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Our First Generalist Policy

physicalintelligence.company

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Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#111

Post by int_19h »

bamboozled wrote: post #46
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this feeling... wouldn't you want to play soccer like Messi? Or play guitar like Hendrix? (etc..). There can be pleasure in being a spectator, but being a performer, at least to me, is 1000 times more fulfilling. I don't care if someone else can do it, even a robot... I want to do that myself! A society with more space for personal ambitions and less need to hustle for food sounds great to me.

I know all this, it's basic common sense, but when you REALLY think about what you're saying, it's still strange. Likely a humanoid robot will be able to play guitar 1000x better than hendrix, then what's the point in you becoming as good as Hendrix, so you can play guitar for yourself in your basement? The difference between today and the future is, today there are still things humans can do better than machines and…

A robot today can play most video games much better than I do, which is why we have that whole anti-cheat thing for aimbots etc.

Why do people still play video games? And not only that, but do crazy stuff like speedruns or self-imposed limitations that make it borderline impossible to win?

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#112

Post by chrischen »

trhway wrote: post #105
erulabs wrote: post #99

It almost feels easier to disassemble and resew the shirt from recycled fabric. I’m mostly joking, but my point is that physical AI probably implies a complete rethink of every individual routine from first principles: why fold the shirt at all? Why not just-in-time-ironing? We’re focusing on the hard problems because we’re imitating how a human with limited resources would approach the issue. If you asked a robot to…

>we’re imitating how a human with limited resources would approach the issue in particular the robots with only 2 hands when it could be 3 or 4 and not necessarily the same - say 3 of the same from 3 directions in the horizontal plane and one from above, with probably different "fingers". More hands allows say pipelining the tasks execution, like staged clothes holding or shooting an RPG while one of the hands alread…

> that seems already underway, with Uber[Eats] drivers being the "robots".

One of the primary benefits of automation is actually a reduction of costs. Uber eats did reduce delivery costs a bit, but probably not to the same order of magnitude true automation could achieve. Historically, you could always "automate" by having some guy do it, but the difference between having a bunch of people copy a book and a mechanical printing press do it is revolutionary.

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#113

Post by forgetfreeman »

prettyStandard wrote: post #23
tonygrue wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts are a few: There is a lot of undone labor in the world. In developing countries the middle class has drivers, cooks, housekeepers. That’s only possible due to inequality. With automation we can all get that. These people with tons of help by and large live fulfilled lives. You find fulfillment in family, friendships, and non necessary creation (art, research, etc); whatever makes you happy. But most of al…

No health problems if there's no people to have them.

Additionally issues around global carbon footprints quickly become tractable when you eliminate the bulk of humanity.

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#114

Post by forgetfreeman »

torlok wrote: post #94
bamboozled wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm into woodworking and carpentry, I don't usually don't hire carpenters because they'll do a better job than me I hire them because I don't have the time to do the job myself.

Fair, but how will robots change that?

Ostensibly there won't be any carpenters to hire because they've all been bankrupted by automated contractor services. This seems like a pretty big change to me.

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#115

Post by forgetfreeman »

golol wrote: post #26
bamboozled wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was down voted before for asking a similar question, I have no idea what the plan is but I struggle to understand what the future looks like when we literally have nothing to do. Why would I even bother with a hobby when a robot can do everything 10x better? Maybe just "enjoy nature" would be the best bet if we survive the robot wars.

Inbetween the current world full of labor scarcity, and the philosophical dilemma "what do I even do" post-scarcity utopia, is a world similar to our current one with much less labor scarcity and much more quality of life. That's what we're aiming for right now. What comes afterwards we can worry about then.

Quality of life for who, though? That's kind of the point of all this back and forth isn't it? Because if prior examples are anything to go on the likeliest outcome is we're talking about further increasing QoL for a small minority of individuals who least need it at the expense of basically everyone else.

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#116

Post by Nevermark »

int_19h wrote: post #107
Nevermark wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What stops “the poor” from continuing to have a thriving economy on their own There can be a large class of poor, but it still be cheaper for a poor person to get their goods & services (as they can) from the corporations with the automation to provide them for a fraction of the cost, and of higher quality, than someone without capital can. When poor people get money, they want whatever technology and services the…

> There can be a large class of poor, but it still be cheaper for a poor person to get their goods & services (as they can) from the corporations with the automation to provide them for a fraction of the cost, and of higher quality, than someone without capital can. But why would the corporations (or rather, their owners) even bother to do that, once robots are producing everything? And what would the poor buy those…

> And what would the poor buy those robot-made goods and services with?

Nothing or very little.

My point is that when labor is handled by automation, the poor won’t be able to create their own economy, even though they have nothing to offer and are excluded from the economy of the rich.

It sounds like we have the same understanding.

Even if a poor person (in this scenario) does get any money somehow, or anything of tradable value, it will go right back to the rich.

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#117

Post by Nevermark »

visarga wrote: post #109
ryandrake wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If robotics and AI are doing all the work, what are the former workers going to do for money? Nothing. They won’t have money. It’s not like the rich will have 1e6 x the poor. The poor will have nothing at all. The future is a tiny elite leisure class with all the wealth and property and access to robotics and automation that does all the work for them and a huge underclass with nothing, nothing to do, and no access t…

> a huge underclass with nothing, nothing to do, and no access to that automation Why do you think the poor won't have AGI in their pockets and robots as well? If we look at how LLMs are evolving, they become easier to run on edge, and there are so many of them being pushed out every day. Costs for robotic hardware are also going down fast. Intelligence is free to have, unlike UBI. And robots can build robots, or mak…

If someone doesn’t have a job that pays, how do they get those things?

I.e. destitute and homeless people do manage to creatively scrounge. But now imagine millions or billions of destitute people with no hope of a paying job. What are they going to scrounge in that context?

Jobs are a critical ingredient to people buying those common things with the rich.

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#118

Post by stoperaticless »

p1esk wrote: post #100
Uehreka wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net worth of over $1 million is rich. An extremely small number of people have that much money. Those people will probably be fine, though if you’re in that $1-10million zone you could be at risk of running out of money eventually if you don’t end up being one of the people owning the automation.

1% of world population have more than $1M. That will be almost 100M people globally. I don’t see how you can own anything substantial (eg datacenter, power plant, factory, etc) if you have less than 100M net worth, hence my original question.

So you can own whole percent of something substantial.

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#119

Post by jack_pp »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #38
virgildotcodes wrote: post #15

I wonder at the long term vision for humanity. We have AI replacing a lot of art, writing, coding, etc. We have a bunch of robotics companies racing to replace physical human labor. Waymo and Tesla replacing drivers. What role do the majority of people realistically play in this world?

Basic universal income makes sense to me. I imagine a society where everyone is free to create art or relax in hammocks all day. A basic universal income would not be enough to fund world travel, your fav consumer items, or ambitious projects, so I don't foresee it causing an intellectual meltdown in society as some fear-monger (As an aside: I speculate people afraid of this may likely be the actual lazy members of o…

As someone who has enough passive income to live with my parents indefinitely without having to work more than 10 hours a month this view is ignoring the access we have to cheap gratification and escapism. If people didn't need to work I suspect a large portion of the population will feel depressed, without a purpose and will waste their life getting whatever convenient pleasure they can afford on that basic income (doom scrolling, Netflix, video games)

Re: Our First Generalist Policy

#120

Post by TylerE »

erulabs wrote: post #99

It almost feels easier to disassemble and resew the shirt from recycled fabric. I’m mostly joking, but my point is that physical AI probably implies a complete rethink of every individual routine from first principles: why fold the shirt at all? Why not just-in-time-ironing? We’re focusing on the hard problems because we’re imitating how a human with limited resources would approach the issue. If you asked a robot to…

That could just as easily be turned on it's head too - if you don't need skilled (or any) staff to shop, cook, serve, and then washup, why would you ever NOT eat at home?

Especially if it can operate very quietly, one fairly slow robot could do probably all the housework, and could do it at night when it's literally out of sight and out of mind. It would feel like magic. You'd wake up every morning to a clean house and hot breakfast.

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