4 ms·

I don't understand what you mean by humans are really cheap, you can't upgrade a human , you can't make him faster, you can't install latest update or add some

I don't understand what you mean by humans are really cheap, you can't upgrade a human , you can't make him faster, you can't install latest update or add some components, the main disadvantage of robots nowadays is that we have not yet achieved a human level AI that gives us the abilitiy to replace humans by robots, but if we ever do that or even achieve just good advancement in it, I strongly doubt that any "unskilled" human worker would be better or compete on the job.

zo1 11y ago
Well, the cost of the capital outlay for reasearch and components, along with the ongoing maintenance costs for the robotic replacement should outweigh the cost of training, hiring and paying the human worker for the same job/task. That is what is meant by the "general purpose worker" as a human being cheaper than a robotic one. And is also why most robotic replacements, as far as I'm aware, have been very specialized and in extremely repetitive tasks that require minimal "visual cues".
lisper 11y ago
> I don't understand what you mean by humans are really cheap Seriously? I can rent a human for $7.50 an hour. In other countries they're even cheaper. If you want to sell me a robot to clean my house, that's your competition.
- kiloreux 11y ago
  That was not a real statement, I just meant that it made contradiction in my mind, not speaking on short run, but in my country and european countries, you need to pay a lot of money to hire someone that includes health insurance something similar to US 401K beside so many things, so it seemed to me like on the long run, robots are much more cheap.
  - potatolicious 11y ago
    > "so it seemed to me like on the long run, robots are much more cheap." Yes, in the very long run, assuming relatively unchanging tasks and capacity demand. But most jobs aren't like that - industrial robotics are dominated by robots that are purpose-designed with a singular task in mind, with a narrow envelope for deviations. A human can be re-trained to do something completely different than before, whereas a robot would likely have to receive completely new hardware. A welding robot cannot become a precision fan-balancing robot, but a human can be retrained from one task to another. It's cheaper to train a large group of humans to do something different than it is to upgrade the hardware & software on the same number of robots. This means that some jobs (see: automotive manufacturing) lend themselves easily to robotics - the throughput is steady, the capacity requirements are stable (i.e., you don't suddenly need 5x more cars in July than in March), and even between different models the general process is the same. Other jobs (see: warehousing, shipping) do not lend themselves to robotics easily - the job changes regularly as processes evolve, the capacity requirements are chaotic (i.e., you need to scale to 10x your normal throughput during Xmas), and there is significant variation in process requirements (e.g., Japanese retail warehouses that run vertically instead of horizontally). Robots are also still astonishingly expensive and largely made-to-order with long lead times. This means that it takes many years to break even on a robot (whereas you can fire the human when you don't need them), and you can scale easily with humans (it's much quicker to find a human than it is to order and receive a robot).

zo1 11y ago

Well, the cost of the capital outlay for reasearch and components, along with the ongoing maintenance costs for the robotic replacement should outweigh the cost of training, hiring and paying the human worker for the same job/task. That is what is meant by the "general purpose worker" as a human being cheaper than a robotic one. And is also why most robotic replacements, as far as I'm aware, have been very specialized and in extremely repetitive tasks that require minimal "visual cues".

lisper 11y ago

> I don't understand what you mean by humans are really cheap Seriously? I can rent a human for $7.50 an hour. In other countries they're even cheaper. If you want to sell me a robot to clean my house, that's your competition.

kiloreux 11y ago
That was not a real statement, I just meant that it made contradiction in my mind, not speaking on short run, but in my country and european countries, you need to pay a lot of money to hire someone that includes health insurance something similar to US 401K beside so many things, so it seemed to me like on the long run, robots are much more cheap.
- potatolicious 11y ago
  > "so it seemed to me like on the long run, robots are much more cheap." Yes, in the very long run, assuming relatively unchanging tasks and capacity demand. But most jobs aren't like that - industrial robotics are dominated by robots that are purpose-designed with a singular task in mind, with a narrow envelope for deviations. A human can be re-trained to do something completely different than before, whereas a robot would likely have to receive completely new hardware. A welding robot cannot become a precision fan-balancing robot, but a human can be retrained from one task to another. It's cheaper to train a large group of humans to do something different than it is to upgrade the hardware & software on the same number of robots. This means that some jobs (see: automotive manufacturing) lend themselves easily to robotics - the throughput is steady, the capacity requirements are stable (i.e., you don't suddenly need 5x more cars in July than in March), and even between different models the general process is the same. Other jobs (see: warehousing, shipping) do not lend themselves to robotics easily - the job changes regularly as processes evolve, the capacity requirements are chaotic (i.e., you need to scale to 10x your normal throughput during Xmas), and there is significant variation in process requirements (e.g., Japanese retail warehouses that run vertically instead of horizontally). Robots are also still astonishingly expensive and largely made-to-order with long lead times. This means that it takes many years to break even on a robot (whereas you can fire the human when you don't need them), and you can scale easily with humans (it's much quicker to find a human than it is to order and receive a robot).