I don't think this is solely tied to car manufacturing automation. Even though Hyundai Motor Group is acquiring them, I would imagine they'd be well-positioned to commercialize general-purpose robotics and not just for car manufacturing, if Tesla is anything to go by. I do think this might be tied to South Korea's demographics, by 2040 the working-age population is projected to decline 25% from 2020 and keep declinin…
Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
391–400 of 431 posts
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's got to be something wrong at the core of BD. They've been pawned off a bunch of times, and they still don't have products out the factory line like they should. I think the tech community has been impressed by their videos, but the fact that their most sold thing is a toy dog at a luxury car price point says a lot about the company. My personal take is that one of the reasons is their posture against ML. They…
>> There's got to be something wrong at the core of BD. They've been pawned off a bunch of times, Well...there is the uncanny similarity to the T-800 and and uneasy realization that the owner of BD could become Cyberdyne Systems IRL. Perhaps some companies like that notoriety but not sure if many want that. https://terminator.fandom.com/wiki/T-800
They already are Cyberdyne Systems IRL?
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is Boston Dynamics makes actual robots, which are much more limited than robots constructed from pure hype.
> If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money! Being less cynical, I do think it’s fair to say that they…
For anyone not familiar with the reference: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#394Back in December 2020, Hyundai purchased an 80% controlling interest in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for $880 million, part of a transaction that valued the robotics company at $1.1 billion. That agreement included a put option allowing SoftBank to sell its remaining stake to Hyundai at a later date. SoftBank has now exercised that option.
SoftBank’s investment plays have largely been comically wrong. This is a good hint that robots are really about to take off.
Humanoid (or dogoid) robot hardware on its own offers no benefits over non-humanoid factory machines. It just has fancy firmware controlling its motions.
Humanoid robots loaded with an AI agent, on the other hand, could actually make you a sudo sandwich, do your laundry, or help you with that weekend project in the backyard. They're finally about to get useful.
I'm not a fan of humanoid robots personally (they creep me out), but I'd love to have a functional R2-D2 with me.
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#395Back in December 2020, Hyundai purchased an 80% controlling interest in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for $880 million, part of a transaction that valued the robotics company at $1.1 billion. That agreement included a put option allowing SoftBank to sell its remaining stake to Hyundai at a later date. SoftBank has now exercised that option.
Oh. It's Softbank exiting humanoid robotics at Softbank's discretion. That's a lot different than " Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics". Hyundai bought them years ago. This is just the last 8%.
Why is SoftBank getting out now when every VC is all about "embodied AI"?
Seems like the only companies VCs want to fund now are robotics, energy, and chips. That "software AI" has had its run.
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Now I just don’t know the source unless I dig myself. Claude includes links to references.
What's a problem though is that while it includes a reference, its distillation from the source, or worse, from the combination of sources, is often plain wrong. I check them regularly, and it made me very distrustful of Claude's capacity to faithfully summarise or explain from a source. When asked to give specific links, it's usually even worse.
I don’t disagree. Many times when I’ve checked the source links a language model provides, I get concerned. It’s definitely important to stay vigilant and exercise critical thinking, but the model’s ability to synthesize information and converse with it in natural language still blows my mind sometimes
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money! Being less cynical, I do think it’s fair to say that they…
now imagine atlas with depleted uranium armor plates, 120 5.56 rounds (99.7% accuracy), and whatever specific equipment for an individual operator role spot as a ground recon unit that works with drones in the air that create 3d plan of attack instead of sending elite human and dog operators in first, a squad of 4 atlas, 2 spots, and 4 drones is deployed the human teams move in second, close behind also do people rea…
So you think replacing humans on the battlefield with human shaped robots...why? It makes no sense in the same way that humans on a car production line are not replaced by human shaped robots, instead by far stronger, far more capable, far faster robots designed for purpose, not mimicry. There's nothing about a battlefield that makes it a good use case for human shaped robots.
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money! Being less cynical, I do think it’s fair to say that they…
now imagine atlas with depleted uranium armor plates, 120 5.56 rounds (99.7% accuracy), and whatever specific equipment for an individual operator role spot as a ground recon unit that works with drones in the air that create 3d plan of attack instead of sending elite human and dog operators in first, a squad of 4 atlas, 2 spots, and 4 drones is deployed the human teams move in second, close behind also do people rea…
>also do people really want humanoid robots at home?
For the right price and capabilities? Sure. I pay various people to do things around the house. Replacing those people with a humanoid robot is probably a big ask. But I'd certainly consider it if possible and cost-effective.
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those robot dogs have been looking amazing for as long as I can think. What's in the way of the big military contract?
In Ukraine they are using tracked autonomuous vehicles for the same tasks. Much cheaper.
It is remarkable how rarely alternative movement styles like slug crawling, flying or rolling get used in the animal kingdom to move around compared to 2-8 legs. If a company can figure out how to do legs and manufacture them cheaply I expect there'd a be a lot of money in that; they must have some sort of practical advantage somewhere in warefare.
Although the tracked drones we see starting to appear in war are terrifying and I'd rather not be on the receiving end of them.
Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's more that Space X's valuation is ridiculous, and they need acquisitions that are ridiculous to pretend that the emperor is still wearing clothes. When cursor is selling for $60B, then grok has to really be worth several times that, right?
It's probably a bit of both. Space X is overvalued, and so is Cursor. It's easier for Space X to justify buying Cursor for $60B than it would be for other, because it's a rounding error compared to Space X's valuation. I haven't tried Cursor, and I'm sure it's a perfectly good IDE, but given that JetBrains was valued at $7B in 2021 [1] $60B seems rather high. 1) https://servreality.com/news/jetbrains-startup-valued-a…
How far we have come that 60B could be considered a rounding error for a company