Oh, give me strength!

[Workingman]

Companies are vying to produce robots to do our cooking, make our beds, wash our dishes, drive us hither and dither in self-drive electric cars..

It is not Sci-Fi, it could be wth us in years, so say some.

We are at the point of making humanity redundant: obsolete. OK, it might not be a bad thing given that we are hell bent on killing ourselves anyway via the economic model of growth, growth and more growth.

Mind you. I would like some of us to survive. St Elon, Jeff, Mark, are you in?

[Suff]

It is sooooo hard to get good journalism.

That BBC video is of a robot called Bumble C. It was hacked together with off the shelf components and had Tesla vehicle self driving computer and software strapped to it. It could barely walk or move.

6 months later, Optimus was shown on video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA6zt7x6nD8

During AI Day 2 Tesla showed Bumble C then outlined the actuators which would be required to drive Optimus. They told us that these actuators didn't exist today in the general engineering world. Every single robotics implementation had specific made actuators for each specific robot.

https://youtu.be/ODSJsviD_SU?t=2566

I cut out all the other stuff and went straight to the engineering. It is set at that time.

But the point here is that this is moving at both sofware speeds and agile engineering speeds. Even so it will take at least 3-5 years before useful robots appear in the workplace which aim to replace general human actions. Note I say general human because robots already replace about 60% of fixed, static and repetitive jobs in the workplace. It is the jobs that require eyes and the ability to react to the environment around then where robots do really badly. Most workplace bots are blind deaf and dumb. They are bolted to the ground and move from A to B in a fixed pattern.

That being said, the gist of the BBC article is roughly correct. Boston dynamics has spent nearly 40 years building their robots. Tesla has replicated 70% of the agility in 12 months and has exceeded the ability to recognise the environment around them by light years. If you click on the first Optimus link you will see something which articulates the whole future. What are these bots doing for "work"? Washing up? Doing your laundry? Nope, making another bot. Think it through.

The competition is not aiming at Boston Dynamics. The competition is aiming to beat Tesla to general robotics in the workplace and, later, the home.

All these companies are going to move faster and faster and as the engineering solutions become "off the shelf" the things we are going to see will astound.

I must admit I did expect Tesla to produce a video of Optimus operating a lift in the factory. For those who follow negative Tesla news and court cases you will know what I mean by that.

[Workingman]

The point is that all these things are POINTLESS!

It makes no difference which company is making these stupid things - they are a waste of time and resources.... and electricity.

What, exactly, are people going to do with those few minutes they save by not having to load the dish washer, put food(?) in the microwave or shake out the duvet?

WALL-E world is upon us. We will all weigh 300kg sitting in wheeled recliners and looked after by robots.

WallEEEEE!!! my bum needs a wipe.

[Suff]

Actually they are going to be in use in the workplace LONG before they ever make it into the home.

Companies making bots for the home are going to go out of business on and off over the following decades. But, eventually, there will be a place for them in the home.

The place for Bots today is in the workplace and harsh environments like space and mines.

Eventually governments will realise that they can have entire factories which have no humans in them. They can operate 24x7 and the economy can grow and grow. Granted they will need humans to buy the goods the Bots make but politicians won't see that for quite a while. They will have "export" stars in their eyes.

[Workingman]

Actually they are going to be in use in the workplace LONG before they ever make it into the home.

So, we are going to have fewer people making things, meaning fewer people earning money to buy those things.

Eight billion people having their bums wiped by two billion robots while they watch Masterchef repeats and dream of food they could have made in the minutes the robots saved them.

No thanks.

[Kaz]

The point is that all these things are POINTLESS!

It makes no difference which company is making these stupid things - they are a waste of time and resources.... and electricity.

What, exactly, are people going to do with those few minutes they save by not having to load the dish washer, put food(?) in the microwave or shake out the duvet?

WALL-E world is upon us. We will all weigh 300kg sitting in wheeled recliners and looked after by robots.

WallEEEEE!!! my bum needs a wipe.

This!

[Suff]

So, we are going to have fewer people making things, meaning fewer people earning money to buy those things.

This is emotion talking not analysis.

People don't want to work in factories on production lines. I don't blame them I've done my stint at that. Very shortly bots are going to come in and be able to do the job with higher precision and less cost.

Did you really think that employers were going to accept over £20k minimum wage with depressed selling prices forever? Or that the minimum wage continues to rise?

Pretty soon they will have a choice. £25k each year for each human for an 8 hour day, 5 days a week if you are lucky; or $30k per robot, sunk cost plus maintenance, with a run time of 6 hours and a charge time of less than 2 hours working 7 days a week. After 3 years, even with replacing the bots every 3 years, they're in profit.

Let's face facts, the UK economy is 90% services anyway. Not manufacturing. If we want to move into manufacturing then we're going to suck bots in anyway.

The service economy will be driven by bot serviced manufacturing money and will provide jobs for humans. Things will change as they have changed. Ford gave us the production line in 1912. The only touch point between a Ford production line in 1913 and one in 2023 is that the vehicle progresses down the line and is worked on in stations where materials are brought to the station to be assembled on the vehicle. Human content? Over 90% reduction.

The last bastion of humans in the manufacturing space is now being removed. We have already seen way more disruption by autonomy than we will see with the last few humans being ejected by far more advanced bots.

The size of our economy is bound by the number of people who are able to work and be active in the economy. With bots this constraint is removed. The cost of producing a lot of things in the UK is prohibitive due to human costs. Replacing humans with Bots means the eventual size of the economy is bound by other constraints and the limits are a lot higher.

As the economy grows exponentially the ability to pay humans more in the service industry grows.

There is a net positive here but everyone wants to think of it in terms of "today". But it won't be "today" when these bots come on stream. It will be a whole different economy with a whole different value base. But I understand that we have started to produce a society who reject change as undesirable. OK change hurts in the short term. But change requires adjustment and once adjustment has happened, then things carry on.

Time to accept and move on.

[Workingman]

Human content? Over 90% reduction.

So how are these people going to earn and buy? An economy needs the money-go-round to work.

The size of our economy is bound by the number of people who are able to work and be active in the economy.

Services? Many of them can more easily be replaced by AI than in engineering, it's already happening. How, exactly, will they be active in the economy when they lose their jobs?

Being "able" to work and actually "having a job to do to earn money to spend in the economy" are very different things.

AI and automation will make humans obsolete except for the vey few on Elysium.

I am glad that I am old.

[Suff]

Human content? Over 90% reduction.

So how are these people going to earn and buy? An economy needs the money-go-round to work.

You tell me, they are already gone. That is Current loss of manufacturing jobs is 90%. Not future with Bots. They'll just hoover up most of the 10% who are left.

Yes I know the service economy is at risk from AI. But service jobs have been massacred by computing for decades now. When was the last time you saw a large company with an army of 2,000 bookkeepers and accountants and a whole bunch of written double entry ledgers?? My Grandfather was an accountant. This I know. Also my first job in computing was to interface between sales invoicing and financial software packages. We wrote the sales invoicing program and my job was to make sure it correctly updated the Pegasus Accounts software tables at the back end.

Bots will dramatically increase our ability to produce "stuff" which people can buy. Which will make "stuff" cheaper anyway. The industry will have to work out how to make sure that there are people with jobs and money to buy their "stuff".

This is a societal change. There is no stopping it and there is no way of avoiding it. Any more than any company could afford to ignore Henry Ford's moving production line.

It's called progress and it is not waiting for those who don't want to embrace it.

[Workingman]

Go on then, give us a clue.

When most of the work is being done by robots and AI what will all the out of work humans be doing? And how will they earn money to be able to buy things and live?

Bots will dramatically increase our ability to produce "stuff" which people can buy. Which will make "stuff" cheaper anyway. The industry will have to work out how to make sure that there are people with jobs and money to buy their "stuff".

So, industry is going to have to work out how people without jobs will be buying all this "stuff", I look forward to that solution.