[lnsru]

What do you expect to be better in 30 years? We have NOW insane computing power, cool stuff like insane size FPGAs and super fast GPUs. Mechanical parts work with fraction of micron accuracy. And yet we have millions of workers picking simple shaped objects manually every day around the world.

[trashtester]

> We have NOW insane computing power, cool stuff like insane size FPGAs and super fast GPUs.

They are still slow, compared to human brains. To compete with biological neurons, computers may have to be 100x-1000x faster.

Your phone is massively more powerful than a DEC Alpha based workstation from 1992 and it can fit in your pocket. Moore's law may be slowing, but I still expect compute to be 100x-1000x performance/$ and performance/W in 30 years.

Software is already on its way into a paradigm shift, where it will increasingly be written by AI (look at the state of github copilot). Hardware (both eletronic and mechanical) design will continue to see similar developments.

At some point, spot-like robots will reach a price where it starts to become affordable by some households. That moment will be similar to the appearance of PC's in the 80s or phones in the 2000x. As the market explodes, prices will drop really quickly.

And even before that, militaries will drive development. Drones (ie robots) are already becoming a key factor in the war in Ukraine.

Battery tech is the main limitation at the moment. Though I do expect significantly better energy density over 30 years, and reduction in power consumption should make up the rest.

So basially, I expect robots will have a development over the next 30 years similar to how PC's developed from 1980-2000 or phones developed from 2000-2020, if not more.

[dataking]

We'll have increasingly more incentive if birthrates (and thus the size of the workforce) continues to shrink. Moreover, robots of all sorts will probably have come down in price which is one of the stumbling blocks mentioned in the article.

[jacooper]

> We'll have increasingly more incentive if birthrates (and thus the size of the workforce) continues to shrink.

This is currently being solved by migration, countries that aren't open for immigrants are the ones paying the price.

[tluyben2]

Robots are too expensive; that is to say; humans are (a lot) cheaper. If you want to buy a Spot robot to pick up garbage, you are out 70k for the base model, 100k+ with some plugins, they need to charge every hour so you need multiple and there are maintenance costs (it’s not like you buy one of these and have no other costs outside electric for 10 years). In many countries humans are a lot cheaper than that for those manual jobs; depending on the work which determines the maintenance costs, maybe even yearly.

We either need to acknowledge humans are more valuable (which is utopia and won’t happen easily) or have high quality robots for 5k or less with 8-10 hour battery life (or hot-swappable; you buy an extra robot that just runs around bringing batteries to and from robots and chargers). And, as with all mass production, that will take time.

[krisoft]

> If you want to buy a Spot robot to pick up garbage

All of the things you say are true. There is one additional thing you don’t mention:

You can drum up people on minimal wage, you give them a roll of bin bags and point at a street and tell them (verbally with words) “pick up the litter on that street, once the bags are full put it in the truck. At the end of the day drive to <address> for disposal” And it will with high probability happen!

Yeah they might goof off and you might need a foreman with a slightly higher wage to keep them busy, but that is basically all the “programing” you need to do.

How would the same work with a robot? Someone needs to program it. It is not unreasonable to think that one day we might have a “general trash collection” AI you can licence, but it is a lot of work to develop that system.

Whoever programs that system will need to solve issues such as:

- cover the whole street, but don’t wander into private estabilishments, peoples gardens or block the street

- pick up cigarete butts from the planters, but not the flowers, but do pick up the dried up fallen leaves/petals

- pick up the half shoe a reveller left on the corner, but don’t pick up the street performer’s hat with his coins in it

- hastle / don’t hastle the homeless based on opaque rules subject to change all the time

- shovel up the dirt from the pavement, but don’t try to dig a hole to china in the spots where grass should be but it dried out and it is basically just a patch of dirt

- empty the street bins, even the one which looks a bit odd (it was a one-off pilot project and we decided to go with a different suplier eventually) or the one which is hard to open (give it a good thunk, it jams since someone drove into it 5 months ago)

- leave the traffic cones be, but bag that one which was run over by a truck, dragged out of place, and got crumpled

And probably 15 other edge cases I can’t even think right now. And when your cleaner robot gets into a bad situation it probably won’t learn to avoid the same situation the next time.

And what happens if something changes? Let’s say you now want to collect aluminium into a separate bag, or there is a street festival with different temporary rules, or something?

To reprogram your robots you need highly trained, specialist crew, costing big bucks.

If your human crew needs “reprograming” you can email a middle manager paid 120% minimal wage who will make them change their way.

And all of this is “just software”. You have all this hassle even after all the battery and hardware issues you mentioned.

We might get street cleaning robots one day, but it is a very though task and i wouldn’t hold my breath.

[wazoox]

Yes exactly. Jobs that are labelled "low wage" are often incredibly subtle and complex. And people doing them actually can get better at them with time, and more efficient, too. I remember the story of a lady whose job was to dispose cakes in boxes, and make assortments (boxes of 4, 6, 8 cakes, with 10 or 12 different type of cakes to choose from: cherry tarts, lemon pies, chocolate éclairs etc). No robot is able to do this, and it's already probably quite less complex than cleaning up a street taken at random.

[Robotbeat]

Acknowledging humans are more valuable is as simple as just adjusting the minimum wage to productivity growth since the 1960s. Would be over $20/hour.

[zone411]

Do you really think we're anywhere close to the limits of robotics?

One example: tactile sensors will be much better in 5-10 years and they'll make a big difference for gripping objects.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01401-y

Another one: solid state batteries. It'd be quite surprising if they're not commercially ready in ~15 years and they should offer at least 2x energy density, better safety, faster charging, more charge/discharge cycles. All would be huge for mobile robotics. There are big expectations: QuantumScape has a market cap of over $3B, Solid Power over $1B, etc.

[infinitifall]

I agree with your sentiment but just a nitpick - tasks considered "easy" by humans aren't necessarily easy to automate and vice versa. Eg. beating a computer at recognizing trash vs beating a pocket calculator at 6734100522 * 714261898941.

[lm28469]

> And yet we have millions of workers picking simple shaped objects manually every day around the world.

It's designed to be like that

> Automation, the most advanced sector of modern industry as well as the model which perfectly sums up its practice, drives the commodity world toward the following contradiction: the technical equipment which objectively eliminates labor must at the same time preserve labor as a commodity and as the only source of the commodity. If the social labor (time) engaged by the society is not to diminish because of automation (or any other less extreme form of increasing the productivity of labor), then new jobs have to be created. Services, the tertiary sector, swell the ranks of the army of distribution and are a eulogy to the current commodities; the additional forces which are mobilized just happen to be suitable for the organization of redundant labor required by the artificial needs for such commodities.

Guy Debord, 1967

[jahnu]

Humans still better at taking orders and making coffee too.

[schnitzelstoat]

The problem is there's a lot of cheap labour that is more competitive than these robotics systems.

This is bad as it removes the incentive for innovation and keeps productivity low (profit per hour worked) so that ensures wages will stay low - it's bad for the workers and bad for the economy as a whole.

[Aperocky]

We'd have 30 years of engineering time to properly utilize those things.

[bitwize]

It's still cheaper to exploit human laborers to pick those simple objects.

There will be a reckoning once capitalism runs out of people to exploit.

[pdimitar]

How exactly will that happen? Most Western governments are happy to import immigrants after their own populace wakes up to their bullshit and stops tolerating it. Many immigrants don't mind working for 20% of what a local would work.

I don't see us running out of Indians, Chinese and Africans in the next 200 or so years at least.

[unicornhose]

But you’ll stop being able to afford them a lot sooner

[pdimitar]

That's very true but the politicians keep pretending that this fact doesn't exist.

[lelanthran]

> There will be a reckoning once capitalism runs out of people to exploit.

That's just a different way of saying there will never be a reckoning :-/