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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

Won't the US government just keep raising tariffs to 'protect' America from those evil Chinese manufacturers?

In any case, just because the legacy incumbents might also be incompetent, doesn't excuse Tesla.

I'm not going to defend the Cybertruck execution, clearly they misjudged the demand.

But Optimus is a fair play. Don't grub for scraps in an efficient competitive market. Make a new market, go big or go home.

The problem I see there is that apart from the sci-fi aspect, what's the market for humanoid robots really?

Really? The sci-fi aspect is it. A humanoid robot with enough intelligence to compete with the average human is going to be something like cars or electricity or the wheel or the Internet. The market then is all labor. Companies paid $13T to employees in the US in 2025, so some component of that.

I just doubt that a generalized form (in this case humanoid) will actually be better for most applications. We can build specialized robots to perform tasks, which can be optimized to perform what they need to do. If I want to deploy a robot in my factory to do some blacksmithing (I don't know why this example came to mind), I don't need it to be a robot that is built to also be suitable to be a bartender. Why not have specialized robots for the applications (which become easier to develop too)?

We have built professions to work around our own form because that's what we're stuck with. Robots can take many forms, so why make them average at all things instead of making robots perfect for one (or a few).

most industrial use robotics is actually this. from the pick and place in electronics and pharmaceuticals to weld and assembly for mechanical. the 'humanoid' robotics ideals are part of the same grift idealogy that pushes replacement of people in all kinds of roles. We are also not going to colonise the moon in the next decade either. Same reason, it a billionare pipe dream that doesnt conform to practical physics.

When do you want to colonize the moon then?

Cost. Manufacturing efficiency. It's easier to make 1,000,000 of the same thing than it is to make a million different variations. I'm sure we'll see specialization, and two arms isn't enough, and we don't need heads if there's a 360 degree camera, but bipedal is probably the base. But going back to your question, there's enough usefulness in average for it to be a huge market.

Works until you run out of money. I work in AI robotics. Yes, it’s promising. No, nobody is deploying anything remotely useful for a while.

It would be so lame to work in non-AI robotics…

I disagree, there’s a lot of fascinating problems in pure robotics.

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