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Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

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Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#71

Post by lm28469 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #50
crazygringo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said better things require more resources. If anything, modern manufacturing uses far less than it did decades ago, with less pollution, people renting things more than wasteful owning, etc. E.g. when driverless taxis come along, expect to see car manufacturing plummet. > there is more to life than working 50%+ of our awake time to watch netflix and buy iphones Life is what you make of it. If you want to write…

Who told you that modern manufacturing produces less pollution? It may produce less of some things, but plastic and evergy use is way up in recent years. For example, a modern car has far less recyclable or recycled content than one from the 80s (more plastic, less steel).

On top of that even if we made cars (and other things) less polluting we still use xxx% more than 50 years ago.

I always use the plane engine analogy, 10 years of research gives you a 3% boost in fuel efficiency, during the same time you doubled the number of flights per day ....

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#72

Post by justinboogaard »

lm28469 wrote: post #12
cs702 wrote: post #6

It's not difficult to imagine ultra-efficient warehouses that have no need for physical human labor, within our lifetime. Exciting stuff. But I have to ask: Can this thing fight queen xenomorphs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWJDtVmGenc

Harder to imagine a society in which we have no need for jobs though Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. Automation for the sake of automation doesn't bring much if 70% of the population is still working 8 hours a day 5 days a week on more and more useless tasks. This isn't even talking about the fact that we're increasing productivity per unit of time but never reducing…

I think there are some jobs where the role of the job is to - for lack of time to come up with a better phrase: "help humans struggle with human things".

Yes, a nurse's role is to heal, but also to offer comfort to a patient, a teacher's job is to instruct, but also to try different ways of connecting with a student struggling to understand an idea.

I don't know if people think those types of jobs are bad or not. I think some of my family members would have had better hospital experiences if they could have had more attention from staff, so I don't think I'd call it useless.

I think that automation could lead to a world where more of the humans-dealing-with-human-things types of jobs are being done.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#73

Post by lm28469 »

oflannabhra wrote: post #61
lm28469 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they ? Amazon warehouse workers ? People working in slaughterhouses ? Starbucks "baristas" working 3 jobs at once while they're execs use every trick in the book to avoid taxes and make literal billions in profit ? Min wage people working insane hours to barely afford life ? I'm the condescending condescending one ? They're being shat on by capitalism. I wish only one thing, for their lives to get better. I'm not…

The sheer degree of superiority in your comment is stunning. I worked lots of jobs before my career in coding. Manual, sometime menial work. The fact that you deem me to be a “proud slave”, too stupid to even see my shackles might be the most stunning condescension I’ve heard, and there’s no shortage of it on the internet. There is a fulfillment I still miss in that work. I could see the effect of my work immediately…

I'm not attacking the people losing their life in these work infernos, I'm talking about the system which enslaved them and made them think this was their paradise

> There is a fulfilment I still miss in that work.

What work are you talking about ? Moving boxes of gadgets all day for lord Bezos while being tracked by optimisation software telling you when to pee or take a smoke break ? Slicing chicken breasts 10 hours a day in a slaughter house ? Driving your leased car for uber 12 hours a day to earn a semi decent wage ? Driving a delivery van, working crazy shifts and not being able to take restroom breaks ?

I'm not talking about a guy making hand made wooden tables in his garage enjoying his craft and skills, I'm not talking about a plumber or a mechanic fixing real world problems, I'm talking about human beings used as robots, doing indecent work for indecent wages.

People aren't stupid, they're lied too, since birth

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#74

Post by lm28469 »

philwelch wrote: post #66
lm28469 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the end game of humanity though ? Let's create more bs jobs so that people can continue to afford new shiny gadgets ? > ALWAYS Earth is a finite environment, with finite resources, at some point it won't scale anymore, especially with today's ecological concerns. The world isn't going to run on cells phones and TV shows indefinitely, and even if, I think we should strive for more than that > People just alway…

> Earth is a finite environment, with finite resources, at some point it won't scale anymore, especially with today's ecological concerns. Fortunately we have an entire solar system. That should last us a shocking amount of time.

We're already seeing how we badly impacted earth* not even 200 years after starting to pollute it... I'd like to see how we'll make dead rocks without atmospheres more comfortable than home before we collapse

* literal biological paradise we've been engineered for millions of years to live on

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#75

Post by cmxch »

anyonecancode wrote: post #18
lm28469 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder to imagine a society in which we have no need for jobs though Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy. Automation for the sake of automation doesn't bring much if 70% of the population is still working 8 hours a day 5 days a week on more and more useless tasks. This isn't even talking about the fact that we're increasing productivity per unit of time but never reducing…

> Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy I find myself often making this assumption too, but I wonder if it's warranted? A "shit" job is often shorthand for a job you can grab someone off the street and more or less have them start working, an "unskilled" job. But the fact that pretty much anyone can do a job isn't the same as saying that someone doing a "shit" job is only c…

> I'm quite skeptical of the idea that there's whole classes of people actually _unable_ to learn skills needed for better work

Disability recipients fall into both categories. Some are not trainable for skilled work with current methods, while others are trainable but not desirable (lack of current work history, lack of hard/soft skills that only come from work).

In short, they're getting some training but not getting the work from it. That has to change somehow.

> It seems the barrier is that generally it's not economically beneficial to do so -- training takes time and money.

Seeing that a lot with entry level IT. It is more economical to wait for the unicorn than to train the people that are available.

What would have to happen to change that (short of a miraculous repeat of the late 1990s)?

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#76

Post by philwelch »

lm28469 wrote: post #74
philwelch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Earth is a finite environment, with finite resources, at some point it won't scale anymore, especially with today's ecological concerns. Fortunately we have an entire solar system. That should last us a shocking amount of time.

We're already seeing how we badly impacted earth* not even 200 years after starting to pollute it... I'd like to see how we'll make dead rocks without atmospheres more comfortable than home before we collapse * literal biological paradise we've been engineered for millions of years to live on

But now you’re moving the goalposts a little. If the problem is limited resources, the solar system has a ton of resources, and we can use those resources to improve life on Earth. Eventually we are going to learn how to live in space by managing small habitats there, but as those habitats gradually grow in size and in number we will learn from that and even become better at managing the very large and complex habitat that is the Earth.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#77

Post by j-pb »

amelius wrote: post #48
j-pb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubtful. You need provable security and systems characteristics if you wanted to get approval for a household robot in for example the E.U. Higher cognition and task solving? Sure, we can do that with blackbox methods, but everything where skulls could get crushed, you want, and by law need, the boring stuff.

Meanwhile, Tesla's Autopilot is using deep learning to detect roads, cars, objects and people.

I'm not saying that machine learning isn't capable of doing these things (most of the time). I'm saying there's no way in hell you'll get a non compliant blackbox system past European safety laws.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#78

Post by lm28469 »

philwelch wrote: post #76
lm28469 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're already seeing how we badly impacted earth* not even 200 years after starting to pollute it... I'd like to see how we'll make dead rocks without atmospheres more comfortable than home before we collapse * literal biological paradise we've been engineered for millions of years to live on

But now you’re moving the goalposts a little. If the problem is limited resources, the solar system has a ton of resources, and we can use those resources to improve life on Earth. Eventually we are going to learn how to live in space by managing small habitats there, but as those habitats gradually grow in size and in number we will learn from that and even become better at managing the very large and complex habita…

The goal post was moved when you shifted the discussion from real life to sci-fi...

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#79

Post by crazygringo »

lm28469 wrote: post #49
crazygringo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody said better things require more resources. If anything, modern manufacturing uses far less than it did decades ago, with less pollution, people renting things more than wasteful owning, etc. E.g. when driverless taxis come along, expect to see car manufacturing plummet. > there is more to life than working 50%+ of our awake time to watch netflix and buy iphones Life is what you make of it. If you want to write…

> If anything, modern manufacturing uses far less than it did decades ago, with less pollution, people renting things more than wasteful owning, I don't think we live in the same world then, we've never imported/exported so much shit, third world countries are catching up with the west in term of how they want to live (personal cars, bigger houses, more electronics), we're polluting more than ever, &c. all the metric…

> I don't think we live in the same world then

I was referring to manufacturing per output -- e.g. per-car or per-toaster uses less energy, pollution, etc.

People consuming more or less objects total is a choice people make, not manufacturers.

Re: Boston Dynamics Unveils New Robot for Warehouse Automation

#80

Post by chiefalchemist »

sandworm101 wrote: post #39
chiefalchemist wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Save? Plenty. It means less parking spots, less HR, less toilets, and so on. They don't get ill, don't have good days and bad, they are fully trained the second they start, and so on. The most difficult part of business is the human element. For better or worse these mitigate that. The resources freed up from addressing the human element can focus on other opportunities.

Robots dont get ill? Talk to anyone who maintains complex moving machinery such as aircraft or industrial machines. They have bad days. They have lifespans and old age. Some develop long-term diseases (corrosion). Some even get viruses. They can be down for months, even years, as such faults are corrected.

When was the last time a robot took an employer to court for a slip and fall. Most (warehouse) employers would rather have one FT employee doing robot repairs, than a warehouse filled with humans.

Yes, of course robots aren't indestructible or immortal. But they're still easier to manage than the majority of humans.

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