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Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

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Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#191
post #77

These robots look slow and not very fluid in their motions, but LLMs like ChatGPT also looked very dumb initially. If progress is as fast as LLMs , this could have massive applications in a few years.

The time between gpt 2 and 3 was 15 months. The time between gemini robotics 1 and 2 was also 15 months: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/gemini/h... The difference between gpt 2 and 3 was insane. 2 could generate limericks when it wasn't repeating a word 300x. 3 could actually do some things. By comparison gemini robotics has hardly changed at all. I will also point out that slow, non-fluid roboti…

Even being able to simply do the task isn't enough here. It also has to do the task while also never, ever, ever accidentally folding your toddler as though it were a towel. Having industrial-strength robots around inherently unpredictable humans in a fail-safe way is an extremely difficult problem that will not be addressed any time soon.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#192
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a twice-monthly house-cleaning service is running you ballpark 5k/year and people treat that shit as non-negotiable. I tried to claw back that line item after our second baby was born (wife didn't want them in the house anyway when we had a newborn), and it was completely unsuccessful. She claimed misery and all our friends were on her side. So the lifestyle stayed inflated.

> ballpark 5k/year How big is your house? When we had a cleaning lady it was $70 a go. Under $2000 for every second week.

2500 finished square feet in a MCOL east coast metro (Baltimore).

Wondering if you're closer to the southern border or something.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want a person I don't know very well in my space. That aside: if I'm lucky enough to find a person who's good and reliable, they might move away, switch jobs etc. It has all the headaches that come with hiring and managing someone, because, well, it is exactly that... If I don't want to be a manager at work (been there done that, happy to let others do it and get the raise that comes along with it), I sure as…

You'd need to manage the robot, too, I would think. In my experience, I rather manage people than machines.

I prefer machines

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#195

I think the biggest snag with home robots will be that if it is strong enough to install your air conditioners, it's strong enough to break your ribs. So the robots will need to be weak, so even weak people can overpower it. But then it loses a ton of it's most promising abilities. I don't mean this like a "rogue robot" situation. I mean it like the robot gets confused, or someone sees a walking $10M lawsuit in their…

I think that people will argue around that. Self-driving cars are already strong enough to kill people and even if you only made the robot strong enough to lift 15 pounds of weight, that's probably strong enough to slit someone's throat with a kitchen knife while they sleep... There probably isn't a level of strength that's weak enough to be completely safe but strong enough to be useful.

So at some point you have to trust that the tech is safe. Both in terms of "robot won't go off the rails", but also in terms of hostile actors can't remotely take over your robot while you sleep.

In terms of sleeping, personally, I would like for the law to mandate that robots must have a physical off switch, in a very visible location, that physically disconnects power. The switch should be illuminated while in the ON position. What makes me a bit pessimistic there is that we don't even have laws to mandate webcam indicator lights (e.g. a very tiny red LED) must be ON in hardware.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#197
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I love this kind of optimized-for-Xitter drive-by market analysis. Very 2026.

I like how someone can ignore that DeepMind invented AlphaFold, while OpenAI and Anthropic have zero experience shipping AI protein folding.

This entire industry might be hopelessly tribalist, nowadays.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point why not have a human cleaning service it will probably be cheaper

it's not cheap at all and the privacy and logistical implications of letting a stranger inside your house is something not everyone wants to deal with. I would rather have a robot.

I don't trust a robot with my privacy, but I know Linette isn't building a profile of my shopping habits and Wi-Fi traffic. She is also careful to not let my cats out.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#199
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure. I think house cleaning/chores require at least a "part-time" job's work of work for the average household (especially with children). We may be atypical, but my partner and I don't want to hire out a cleaning service and deal with the whole human component. But, I think we'd gladly pay 15k+ if it allowed us to take on the additional gainful workload. Even at a 20k price tag, I suspect we would likely ha…

If you can even afford 20K you're in the top 10% of the US population. It's not a very big market, and even selling to that market is hard. Probably only 10% of that 10% will actually buy, and all of a sudden you're selling to 1%. Selling to businesses is much easier, 99% of businesses can afford 200K if it replaces 3 x 70K humans.

Most people finance vehicles that cost much more than 20K.

I'd gladly pay or finance a robot that could have dishes clean, laundry folded, and carpets vacuumed by the time our family got home.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#200
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have Google, Figure, Tesla, Boston Dynamics, and literally dozens of Chinese companies building humanoid robots and making huge improvements in the tech. Not there yet by any means as a general-purpose home assistant, but I don't think it will be too surprising if at least one of them succeeds

It will take a while before humanoids become useful. You can speed it up with extreme amounts of investment but it still wouldn’t be soon.

I'd say 10 years before they're a luxury item, if you look at what has progressed in the past 10 years it's been massive
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