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Universality matters though. It's less interesting that a hyper specific machine exists for a task than that the same machine might be able to do a wide range of tasks, provided the price point is right.

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“Less interesting” is an interesting value to compare things that are typically measured by utility. Human form factor robots are definitely more interesting to us as humans, but really only economically viable for high mix low volume tasks (of which there are many).

But past a certain scale special purpose machines will always be more cost effective.

And more annoyingly they will no doubt be given modular behavioral capabilities that require separate subscriptions to use (even the big cube-shaped farming robots do this)

The human form is terrible for most productive things. We are slow, weak, short, and inaccurate. Robotic arms are the true multitalents of manipulating the physical world.

That doesn't say anything about the human form: it says something about the human body.

But it's also not very accurate on that count: we are actually very strong compared to mechanical systems of a similar size, weight and energy structure.

You're mistaken. It says something about the shape of humans. Bicycles, which are powered by the human body, show the inferiority of bipedalism to wheels, when it comes to fast and efficient locomotion.

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