoid looking robots who are collaborating on tasks dynamically as needed in the dark (because they don't need light, ... or oxygen ... or basically anything but electricity)...

In my book that is as dystopian as it gets and has nothing to do with the current level of automation with robots that's happening, that's a whole new level. Production efficiency is one thing, but not far and the DOD or someone else on the other end of the world has some creative ideas how to use that to "make the world great again"...

> This is how you keep cost of stuff low. Many people don’t realize that prices of cars have remained stable over last 20-30 years (beating inflation)

They absolutely haven't.

Correct. They've become significantly cheaper to run, and their lifetime costs are vastly more affordable.

In the 1960's, getting a car to 100,000 miles was an achievement; now, the car is just getting broken in.

Car repairs have increased as well. So I'd like a bit more sources regarding your assertions.

> In the 1960's, getting a car to 100,000 miles was an achievement; now, the car is just getting broken in.

The average car reaches 160K miles before end of life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity.

So by 100K miles, 50% of cars have already lived two thirds of their life.

Nuclear batteries aren't nearly powerful enough for industrial robots.

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