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What if I told you that these robots were assembled almost entirely by other robots? And that their raw materials were mined by other robots?

GlenTheMachine 8y ago
My first response would be that prices will always equilibrate such that complicated machines are always expensive relative to income. Except for microprocessors. But microprocessors are deeply weird, economically.
- pickdenis 8y ago
  Nanotechnology must be the answer, then.
- rusticpenn 8y ago
  The foundries operate at very low margins, They need atleast 5 years to get the money back. I think it was a race to lower costs as there is no significant change in quality of chips between taiwanese foundaries or former german foundaries.
chki 8y ago
What does that mean though? Are you suggesting that there are other problems that are already done by robots which in consequence means that these concrete tasks will also be done by robots at some point? How does that have anything to do with the concrete arguments that the parent comment is talking about?
tomatotomato37 8y ago
So what? The FANUC robotics factory is a completely automated lights out factory, yet even a half meter arm that can brealy lift more than 10kg goes for 20-30k. Robots are just expensive.
- iandanforth 8y ago
  False! Robots are expensive for three reasons 1. Small scale 2. High precision and 3. Patents. By far the largest one of those is scale. If you can build a car for 15k you can build a humanoid robot for 15k. I'm happy to take a long bet on this.
  - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
    Existing industrial robot arms are already built at some scale, and they go fo $50,000 and up. And that's just an arm. No tooling, no sensors. This may be that the economies of scale aren't big enough, but we're already talking about hundreds of thousands of units per year in the industry. The car industry builds 75 million or so units per year. They get away with it because of turnover. Fleet owners don't keep cars past 20,000 or 30,000 miles. High end car owners replace their cars every couple of years. They pay $30,000 to $70,000 every five years. Because cars are more than transportation, they're a lifestyle choice and in many cases a sign of conspicuous consumption. I have a hard time thinking of any other consumer item that is both owned by the vast majority of people and is also a sign of wealth, that is purchased in the high tens of millions every year and for which people happily pay more than $20,000. Cars aren't a good proxy for household robots here, I think.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      "Fleet owners don't keep cars past 20,000 or 30,000 miles. High end car owners replace their cars every couple of years. They pay $30,000 to $70,000 every five years." Cars aren't scrapped after five years. The average car on the road is over 10 years old, and they're not normally scrapped before about 15 years old.
      - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
        >Cars aren't scrapped after five years. No, of course not. But fleet owners buy new ones every five years or less. Typically the old cars are sold on the used market. Which means there is always a market for new cars, and a steady availability of used ones. But the point is: fleet owners turn their inventory over much faster than the cars wear out.

GlenTheMachine 8y ago

My first response would be that prices will always equilibrate such that complicated machines are always expensive relative to income. Except for microprocessors. But microprocessors are deeply weird, economically.

pickdenis 8y ago
Nanotechnology must be the answer, then.
rusticpenn 8y ago
The foundries operate at very low margins, They need atleast 5 years to get the money back. I think it was a race to lower costs as there is no significant change in quality of chips between taiwanese foundaries or former german foundaries.

chki 8y ago

What does that mean though? Are you suggesting that there are other problems that are already done by robots which in consequence means that these concrete tasks will also be done by robots at some point? How does that have anything to do with the concrete arguments that the parent comment is talking about?

tomatotomato37 8y ago

So what? The FANUC robotics factory is a completely automated lights out factory, yet even a half meter arm that can brealy lift more than 10kg goes for 20-30k. Robots are just expensive.

iandanforth 8y ago
False! Robots are expensive for three reasons 1. Small scale 2. High precision and 3. Patents. By far the largest one of those is scale. If you can build a car for 15k you can build a humanoid robot for 15k. I'm happy to take a long bet on this.
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  Existing industrial robot arms are already built at some scale, and they go fo $50,000 and up. And that's just an arm. No tooling, no sensors. This may be that the economies of scale aren't big enough, but we're already talking about hundreds of thousands of units per year in the industry. The car industry builds 75 million or so units per year. They get away with it because of turnover. Fleet owners don't keep cars past 20,000 or 30,000 miles. High end car owners replace their cars every couple of years. They pay $30,000 to $70,000 every five years. Because cars are more than transportation, they're a lifestyle choice and in many cases a sign of conspicuous consumption. I have a hard time thinking of any other consumer item that is both owned by the vast majority of people and is also a sign of wealth, that is purchased in the high tens of millions every year and for which people happily pay more than $20,000. Cars aren't a good proxy for household robots here, I think.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    "Fleet owners don't keep cars past 20,000 or 30,000 miles. High end car owners replace their cars every couple of years. They pay $30,000 to $70,000 every five years." Cars aren't scrapped after five years. The average car on the road is over 10 years old, and they're not normally scrapped before about 15 years old.
    - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
      >Cars aren't scrapped after five years. No, of course not. But fleet owners buy new ones every five years or less. Typically the old cars are sold on the used market. Which means there is always a market for new cars, and a steady availability of used ones. But the point is: fleet owners turn their inventory over much faster than the cars wear out.