[Teever]

Yes, the economics of such a device are the interesting part.

The point where it all changes is when the humanoid robot can repair itself / make a copy of itself.

That's a physical compiler that can bootstrap itself.

That's a genie that lets you wish for more wishes.

What that does to the economy is anybody's guess.

When we'll make one and when the average joe will be able to get their hands on one are some interesting questions.

Once people know it's possible with off the shelf materials they'll soon seek to replicate it, so it can't remain controlled unless it's hidden, because they will succeed in that attempt to replicate it. Who wouldn't?

What would the average joe do with a humanoid robot that can do most domestic and industrial tasks as well as self replicate?

[TaylorAlexander]

I just want to say, as a robotics engineer that used to be a CNC machinist and now plasma cuts and welds together farming robots of my own design...

There's not really such a thing (even conceptually) as a humanoid robot that can "self replicate" without a broader robot factory with additional machinery. When you ask "what would the average joe do with a humanoid that can ... self replicate" this sort of misunderstands how robots will be built. Certainly the average joe could ask the robot to go build more if the average joe also had access to a robot factory with CNC machines, metal 3D printers, plastic injection molding machines, PCB fabrication equipment, etc etc. But additional machinery will always be needed.

People in the 3D printer world got really excited about self replicating machines, but motors, cable harnesses, PCBs with lots of different chips on them, metal housings etc still cannot be 3D printed on such machines.

If the average joe has his own robot factory, he's not the average joe. It is theoretically possible that all these different machines will be collapsed in to some sort of single machine - it's hard to say what will happen in 100 years or more - but that's not really anything I would get too worked up about right now.

[Teever]

Imagine a humanoid robot that is comparable to your average joe in terms of dexterity and stamina like let's say as a high water mark it can rebuild a car engine and do basic dentistry for sixteen hours of the day as long as it recharges for the other eight. Let's say that it has the ability to carry a robot of equal weight about 25 km and can repair that fellow robot provided that it has the necessary parts and a basic tool set and the equivalent to your average residential garage type environment to work in[0] (but like really could do it in the field).

If you had a pair of two of these robots and your run of the mill warehouse full of their spare parts (assume a tape of infinite length...) so that with careful planning between the two of them they could do the necessary preventative maintenance on each other so that they didn't break down at the same time, or could go rescue the other if it broke down unexpectedly in the field, how long would it take them to build the infrastructure necessary to produce new parts to replenish their stockpile and generate new robots so that they could experience exponential growth?

When I watch stuff like Primitive Technology[1] I'm in awe at how asingle well-fed and educated human being can with the right preparation and research can go into a jungle setting and speed run up to the iron age. It makes me wonder about the minimum viable number of people and education/knowledge/experience required to do the same thing for realsies to the computer age. It's just a pipe dream or two about when a robot equivalent to the average joe is a thing and when I see videos like the one we're talking about or the recent one from Boston Dynamics the gears in my mind start turning.

There was a time when computers didn't exist. Then they did. At first computers used to be the size of buildings, then they became the size of floors of buildings, then the size of rooms, then the size of appliances[2], and so on and so forth. we're seeing this sort of miniaturization across segments of industry driven in large part by the miniaturization of semiconductors. If you take a big picture view the economy as a whole it is a self replicating machine. As are the vertiable Adam and Eve that made that economy. In a complicated sort of orobourous way the entire economy is made up of humanoids (and let's not forget our quadroped hoven friends who serve as feedstock btw, or chickens and tuna and so on...) who replicate in some way or another.

There is this sort of impending collision between the organic and inorganic self replicating aspects of our economic system. Ribozyme and hominid, compiler and automobile assembly line, what are the difference exactly?

[0] https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/illustration/doctor-workin... [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA [2] https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/11101401564...

[TaylorAlexander]

> with careful planning between the two of them they could do the necessary preventative maintenance on each other so that they didn't break down at the same time, or could go rescue the other if it broke down unexpectedly in the field, how long would it take them to build the infrastructure necessary to produce new parts to replenish their stockpile and generate new robots so that they could experience exponential growth?

There is a lot happening here. Really big jumps. Sure, humanoid robots with lots of spare parts could repair each other. You could also just imagine a robot that never broke down for this thought experiment. Still, going from nothing to "can build more complex humanoid robots", even with very persistent workers who never get tired, is an extreme endeavor.

I suppose some day the equipment to build a humanoid could be cheap and accessible to home fabricators. But that equipment still will not just be "a humanoid", it will be specialized machinery. You could certainly have humanoids operate that machine, but I still see this scenario as "imagine you have two humanoids. now imagine you have two humanoids and a humanoid manufacturing machine. they could make infinite humanoids". There is no getting around the fact that a machine that makes humanoids will be a separate machine.

Will it be interesting when that happens? Yes, absolutely.

[camtarn]

I suspect that microprocessors might be the sticking point. It's possible to manufacture small integrated circuits in a home lab setting, albeit it's certainly not easy, and you're still reliant on an industrial chemical supply chain for the raw materials. You might even be able to get up to the level of a microcontroller or an older microprocessor. But, as I understand it, modern microprocessors are really difficult to make without very specialised machinery and a lot of proprietary knowledge.

High density data storage would probably also be an issue. And I'm not sure about batteries - I don't know how much proprietary tech is required to make the difference between a basic functional lithium battery versus one that actually stores enough energy to be practical.

[itishappy]

I think you're glossing over how massive our factories and supply chains have become to enable today's miniaturization.

Primitive Technology can get you to the iron age, sure, but that's scrap quality. That's the INPUT to our current smelting chain. To make stainless steel you're going to need CO2 and Argon and Nickel and Chromium. That's just one of the structural materials needed, and it's one of the easiest! Polymers are going to be the real challenge...

A bigger problem is gonna be chips. Yes, chips are really small these days. Fabs are not. Fabs take billions of dollars and millions of man-hours to construct. Your robots which are accurate on the scale of millimeters (maybe), are going to need to produce and place optics to nanometer levels of precision (mm->nm is on the same scale as km->mm).

On top of all that, you need to confirm that the thing you're making is the thing you intended to, so you need to measure a bunch of stuff! You're going to need interferometers, CMMs, spectroscopes, electrical test equipment, etc. You can buy all that, sure, but now we're back in the billions of dollars and millions of man-hours territory.

[Dylan16807]

> how long would it take them to build the infrastructure

A very very long time if they have access to all the mines and chemical sources needed, never if they don't.

And they will need space to build factories.