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I could see this. Especially robot armies marching back into the middle east. I can also see robot caregivers for the elderly. Or in cities built for pedestrian

I could see this. Especially robot armies marching back into the middle east. I can also see robot caregivers for the elderly. Or in cities built for pedestrians a robot walking next to you carrying your shopping bags or escorting your kids to school with a live video feed back to the parents. Fire trucks pulling up and 50 robots jumping out and running into a burning building to carry people out. Could go either way, or both. Edit: I think from a seek and destroy perspective we are much more likely to go the cloud of small drones route than these. These would serve as an armed / peace keeping / law enforcement. presence but would not be nearly as effective in a real combat situation as the drone swarm.

derefr 5y ago
Or, rather than any of these special-purpose autonomous robots, the most likely outcome: fully-articulated telepresence robots, allowing people using VR to do anything a human could physically do, remotely. That covers pretty much all of the above use-cases and more, without assuming advances in high-level strategic AI; just good low-level motor-model learning as already exists here, plus good Internet and input methods for medium-level subsumptive motor control.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  Don't forget 1) carrying enough energy 2) getting the price point down to what people are prepared to pay for telepresence. These are very tough indeed.
  - derefr 5y ago
    There are a lot of use-cases for which a tethered telepresence robot (with, say, a five-minute emergency battery for getting swapping from one wall-socket to another) would work just fine. You wouldn't see infantry drones, but it'd work for most anything that occurs solely inside a building.
    - robotresearcher 5y ago
      Tethers are a nightmare. A nightmare.
      - derefr 5y ago
        For autonomous robots, sure. And for dumb robots. But are they a problem for people—e.g. rock climbers, divers, etc.? If not, then they also wouldn't be a problem for remote people, provided those remote people get enough sensory feedback to be aware of the relative position of the tether. After all, the whole point of all this motor modelling is to enable the robot to do things humans do, like noticing when its foot lightly touches its own tether, and then using its hands to unhook the tether from its foot, temporarily pull it lightly aside, step around it, and then drop it. (Think: vacuuming a room with a tethered vacuum cleaner.) That's a very hard thing to teach a robot to do; but a human that realizes they're "plugged in" would do it almost intuitively.
        robotresearcher 5y ago
        All that messing with the tether is pure overhead not spent working. It's also beyond the current state of the art. A few meters of high-current cable weighs a LOT. Exerts large forces in weird directions and adds to your motor requirements. On humans and tethers: Do you like wifi? Why not stick to Ethernet? SCUBA is diving without a tether. It’s popular. Climbers use ropes so they don't die, not because ropes are fun. Bouldering is popular. Singers and guitarists tend to move to wireless for performance as soon as they can afford to (purists excepted). Because tethers suck. Suuuuuuck.
        derefr 5y ago
        > SCUBA is diving without a tether. It’s popular. Look up saturation diving. The link from the diver to their dive bell — now that's a tether. One critical to human life, unable to be lost for even a moment, and yet which humans freely do freaking oxyacetylene welding around. And yet it still works out fine, in 99.999% of dives. Humans are good at managing tethers! But to be clear, my point isn't that tethered robots would be preferable to or even as good as untethered robots. Just because humans are good at tethers doesn't mean they like them. So of course untethered telepresence robots would be better, if they were practical. My point is that tethered human-equivalent telepresence robots — in combination with human operators who can map their intuitive management of their own body-plan into management of the robot and its tether — will be practical in an absolute sense, long before untethered human-equivalent telepresence robots become practical. We'll have tethered telepresence 'bots doing real, useful stuff out there in the world (decomissioning toxic/irradiated structures in non-polluting ways, say—or replacing those sat divers!), long before we manage to make batteries dense enough to power untethered telepresence 'bots for the same purposes.
- mlboss 5y ago
  This would move all the manual jobs from developed countries to developing countries. Haircut in US costs $20 dollar you can get the same haircut in $1 in developing country.
  - derefr 5y ago
    I don't think the CapEx of a robot barber would work out, no matter how low the OpEx. (Which is why we don't see very many non-humanoid, pre-programmed robot barbers, either.) Just because the tech would be there, doesn't mean it'd be practical/affordable for mass deployment. It'd likely be the domain of rich people and/or tech companies—just as less-complex telepresence robots are today. And by the time the CapEx would get low enough to use telepresence for such things, we'd probably have the general strategic AI to not need it.
vindarel 5y ago
Elderly people don't want robots, and yeah, good things© are unlikely to happen anyways. When new startups want to help people©, they are actually forced to go where the market is. "Well, only two years working for the autonomous drones for the army and we'll focus back on helping farmers". And years go by. Employees can believe in that vision, but can be tricked for years. They should change jobs. (there was a very true and touching testimony in this book (fr)[1]). Also I believe 50 firemen robots is unlikely the best way to fight a fire :p Like autonomous cars: impose autonomous cars to lower car accidents in cities and save lives©? Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive so fast… [1] https://www.amazon.fr/Merci-changer-m%C3%A9tier-Lettres-robotisent/dp/2491109026/ref=sr_1_5 https://www.amazon.fr/Merci-changer-m%C3%A9tier-Lettres-robo...
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  > Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive so fast… ... and then be ashamed of the lives lost because emergency responders couldn't get to the scene in time. :( Everything is tradeoffs.

derefr 5y ago

Or, rather than any of these special-purpose autonomous robots, the most likely outcome: fully-articulated telepresence robots, allowing people using VR to do anything a human could physically do, remotely. That covers pretty much all of the above use-cases and more, without assuming advances in high-level strategic AI; just good low-level motor-model learning as already exists here, plus good Internet and input methods for medium-level subsumptive motor control.

robotresearcher 5y ago
Don't forget 1) carrying enough energy 2) getting the price point down to what people are prepared to pay for telepresence. These are very tough indeed.
- derefr 5y ago
  There are a lot of use-cases for which a tethered telepresence robot (with, say, a five-minute emergency battery for getting swapping from one wall-socket to another) would work just fine. You wouldn't see infantry drones, but it'd work for most anything that occurs solely inside a building.
  - robotresearcher 5y ago
    Tethers are a nightmare. A nightmare.
    - derefr 5y ago
      For autonomous robots, sure. And for dumb robots. But are they a problem for people—e.g. rock climbers, divers, etc.? If not, then they also wouldn't be a problem for remote people, provided those remote people get enough sensory feedback to be aware of the relative position of the tether. After all, the whole point of all this motor modelling is to enable the robot to do things humans do, like noticing when its foot lightly touches its own tether, and then using its hands to unhook the tether from its foot, temporarily pull it lightly aside, step around it, and then drop it. (Think: vacuuming a room with a tethered vacuum cleaner.) That's a very hard thing to teach a robot to do; but a human that realizes they're "plugged in" would do it almost intuitively.
      - robotresearcher 5y ago
        All that messing with the tether is pure overhead not spent working. It's also beyond the current state of the art. A few meters of high-current cable weighs a LOT. Exerts large forces in weird directions and adds to your motor requirements. On humans and tethers: Do you like wifi? Why not stick to Ethernet? SCUBA is diving without a tether. It’s popular. Climbers use ropes so they don't die, not because ropes are fun. Bouldering is popular. Singers and guitarists tend to move to wireless for performance as soon as they can afford to (purists excepted). Because tethers suck. Suuuuuuck.
        derefr 5y ago
        > SCUBA is diving without a tether. It’s popular. Look up saturation diving. The link from the diver to their dive bell — now that's a tether. One critical to human life, unable to be lost for even a moment, and yet which humans freely do freaking oxyacetylene welding around. And yet it still works out fine, in 99.999% of dives. Humans are good at managing tethers! But to be clear, my point isn't that tethered robots would be preferable to or even as good as untethered robots. Just because humans are good at tethers doesn't mean they like them. So of course untethered telepresence robots would be better, if they were practical. My point is that tethered human-equivalent telepresence robots — in combination with human operators who can map their intuitive management of their own body-plan into management of the robot and its tether — will be practical in an absolute sense, long before untethered human-equivalent telepresence robots become practical. We'll have tethered telepresence 'bots doing real, useful stuff out there in the world (decomissioning toxic/irradiated structures in non-polluting ways, say—or replacing those sat divers!), long before we manage to make batteries dense enough to power untethered telepresence 'bots for the same purposes.
mlboss 5y ago
This would move all the manual jobs from developed countries to developing countries. Haircut in US costs $20 dollar you can get the same haircut in $1 in developing country.
- derefr 5y ago
  I don't think the CapEx of a robot barber would work out, no matter how low the OpEx. (Which is why we don't see very many non-humanoid, pre-programmed robot barbers, either.) Just because the tech would be there, doesn't mean it'd be practical/affordable for mass deployment. It'd likely be the domain of rich people and/or tech companies—just as less-complex telepresence robots are today. And by the time the CapEx would get low enough to use telepresence for such things, we'd probably have the general strategic AI to not need it.

vindarel 5y ago

Elderly people don't want robots, and yeah, good things© are unlikely to happen anyways. When new startups want to help people©, they are actually forced to go where the market is. "Well, only two years working for the autonomous drones for the army and we'll focus back on helping farmers". And years go by. Employees can believe in that vision, but can be tricked for years. They should change jobs. (there was a very true and touching testimony in this book (fr)[1]). Also I believe 50 firemen robots is unlikely the best way to fight a fire :p Like autonomous cars: impose autonomous cars to lower car accidents in cities and save lives©? Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive so fast… [1] https://www.amazon.fr/Merci-changer-m%C3%A9tier-Lettres-robotisent/dp/2491109026/ref=sr_1_5 https://www.amazon.fr/Merci-changer-m%C3%A9tier-Lettres-robo...

shadowgovt 5y ago
> Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive so fast… ... and then be ashamed of the lives lost because emergency responders couldn't get to the scene in time. :( Everything is tradeoffs.