Article Argues Humanoid Robots Will Lag Humans for Years
Tech journalist Timothy Lee examines hardware limits and task difficulties for robots.
Timothy B. Lee published an article on his Substack Understanding AI explaining challenges facing humanoid robots. He notes that while robots can perform impressive feats like dancing and running, they struggle with many tasks that are simple for humans. Issues include motor overheating during prolonged standing and the need for specialized hardware. Lee points out that even after ChatGPT's release, it took years to impact professions, and robots face additional distribution and physical constraints that will extend timelines further.
Robots can dance, do backflips, and run faster than Usain Bolt. This makes a lot of people worry about mass unemployment. But @chi_t_williams wrote an amazing article explaining why it'll take years — possibly decades — for robots to match humans.
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5 postsTB 
Timothy B. Lee@binarybitsLast year roboticist Benjie Holson created the "Humanoid Olympics," a list of tasks that are trivial for humans but hard for robots. A startup called Physical Intelligence solved several of them three months later. But there were some big caveats!
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TB Timothy B. Lee@binarybitsRobots with legs make for impressive demos, but they have some serious downsides. If you make them stand up for too long (think minutes, not hours) their motors will overheat and they might suddenly collapse.
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AN Arvind Narayanan@random_walkerThis was a great article and I learned a lot from it. But while there's a lot of writing on robotics timelines, I've seen less on what happens once competent robots do inevitably arrive. US agriculture employment share dropped 50x because of mechanization. This is very…
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AN Arvind Narayanan@random_walkerCompletely agree on this part and I have very much the same prediction here https://www.persuasion.community/p/arvind-narayanan See also the instant classic "What will be scarce?" by @alexolegimas
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TB Timothy B. Lee@binarybitsPeople declaring some event to be the ChatGPT of robotics should think about the fact that it took 2-3 years before ChatGPT had a significant impact on even one profession. And that was an app with instant, free distribution. Robots will take a lot longer.
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