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

Where are the robotic bricklayers?

constructionphysics.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 564 posts

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#261

Post by d0gbread »

notJim wrote: post #134
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, that's just not true. Electricians in Phoenix can break $100k, and they openly tell me about it all the time. The electrician who did my house went from making $40k in his first year to $250k float month-to-month. It makes working in software look like being a peasant out here. Ask me what HVAC companies make in the hottest city in the nation.

Take it up with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are nationwide averages.

Reporting on averages is fine but you've made the mistake of thinking that average is representative of anyone. In all likelihood salaries are not normally distributed around that average, and we'd instead find a low hump (rural) and a high hump (urban, suburban).

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#262

Post by throwawayboise »

Grakel wrote: post #151
Overton-Window wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is the conversion of ambiguous human requirements into machine readable instructions. To automate, computers would need to understand ambiguous human requirements. This is AGI. By comparison, brick laying is trivial.

Mix mortar to the consistency of mashed potatoes and apply gently but thoroughly to two faces of a heavy, but brittle object, then place that brick into a corner with both faces with applied mortar of even thickness touching receiving faces at the same time, no lateral sliding. Press the brick gently into the corner and tap, making sure that it lines up perfectly vertically with a string line and horizontally with th…

And then it starts to rain.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#263

Post by coding123 »

munk-a wrote: post #107
egh wrote: post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

I have done some workplace automation (building support tools to automate away stupid paperwork) and I've never ever felt contempt for the people I'm building tools for. These people do extremely intelligent work and make evaluations on complex scenarios - my tools only help them minimize the silly BS that slows them down, building layered tools on top of poorly designed assistive tools or breaking out greenfield sol…

I don't understand UBI personally. In general it will have the net effect of dropping even more people out of the labor pool. Even with increasing population over the last 50 years the number of people participating is going down. Not as a percentage, but a number.

With that, things like getting a plumber will skyrocket in price.

I mean why should I fix your toilet if I can be at home playing video games right now? I'm going to have a roof over my head and food in my mouth either way.

Current UBI experiments don't have the experience of going 100% of the population, so there's no way to know what will happen.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#264

Post by exporectomy »

dragonwriter wrote: post #213
colordrops wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having respect for the skills of a worker and also believing that they are possible to automate are not mutually exclusive. It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess and chess players, or go and go players, before the problem was solved. And it's not just blue collar workers that are a target of this idea. We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and in…

> We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and into the commercial realm Every step in programming tooling since programs stopped being input as manual hardware configuration has been automation of programming, and its just made more work, and higher paying work, for programmers.

Not the same programmers though nor the same job though. The job of programmer-by-plugging-in-wires was still eliminated.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#265

Post by danielodievich »

egh wrote: post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

My grandfather spent his entire working life after the war in the cement and brick factory, and built 3 houses and various sub-buildings out of brick. Since very young age my brother and I were tasked with helping, starting with just sieving sand via mesh to remove rocks, and then once we got just a bit older and stronger, actually mixing mortar out of cement and sand and carrying the mixture to the job site.

I think I laid my first brick before the age of 9, but first just a couple here and there. Bricks are heavy! I think was 12 when I was given a straight stretch of the wall close to foundation to, and after review of my work I had to take everything apart, it was saggy, uneven and ugly. Eventually I learned to do straight walls, but the corners eluded me until at least a year doing it with very qualified masons coaching. I don't think my joints were ever pretty enough with that lovely groove that some people do, and avoiding mortar onto the brick is devilishly hard.

Where I live there is little brick construction but I love seeing what is there, it is always so pretty.

Based on my experience of the changing by the minute mortar, heavy bricks, continuous looping feedback, I don't believe it is something that will get automated.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#266

Post by afrodc_ »

sudosysgen wrote: post #253
bumby wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can simulate for example driving a car really well. Can you qualify this more specifically? In many domains (particularly safety critical ones) “reasonably well” may not be sufficient

Car simulators are accurate enough that F1 drivers drive more in simulators than in practice laps. They are very accurate. More than well enough to train a model to drive, for example, reasonably fast. Of course the real world is always different even if simply because the conditions are different, so you keep some headroom.

I think this has more to do with cost and convenience more than being a better representation of what it's actually like driving on the extremely varied state of a track. You can see this with the practice laps being extremely important because of the way the tire compositions, weather and car set ups change the dynamic of the cars drastically. The simulators can't replicate this effectively.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#267

Post by afrodc_ »

meowkit wrote: post #248
bumby wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can simulate for example driving a car really well. Can you qualify this more specifically? In many domains (particularly safety critical ones) “reasonably well” may not be sufficient

Self driving hours having a lower incident rate than human drivers. That’s the minimum. Having a 99.9x% success rate (put as many 9s as you desire) is your qualifier and that’s a standard measure in operational uptime.

I've heard the opposite of this in that self driving cars underperform compared to human drivers across the board. The sample size of self driving cars doing everything a driver does is also miniscule. Do you have a source?

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#268

Post by turtlebits »

dragonsky67 wrote: post #130

The question I would have around automated building construction is "why use bricks?". Bricks are great for humans to build with, they are just the right size and weight for the human hand to manipulate and place. They are not optimised for machine manipulation. I would guess that if you wanted to automate construction you would start by making things like walls on an automated production line, then ship the largest…

Agreed. Bricks aren’t great for construction. Not structural, poor R-value, a ton of labor.

Just have concrete poured or stick frame and a fake brick facade. Will probably last longer as well.

Seems like the wrong problem to solve.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#269

Post by [deleted] »

d0gbread wrote: post #261
notJim wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take it up with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are nationwide averages.

Reporting on averages is fine but you've made the mistake of thinking that average is representative of anyone. In all likelihood salaries are not normally distributed around that average, and we'd instead find a low hump (rural) and a high hump (urban, suburban).

[deleted]

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#270

Post by EthanHarv »

coding123 wrote: post #254
colordrops wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having respect for the skills of a worker and also believing that they are possible to automate are not mutually exclusive. It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess and chess players, or go and go players, before the problem was solved. And it's not just blue collar workers that are a target of this idea. We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and in…

Are we sure that the ML experts that wanted to beat real human chess players actually respected them? Wouldn't they know that at some point the enjoyment of chess itself might fade if the best in the world is a computer? Maybe chess is having a moment right now due to Netflix, perhaps maybe it's a permanent upswing. But long term, I don't know if it will remain interesting to people.

I personally doubt chess will fade. As far as I can tell, the enjoyment of high-level chess is less to do with reaching objective perfection, rather it's more the "thrill" of seeing a _human_ who has poured their life into the pursuit of improving their game. It doesn't really matter that a computer can beat them, we care about them because people like seeing other people's talents.

And on a casual level, nothing changes if the best in the world is a human or computer, so the casual player isn't particularly affected.

Post reply on HN