I was gonna say something like “I’m assuming the idea is to make them do factory work in an attempt to compete with China’s robots”, but that would be the smart thing to do with them, and Musk isn’t one to do smart things. Indeed, reading the article it seems he just intend some pipe-dream about every one having robot butlers or whatever.
In China, humanoid robots are doing factory work. Not will do factory work, are doing it, right now. They are put to useful work.
In the US, humanoid robots are only used to increase stock value of corporations with promises that never end up materializing.
In China, self driving cars are used for public transport, they are made into very affordable taxis and even buses I believe. And other similar AIs are driving driver-less metros and trains.
In the US, self driving cars are just an excuse to sell cars for a higher price, just like when Apple adds features no one asked for to their Iphones to justify a markup.
I found that a lot of peoples here, when they see capitalists use a technology or an idea to do this kind of grift, instead of blaming the capitalist for using a potentially useful technology or interesting idea to make a self serving short sighted grift out of it, they reject the very technology or idea itself as something “beneath us” not worth talking or thinking about at all. I’ve seen comrades adopt that attitude multiple times and I don’t think it’s a good way to see things nor something we should do as Marxists and dialectical materialists.
I appreciate your insight and critique. I didn’t know China already had these things working in factories. Definitely makes more sense than a robot butler. Out of curiosity, do you have a source? Not trying to call bullshit, just would like to read more on it. And using an English search engine on anything China usually doesn’t turn up anything useful lol.
That’s what I mean by ideological blindspot. The only thing any of these articles say about the use of humanoid robots is
Robots like the H1 that performed at the gala have moved into Chinese EV factories thanks to partnerships between Unitree and EV makers like BYD and XPeng.
Which isn’t much, nothing concrete.
And the videos are straight up slop.
If this was about hyping up Musk, you’d get absolutely dunked on if you presented that as evidence of humanoid robots getting used in factories.
That’s what I mean by ideological blindspot. The only thing any of these articles say about the use of humanoid robots is
Robots like the H1 that performed at the gala have moved into Chinese EV factories thanks to partnerships between Unitree and EV makers like BYD and XPeng.
Which isn’t much, nothing concrete.
This is already much more than Musk or any other American or European humanoid robot constructor can say about their robots. So no, I agree that it’s not much, but it is very much concrete. And remember this is a very recent development, a few years old at most, it’s a bit early to make definitive conclusions about how well or poorly it’s going.
Incidentally, the appeal of humanoid robots isn’t just automating production (because if it was just that specialized robots would be far better than any generalist humanoid), instead I think the appeal of humanoid robots is as a tool to manage the balance between employment and production output. As a socialist society you want to become able to guarantee jobs and access to the products of labor to your citizens. Which means you have to balance level of automation with necessary output: too many robots and there’s not enough work for everyone, too few and there might be shortages of certain things due to underproduction. This means that ideally you want to be able to retire a few machines when there are peoples in need of a job and bring more machines in when workers retire or stop working for whatever other reasons. But you can’t make the switch quickly enough with specialized robots because these require conditions so vastly different from human workers that you need to refit the entire factory floor or at least part of it both to bring robots in or to get them out, which can take months to years. With humanoid robots though, they can work with the exact same factory floors the human workers use, meaning switching between robots and humans is as easy as ordering the robots to walk in or out of the factory. That’s the best argument for humanoid robots in my opinion, and because of that I think it makes a lot of sense for a socialist country to develop the technology.
And the videos are straight up slop.
Well these are youtube videos. I don’t see what the quality of the video has to do with whether or not the robots do work in factories though.
If this was about hyping up Musk, you’d get absolutely dunked on if you presented that as evidence of humanoid robots getting used in factories.
I’d get dunked on for presenting images of robots getting used in factories as evidence of robots getting used in factories? I don’t get your point here. Is it the fact that it’s only a handful of factories?
I was gonna say something like “I’m assuming the idea is to make them do factory work in an attempt to compete with China’s robots”, but that would be the smart thing to do with them, and Musk isn’t one to do smart things. Indeed, reading the article it seems he just intend some
pipe-dream about every one having robot butlers or whatever.
It does sort of weird me out how often we celebrate China for the same stuff we boo Musk for. That does seem like a bit of a ideological blindspot.
The Chinese self-driving cars don’t work that much better.
The difference is in what it’s used for.
In China, humanoid robots are doing factory work. Not will do factory work, are doing it, right now. They are put to useful work.
In the US, humanoid robots are only used to increase stock value of corporations with promises that never end up materializing.
In China, self driving cars are used for public transport, they are made into very affordable taxis and even buses I believe. And other similar AIs are driving driver-less metros and trains.
In the US, self driving cars are just an excuse to sell cars for a higher price, just like when Apple adds features no one asked for to their Iphones to justify a markup.
I found that a lot of peoples here, when they see capitalists use a technology or an idea to do this kind of grift, instead of blaming the capitalist for using a potentially useful technology or interesting idea to make a self serving short sighted grift out of it, they reject the very technology or idea itself as something “beneath us” not worth talking or thinking about at all. I’ve seen comrades adopt that attitude multiple times and I don’t think it’s a good way to see things nor something we should do as Marxists and dialectical materialists.
I appreciate your insight and critique. I didn’t know China already had these things working in factories. Definitely makes more sense than a robot butler. Out of curiosity, do you have a source? Not trying to call bullshit, just would like to read more on it. And using an English search engine on anything China usually doesn’t turn up anything useful lol.
From the list of sources I keep I have these articles that mention the humanoid robots doing factory work specifically:
Your First Humanoid Robot Coworker Will Probably Be Chinese (this one tries to put a ‘china bad’ slant, but still a worthwhile read)
China’s EV giants are betting big on humanoid robots
AI powering China’s industrial evolution
And videos:
This is Why “Made in America” Will Fail
CHINA’S ROBOT REVOLUTION! 🤖 YIZHUANG CONFERENCE SHOCKS THE WORLD from 7:47
And that’s just what I’ve read and watched.
That’s what I mean by ideological blindspot. The only thing any of these articles say about the use of humanoid robots is
Which isn’t much, nothing concrete.
And the videos are straight up slop.
If this was about hyping up Musk, you’d get absolutely dunked on if you presented that as evidence of humanoid robots getting used in factories.
This is already much more than Musk or any other American or European humanoid robot constructor can say about their robots. So no, I agree that it’s not much, but it is very much concrete. And remember this is a very recent development, a few years old at most, it’s a bit early to make definitive conclusions about how well or poorly it’s going.
Incidentally, the appeal of humanoid robots isn’t just automating production (because if it was just that specialized robots would be far better than any generalist humanoid), instead I think the appeal of humanoid robots is as a tool to manage the balance between employment and production output. As a socialist society you want to become able to guarantee jobs and access to the products of labor to your citizens. Which means you have to balance level of automation with necessary output: too many robots and there’s not enough work for everyone, too few and there might be shortages of certain things due to underproduction. This means that ideally you want to be able to retire a few machines when there are peoples in need of a job and bring more machines in when workers retire or stop working for whatever other reasons. But you can’t make the switch quickly enough with specialized robots because these require conditions so vastly different from human workers that you need to refit the entire factory floor or at least part of it both to bring robots in or to get them out, which can take months to years. With humanoid robots though, they can work with the exact same factory floors the human workers use, meaning switching between robots and humans is as easy as ordering the robots to walk in or out of the factory. That’s the best argument for humanoid robots in my opinion, and because of that I think it makes a lot of sense for a socialist country to develop the technology.
Well these are youtube videos. I don’t see what the quality of the video has to do with whether or not the robots do work in factories though.
I’d get dunked on for presenting images of robots getting used in factories as evidence of robots getting used in factories? I don’t get your point here. Is it the fact that it’s only a handful of factories?
From what I’ve seen, the cars with the huawei tech work pretty well
Eh, they’re a spectacle. Like last year’s Chun Wan, you got some robots dancing
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: