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An electric new era for Atlas

bostondynamics.com

391–400 of 443 posts

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#391

That first video of the bot standing from the floor and turning towards the camera one joint at a time does something strange to the uncanny valley horror movie part of my brain.

At first look, it reminded me of the "Supervisor" robots from "Budget Cuts": https://budget-cuts.fandom.com/wiki/Supervisor

Reminds me of The One Electronic from Rice Boy

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#394
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you materially affect a half-century old internal combustion engine? Sure. Can you do so after decades of miniaturization/optimization, to make it as efficient as they are today? Mobiles are similar, they are filled to the brim with various electronics, connected together into a huge mash. why would you even expect to fix that?

OK so why don't these companies let the users try? If you are right, they won't be able to do it anyway, so no harm done. Why do companies use every technical and legal trick in the book to prevent people from even trying? It's obviously about what makes the company more money.

Because even if individual users can't, the nerds a few blocks over can and they're charging half price.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#395
post #344
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you understand how hard it is to retool and rearrange a factory.

I’m saying if you have a collection of humanoids and general purpose tooling, you can adapt much faster. I don’t literally mean retool a conventional production line in one night

So basically just robots with tools? It might work.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#396
post #67

I wonder if you could send a robot to the store to buy cigarettes in the UK, or indeed the robot may decide it wants to buy cigarettes. "Sorry we can't sell cigarettes to anyone born after 2009, or robots".

If we're sending these robots to buy cigarettes at the store, then we've failed horribly

These robots will be available to buy within our lifetime. Look at the nicely designed power button on the back with blue light ring. They are preparing for consumers.

An elderly relative of mine has smoked his whole life. He admits it's bad but won't stop regardless of pressure from family. He enjoys the routine and the quiet moment. He would absolutely send his robot to buy cigarettes if possible. Nobody else in the family wants to buy them.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#397
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self replicating humanoid robots sound like I should start researching the building of electromagnetic weaponary for the coming war.

In theory, what's the best way to take out a robot like Atlas (or next year's more advanced military model)? It seems like they could be made electromagnetically shielded, waterproof, bulletproof, etc. Maybe just armor piercing rounds fired in the right spot? A net? A special taser? A paintball to it's main cameras? Cover it in some gluey substance?

Bullet resistant. Nothing is bulletproof against a big enough gun.

https://youtu.be/I5MQNf1oeyQ?si=CR3X0C76qFgEoLza

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#398

As we enter an era of wide scale robotic deployment, we need to think long and hard about what the maintenance bottleneck will look like. We need to advocate now for reliable and open upgrades, replacement parts, service documentation, and diagnostics. Right to repair will be even more important for this technology than autos or general computing.

Never mind right to repair, of all the advancements, maintaining the new machines has always been the obvious new job that gets created. We created the loom and fired everybody? Well now there's a loom engineer job waiting for (some) of you. What happens to society when, instead of having a robot-fixing job, the robots can fix themselves? AGI is a distraction; much like the Turing test turned out to be the wrong test…

Seeing "no more jobs" in the "worry" list is surprising. State pensions exist, and the only reason the pension ages are rising is not enough workers to pay for them; having so many robot workers that there is no demand for human labour* would lower the "pension" age down to zero, AKA "UBI".

* which definitely requires human level general AI at fairly low electrical power demand

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a hypothetical deployment but it's reasonable to expect. These robots will be very valuable, and everyone will want one. It's not going to become a housemaid in a few years. But will they be making car parts? Almost certainly. Moravec's paradox is still in play, but advancement in AI chips will slowly overcome it.

> But will they be making car parts? Almost certainly. What can humanoid robots making car parts do, that the already-existing and already widely deployed robots making car parts can't?

Without knowing the specifics, that would be whichever things prevented Tesla from being run as a lights-out factory already.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#400
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan, the country whose GDP hasn't grown in 30 years, has 0 major tech companies, still uses fax machines for everything, and has numerous stagnant, conglomerates/trusts/monopolies, does capitalism really well? I feel like this comment comes from another planet.

How are you thinking about the application of capitalism and capitalism more generally? Here is the definition I'm working from: "private ownership of capital and means of production meets market competition, driving resource efficiency, innovation, and maximizing profit while respond to consumer demand resulting in GDP growth." If you take that definition then look at the last 100 years, only 4 names come up: Japan,…

UK, (West) Germany, Canada.

These graphs don't go back 100 years, but they do show fairly similar growth.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=canada%20gdp%20per%20ca...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=uk%20gdp%20per%20capita...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=germany%20gdp%20per%20c...

Compared with Japan:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=japan%20gdp%20per%20cap...

Only South Korea is the stand-out here:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=south%20korea%20gdp%20p...

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