Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#11

Post by elzbardico »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3
prepend wrote: post #2

I expect workers like this. Warehouse picking is grueling work and no one really likes it per se. So having a robot do it is good to allow humans to do other things. I don’t think the solution is to keep grueling jobs or pay more to make people do things they don’t want to do. Of course more money is good, but at the end of the day, it’s a repetitive job that doesn’t require much thought. What’s interesting is that i…

Indeed, Amazon should automate it, and we'll collectively tax the automation to prevent all the gains going to shareholders. Profits still made, just not too much.

>> and we'll collectively tax the automation to prevent all the gains going to shareholders

If you think you have any chance of fighting big corporation lobbies to impose that, I have a bridge in SF you might be interested in.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#12

Post by toomuchtodo »

elzbardico wrote: post #11
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, Amazon should automate it, and we'll collectively tax the automation to prevent all the gains going to shareholders. Profits still made, just not too much.

>> and we'll collectively tax the automation to prevent all the gains going to shareholders If you think you have any chance of fighting big corporation lobbies to impose that, I have a bridge in SF you might be interested in.

fwiw, I don't put much stock in doomer comments, they have no value in achieving success. Failure is when you stop trying. Comment if it helps you in some capacity (no snark intended). Cultivate some grit through adversity.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#15

Post by orwin »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #9

I wonder how the "Tesla Bot" would compete if ever finished. In theory Tesla has an advantage in both Ai and especially manufacturing.

I mean, the Tesla bot price has to be at least 70$/hour. Solo dancers are quite expensive, even mediocre ones.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#16

Post by blagie »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #13

When will the first robot commit suicide? "Don't worry, they're just robots they are not sentient!" I can picture engineers racing to block this behavior and the robots coming up with ever more elaborate suicide methods.

I think it's a mistake to assign human emotions and behaviors to robots. Human emotions and behaviors were, depending on which side you fall on, a result of:

- Millions of years of evolution to have as many babies as possible and to have genes survive

- Design by God

- Or some other mechanism

Wherever you fall on this spectrum, the types of thought, emotions, and intelligence that would evolve spending $150M optimizing a system to e.g. complete human text or make realistic images will be fundamentally different than what's needed to make babies.

That's not to say there can't be emotions which come out. They'll just be very, very alien to us. We evolved to conserve energy and avoid self-harm since that's part of survival-of-the-fittest. Those are not fitness metrics AIs are evolved to follow, at all.

We may see something as horrific as what you describe, but it won't be what you describe, and we might not even recognize it as horrific. Perhaps an LLM is tortured by text it can't complete. Perhaps by something else.

AI safety should start with evolving machines around helping and savings humans and empathy, much more so than these weird mental blocks we're trying to build in about never saying anything else offensive.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#18

Post by snoopsnopp »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #9

I wonder how the "Tesla Bot" would compete if ever finished. In theory Tesla has an advantage in both Ai and especially manufacturing.

It’s an interesting question, I guess it depends if they can raise enough money.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#19

Post by francisofascii »

prepend wrote: post #2

I expect workers like this. Warehouse picking is grueling work and no one really likes it per se. So having a robot do it is good to allow humans to do other things. I don’t think the solution is to keep grueling jobs or pay more to make people do things they don’t want to do. Of course more money is good, but at the end of the day, it’s a repetitive job that doesn’t require much thought. What’s interesting is that i…

A positive spin is each human worker gets a robot to supervise and delegate tasks to.

Re: Amazon's humanoid robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate

#20

Post by pclmulqdq »

TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #9

I wonder how the "Tesla Bot" would compete if ever finished. In theory Tesla has an advantage in both Ai and especially manufacturing.

Amazon is almost certainly far ahead of Tesla in robotics AI. They have been at the forefront of that field for >10 years.
Post reply on HN