[ZhuanXia]

Gwern on the luck of the last mover:

"Launching too early means failure, but being conservative & launching later is just as bad because regardless of forecasting, a good idea will draw overly-optimistic researchers or entrepreneurs to it like moths to a flame: all get immolated but the one with the dumb luck to kiss the flame at the perfect instant, who then wins everything, at which point everyone can see that the optimal time is past."

Robotics has been a money pit for startups and corporations for a long time. Think of the billions Toytoa has spent on home robotics research, to little avail.

But at some point it won't be. Some entity will "kiss the flame" at the right movement. The wealth they create will be beyond any company ever, by an almost incomparable margin.

[dang]

Please put quotation marks around a quote, so we can know what's the quote and what's not! I've added them to your comment now, based on https://www.gwern.net/Timing. It's good to link to the source of a quote too. (Your comment was fine otherwise.)

[hinkley]

I worked at a startup that was trying to do what the Apple Store did for mobile about 4 years before that. They got little traction and ended up selling to a cellphone manufacturer.

The next startup after that, the boss was very excited to have competitors, because without them you are alone in trying to validate that sector. Competition means people are voting with their feet and wallets that you are, if not right, at least not wrong.

It kind of felt like I understood him on a level many of my coworkers did not.

But you're describing kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. When there are too many people, you have no control over the narrative. If you are surrounded by idiots, you get painted with the same brush.

And now that I'm thinking about it, it would even be tenuous for you to buy up your more clue-ful competitors because combining forces may improve your narrative but now it's one voice instead of two. That's a new wrinkle in the post-hype consolidation pattern that I hadn't considered before.

[carapace]

Part of the problem is that the popular conception of robots tends to be a kind of fetish. What I mean is, the things that are easy for robots to do are already addressed. You can buy off-the-shelf robots that work really well. They're not cheap though.

But those don't look like "robots", they look like arms with tools on the end of them.

The kind of humanoid servant robot from books and movies, however, is still pretty much fictional. The required capabilities are mostly really hard, even after you factor in the recent advances in ML et. al.

I remember when Sony made that little humanoid robot that danced. I was like, "Big deal! I like to dance. Make a robot that does the dishes."

- - - -

To make it big with robots (per se as opposed to just building an automated factory, or toys) you have to find the economic niches.

[DuskStar]

> But those don't look like "robots", they look like arms with tools on the end of them.

> I was like, "Big deal! I like to dance. Make a robot that does the dishes."

From these comments, I think you're missing a really huge category of robots - appliances. Why does a dishwasher or laundry machine not qualify as a robot, after all?

[carapace]

I sometimes do call them robots, but you could exclude them on the basis of lack of mobility, or, better yet, lack of decision making. (Although a friend of mine has a laundry dryer with a moisture sensor.)

In a sense, anything with a PID controller or even just a governor could be considered a "robot", or at least "automation", eh?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor

[paraschopra]

It’s not the tech per se that is usually lacking, what’s truly required is tech that solved a human need better than how it is being solved currently.

Since solving it better than how it is being solved requires much more than tech (distribution, habits, pricing), it does take a number of experiments before value from tech is unlocked by an entrepreneur.