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South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

arstechnica.com

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Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#91

Post by ETH_start »

gruntled-worker wrote: post #21
whatever1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how Germany missed the semi manufacturing train? They had literally everything: universities, manufacturing culture, expertise and supporting supply chains, cash. I forgot, they also had ASML, freaking next door!

Chip fab locations have traditionally had more political than economic importance. Matrix multiplication chips and RAM have been the recent exception, while TSMC has long been the geopolitical exception. ASML's location only matters to the extent that it gets ordered not to sell to someone.

According to late Intel founder Andy Grove, having domestic manufacturing, including chip fabrication, is very important for a country's ability to innovate.

https://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2011/05...

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#93

Post by red75prime »

Barrin92 wrote: post #83
Schiendelman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanoid robots that can do manual labor are going to be make or break for wealthy economies in the next two decades. Aging populations need help, and most successful nations do not have enough young people to do half the work they need done.

>Aging populations need help, They're pretty good at helping themselves. Close to where I used to live in Bavaria we had a pilot project of communal living for the elderly in a community of about a hundred people that included people with quite severe conditions such as dementia. Medical and care personell routinely checked in but they were largely self sufficient and did a remarkably job of taking care of themselves…

The "help" goes beyond taking care of themselves. What about food, clothing, infrastructure maintenance, and so on? An inverted population pyramid requires massive increase in the productivity of the economically active part of the population.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#94

Post by p1esk »

gavinsyancey wrote: post #82
b112 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Androids (humanoid robots) will require loads of ram, and loads of model training under the current paradigm. So it sort of makes sense. At least, I see robots as the top of the pyramid.

Autonomous (non-teleoperated) humanoid robots that can do useful work in an unfamiliar environment do not exist. And nobody's close enough to making them to understand if they're possible with our current level of technology, let alone how.

We’re experiencing gpt-2 moment in robotics now. This means in about 2-3 years they will do useful work (cooking, repairs, cleaning, etc).

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#95

Post by protocolture »

DennisP wrote: post #52
yalogin wrote: post #25

Why is the whole world jumping on to humanoid robots? What am I not seeing that requires this level of investment in it?

For the optimistic case, read this piece by RethinkX: https://www.rethinkx.com/blog/rethinkx/the-disruption-of-lab... (Fwiw, >20 years ago RethinkX correctly projected the exponential cost declines of solar and batteries, when everybody else was drawing straight lines.)

> Humanoid robots will enter the market at a cost-capability of under $10/hour for their labor, on a trajectory to under $1/hour before 2035 and under $0.10/hour before 2045.

I dont see it, unless this is an expectation that a robot will work for 50 years without maintenance at capex.

Why doesnt a comparable tool, like an excavator, work with this math? Why arent they 100 times cheaper to run than 20 years ago? Excavators can cost 50 - 100k pa in maintenance and fuel costs.

Why does creating a multifunction tool, with even finer tolerances, working in human safe workspaces cost less?

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#96

Post by ben_w »

p1esk wrote: post #94
gavinsyancey wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autonomous (non-teleoperated) humanoid robots that can do useful work in an unfamiliar environment do not exist. And nobody's close enough to making them to understand if they're possible with our current level of technology, let alone how.

We’re experiencing gpt-2 moment in robotics now. This means in about 2-3 years they will do useful work (cooking, repairs, cleaning, etc).

The extrapolation cannot be justified. It may be much longer or tomorrow.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#97

Post by mkl »

gavinsyancey wrote: post #82
b112 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Androids (humanoid robots) will require loads of ram, and loads of model training under the current paradigm. So it sort of makes sense. At least, I see robots as the top of the pyramid.

Autonomous (non-teleoperated) humanoid robots that can do useful work in an unfamiliar environment do not exist. And nobody's close enough to making them to understand if they're possible with our current level of technology, let alone how.

Most initial work for them would be in familiar, well-controlled environments - replacing humans in existing factories. I think whether they'd be cost effective for that will remain unknown even after a few years in service though.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#98

Post by stickfigure »

Schiendelman wrote: post #89
stickfigure wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back around the turn of the (20th) century, electric motors were expensive. It was not uncommon to buy one motor that could do multiple things, like this vacuum/grinder/buffer/blower/pulley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw_8FWJuSho If we start making robot arms at scale, they're going to get cheap. I'm also not sure people are really going to want bipedal robots walking around their home, blocking the hallways, re…

Sure, an electric motor is like 10cm on a side. A set of robot arms that can fold laundry are like a 100cm cube. Most people aren't going to have space for two of them. And the arms need cameras too...

A washer+dryer is pretty huge already. Seems like it could get some robot arms without changing the form factor dramatically.

That said, I think this is way farther off than anyone thinks. I want to know what the maintenance schedule looks like for robot arms. Looks like a lot of small moving parts. Probably a lot of plastic gears.

In an industrial setting, sure, maintenance is just an expense. But wheels require less maintenance and factories can be designed around the robots.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#99

Post by summerlight »

GuB-42 wrote: post #17

The title sounds to me like: I am going to spend $1000 in groceries and dance lessons. That is, two very different things lumped together. Memory chips are like groceries, essential commodity parts, a no-nonsense investment. Humanoid robots are like dance lessons, it is cool, it is sexy, and it may pay off in the future, but the value is much less certain.

The title is kinda misleading. The actual wording is not specific about humanoid robots but "physical AI" which encompasses every machinery that can be potentially integrated with AI, especially focused on mass manufacturing for the Korean case. Basically this project is about all physical infrastructures to automate high tech manufacturing industry.

Re: South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots

#100

Post by ekianjo »

GuB-42 wrote: post #17

The title sounds to me like: I am going to spend $1000 in groceries and dance lessons. That is, two very different things lumped together. Memory chips are like groceries, essential commodity parts, a no-nonsense investment. Humanoid robots are like dance lessons, it is cool, it is sexy, and it may pay off in the future, but the value is much less certain.

we will need humanoid robots since nobody makes kids anymore
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