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Comment by qayxc | Hacker News Reader

Nah. What's often overlooked when seeing these (mostly) propaganda events is the fact that the actual autonomy of these machines is still lacking.

We've had purpose-built machines that outperform every human at specific tasks for over a century now. Just because a subset that's popular these days (the "humanoid" and dog-like variants) invoke some psychological and cultural (we've been primed by media for over 150 years at this point) fears, doesn't make them more capable than they seem.

Sure, the thing can run real fast, but looking at it, that's pretty much all it actually can do. In contrast to a boring old industrial robot, though, being able to win a half-marathon or a 100m dash against any hypothetical human isn't all that useful, no?

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Of course it's still lacking. In contrast, how long does it take for a human to go from birth to being able to break any world records? How many years of dedication just to hone themself for that particular thing? And is a human breaking a record any more "useful" than a machine breaking it?

Once you lay down the coolaid for a second you'd realize that the whole point of the human experience has little to do with its "usefulness". But you'd have to redo your civic education and maybe socialize first for that to finally hit.

Ah, someone who doesn't have a valid argument but feels compelled to argue anyway, and so resorts to personal attacks. I know, it sucks to be in such a position. But you'll feel better once you accept reality. Buck up.

Ah, someone who doesn't have a valid argument but feels compelled to retort anyway, and so resorts to vague-posting about some higher-level point they supposedly hold. Drink up.

Given its form factor there is already a ton of active research into developments that would be just about plug and play. Hands with coordination for example.

True. Physical capabilities can be added with ease. The actual problem isn't the actuators anymore, though. Very useful for a remote controlled puppet ala "Surrogates" (the film), still not quite there yet when it comes to performing even simple tasks autonomously.

Emptying a washing machine located in the cellar/basement, taking the clothes to a room on the ground floor, folding and sorting them before putting them in the closet still is quite the challenge.

Wirelessly hooking such robot up to a data centre running heavy machine learning models isn't a proper solution either, because in contrast to digital agents, latency matters quite a bit in physical interactions.

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