[Endama]

I think robots have an uncanny-valley effect not just in aesthetics, but utility. For example, I actually really like my roomba because it only does one thing: it cleans my floor (when it doesn't get tangled in some cord). However, if there was a humanoid robot that can walk around and possibly knock over something or do something unexpected, I don't want that thing in my house. What prevents some hacker to compromise the robot and have it stab me in my sleep?

Another example is Alexa/Google Home. Some people love the convenience these in-home services provide, but others find the utility itself a liability: is this thing always listening to me and recording me in my home? The robots can do too much, they have too many functions and abilities, which makes me question the intent of the robot.

For robotics to really take off, I think there needs to be a kind of anthropomorphization that needs to happen: the utility of the robot must be high enough that I know that it understands my intention and can respond accordingly; that is to say, that I can have a relationship with my robot.

[jpm_sd]

I 100% disagree with your conclusion. People don't want robot buddies, they want dishwashers. And dishwasher equivalents for other household tasks.

[soared]

People probably made that claim about a ton of other things which turned out false. The best example is music discovery, older generations might've thought "I want to pick my own music, there is no a way a computer could know what I like". But then show them Spotify's discover weekly and they discover 10 songs a week that they live.

[pasabagi]

I think Dijkstra made a point that when somebody sees something new, they try to project something they know onto it - so with computers, the first thing people tried to do was make machines that thought like people- a project that's still bearing very little fruit. In the meantime, the things you could do really well with computers, like discrete maths, have been fabulously useful.

I suspect robots are a bit like that. They make very poor substitutes for people. But, they can do a lot of stuff ('dishwashers', for example), that are basically orthogonal to what people do, but reduce workload immensely.

[ghaff]

Nah. Older generations aka me listened to the radio which is just a much cruder form of discovery. You pick a station or stations that appeal to your tastes and let the DJ do the rest.

[mynameisvlad]

There's still a difference between hand-curated content and algorithmically generated ones. People have trust in others, people are less likely to trust code.

[tjr]

A couple of weeks ago, I heard on the radio a program, something like, "The Frugal DJ", wherein all of the music played came off of records that the host had obtained for cheap. Like, $1 albums at garage sales.

It was interesting.

[misterprime]

>People have trust in others

A history of mafia men shoveling cash and threats to DJs has me convinced otherwise.

There is/was big money to be made getting your song played on the radio and that system is/was gamed pretty hard.

[gowld]

The average person has no idea whether the content on the radio is human generated (by what human? a corporate marketing department!) or algorithmically generated.

[wpietri]

People make all sorts of bad predictions in both directions, so the fact that some people were wrong on this doesn't say much about other claims. But if one is looking for a statistically safe bet, "people don't want proposed idea X" is a pretty good one. Most ideas don't work out.

[tokyodude]

Sadly I keep getting told that but have yet to find any music service that actually figures out what I like. My fiction is that you have to like one of 5 or 10 mainstream styles or you have to not be picky.

I put in Prince and Spotify gives me rap. Prince has nothing to do with wrap. I put in Pizzicato 5 and Spotify gives me J-POP. Pizzicato 5 has nothing to do with J-Pop. I put in a dance tune from a popular western pop band and Spotfiy gives me ballads from popular western pop bands when what I wanted was more dance tunes.

I've never had Spotify or Apple Music or Youtube Music work ever.

Even their own playlists don't work. I tried playing "Morning Pickup" and first 2 songs are super depressing.

[imtringued]

Last time I used Spotify's discover weekly is was completely useless. The recommendations consisted of mostly the same super specific sub genre of music with zero variety that I don't like at all.

[atomical]

So if a human was given a choice of a robot that made dinner and washed dishes and a robot that lets them check the temperature and play despacito to their hearts content they would choose the latter? I'm not buying it.

There are so many gains to be made with real robotics.

[bduerst]

I.e. Nobody would admit to wanting an camera+phone+email device before the first iPhone was released.

[ergothus]

Give me a smartphone: "This is great, I don't need a watch!"

Give me a smart watch: "This is great, I don't need to pull my phone out!"

Predicting what people will/won't like seems like black magic to me, with after-the-fact efforts to diagnose why "obviously" people did/did not love something somehow only works in hindsight.

I'm not saying the idea of finding something useful and making money providing it is broken, only that pushing the boundaries is inherently unpredictable, because we aren't terribly logical (or at least have a lot of variables at play)

[gowld]

> Give me a smartphone: "This is great, I don't need a watch!"

Who ever said that, and why didn't those people carry pocketwatches?

[jacobolus]

> Who ever said that?

When I was a kid in the 90s, my impression was that most adults wore cheap quartz wristwatches. 25 years later, their kids have grown up but instead of wearing watches just carry phones around, because the smartphone is a good enough time-keeper.

Obviously many people still wear wristwatches, and the same type of people who wore watches as status-marking jewelry 20 years ago probably still do today. But wristwatches are no longer necessary for telling time, as pretty much everyone carries a smartphone everywhere they go. For most people the additional convenience of having the watch on the wrist isn’t worth carrying an extra device, at least not all of the time.

[ergothus]

I did. Digital watches were cool! But then then were bulky blocks of plastic on my wrist, and when I was carrying a phone anyway I did away with the watch.

Years later I got the original Pebble, and while it was great for seeing who was calling me or getting a quick text, or banishing phantom buzz...my primary use was to check the time.

[ghaff]

Lots of people did/do. Smartphones added enough functionality that they became worth carrying around. It's not that they wanted to carry something around but smartphones made it worth it. And, once you have a clock with you at all times, why do you need a watch?

(To be clear, I've always liked having a watch on my wrist but then I grew up with one.)

[photojosh]

I had a Palm Treo, 3 years before the iPhone. Even had TomTom installed for GPS mapping. It was rubbish at all of those things compared to today's devices, but I could see the potential.

[wpietri]

In the short term, I agree. People buy products that solve problems. The human body is not the ideal robotic template for almost any kind of work. The Roomba is excellent proof of that.

But in the long term, I think primate tendency toward dominance means that there's a significant market for people who want to boss around things that can be perceived as other people. I doubt many people want robot buddies, but I'd bet there's quite a market for what are in effect robot slaves.

On the one hand, that seems pretty squicky to me. But on the other, if it keeps them from trying to reduce the freedom of other humans, then godspeed.

[Endama]

I'm saying that if folks out there want robots to become more human-like, they need to be more human-like in intent as well as function. My original statement is effectively agreeing with you that people don't want robot buddies [right now].

[7373737373]

A few of us over at https://letsrobot.tv would strongly disagree

People have lived with their human-controlled robots for months, some even took them shopping. While some stuff got broken, it can be a very engaging experience.

[Loughla]

I think that people want both, but not in the same machine. Having a robot buddy that washes the dishes and cleans your room is too close to having a slave for most people to stomach.

[VLM]

My 14 year old roomba has algorithms that are dumber than all livestock I can think of; my pet tropical fish exhibit better path finding abilities when I feed them. When the roomba unintelligently, yet effectively, cleans my room I do not feel any danger of human anthropomorphism.

Much like airplanes are not imitations of birds, its unlikely household robots will be mistaken for human slaves. A lot of time was wasted in the development years of heavier than air flight by trying to poorly imitate birds using machines.

[whatshisface]

>Having a robot buddy that washes the dishes and cleans your room is too close to having a slave for most people to stomach.

Where do you get this idea? Decades of TV shows indicate that people would love to have a robot servant.

[rhizome]

Where do you draw the line? Is an electric can-opener with automatic shut-off slavelike?

[corndoge]

Sounds like you 100% agree with the conclusion

[eloisant]

I agree - and as a robotics researchers working on humanoid robots told me, if the robot looks too human, users will be reluctant to treat it as a slave and order it around; they'll feel bad about and want to be nice to the robot.

Whereas you never feel bad for making an appliance work 24/7, or to ask your dishwasher to start his work at 11pm.

[Jyaif]

The fix is obvious... make the robot look sad when it's not doing anything, and happy when it is doing something.

[atomical]

Alexa doesn't solve 99.9% of housework. I want a robot to make me meals and clean the house. Checking the temperature and listening to music isn't revolutionary.

[ghaff]

That’s the general problem with smarthome stuff. Turning lights on and off is not actually high on my list of tasks I don’t want to do. Those that are like laundry are partly aided by specialized robots. Others like the lawn, shoveling, cleaning, etc. are addressed by either paying people or doing them myself.

[x0x0]

I wouldn't mind a robot that unloads the dishwasher.

The problem is I can get a maid that scrubs my apartment 2x a month for under $200/mo, approx $2k/year. So that sets a very harsh price ceiling on assistance robots.

[bhaak]

Depends. I would pay more for a non human being to do so.

It means I can leave my dirty underwear on the floor without being judged.

[gowld]

The only person judging you is yourself.

[bhaak]

That could very well be true but it doesn't change the fact that I'm being judged.

Many people pay lots of money for getting rid of personal inconveniences.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Yes, I was just thinking the other day why can't more robots be like Roomba. It does its task well in a way that enriches my life and makes it easier. Maybe it is because its task is really simple, although it was designed really well also. I specifically live in a house with all hard floors so it can do its job for me, which is kind of interesting. I molded myself around what the robot is most capable of.

[patall]

Wasn't it iRobot that wanted to sell your floor plan (and other household information) to other companies?

[Jhsto]

Other manufacturers as well, which for Xiaomi[0] include: logfiles (syslogs, stats, Wi-Fi credentials) and floorplans.

[0]: https://dgiese.scripts.mit.edu/talks/

[colanderman]

I think this is true of any tool (in my experience, software). "Smart" tools are not useful. Predictable tools are.

[gameswithgo]

when I last had a roomba many years ago I spent as much time picking hair/strings out of the rollers as I would have just vacuuming with a normal vaccuum. Has this improved?

[crazysim]

I think they have tangle free rollers nowadays. Haven't tried them yet though.