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Would you pay $20k + $3/hr for a teleoperated housekeeer that works slowly instead of a $20/hr human? It just doesn’t make any financial sense. Automation is th

by trzy 2y ago

Would you pay $20k + $3/hr for a teleoperated housekeeer that works slowly instead of a $20/hr human? It just doesn’t make any financial sense. Automation is the only way but even then, at say $200-$300/mo, the break even is ~2 years on a $5000 robot, and that’s ignoring maintenance costs. There are also potential ethical issues around teleoperation as a form of labor arbitrage. Should employers be able to outsource low-skill physical labor to actual humans abroad to circumvent wage and immigration laws? Is the benefit worth the economic dislocation to society? If you say yes, ask yourself why even bother reshoring manufacturing at higher cost and with trade barriers. Teleoperation is argued to be an interim solution that trains autonomous systems the way driving trains FSD but as of right now, given what we know about just how much data is needed for current imitation learning approaches to work for fine manipulation tasks, it doesn’t seem scaleable. Maybe there will be a modeling breakthrough. My bet is on cheaper non-humanoid form factors and data collection that doesn’t require a robot being operated for every data collector in the field.

fakedang 2y ago
Mining. War. Sewer cleaning. Tons of jobs where it would help not being actively in the call of duty, and where precision isn't as much of a priority.
- trzy 2y ago
  Teleop is used already in these applications. But a human form factor is not required.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    A human form factor is not required or optimized for any specific task, but it does generalize which is potentially very useful.
    - mckn1ght 2y ago
      Maybe. But if it is a worse design for tasks A, B and C and harder to build, why not go with the simpler and more specialized design for each separate task? Is the economy of scale really that much better with the general design? I’m not convinced.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        If you’re talking about industrial tasks then you want efficiency and precision. If you’re talking about mundane variety of tasks then you want generalizeability. Having a robot bake A cake and then wash the dishes. Not sensical to build a custom bot.
        mckn1ght 2y ago
        I’m still not convinced a human form factor is the best solution there. Why not fixed articulating arms at the laundry/sink locations instead of bipedal robots that must maintain balance and locomotion between the spots? Maybe if that were possible to do perfectly, but the engineering effort to get there is enormous compared to tech we’ve already had on assembly lines for decades. I’m not even saying we that we absolutely shouldn’t explore the tech, I’m just questioning if it’s objectively the best solution. A humanoid robot wouldn’t completely remove the need for human effort involved in eating or getting dressed and undressed… so is it really a problem that we need to physically place dishes or clothes in a certain spot ourselves for them to be dealt with?
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        Nobody wants mechanical arms attached to their sink and every other object that may require work. Mind you they may not want an android in their home either. Laundry and washing dishes is not just “putting things in a spot”. Perhaps you don’t fold your clothes or separate your clothes or scrub dishes but many people do. Even loading the dish washer is fairly annoying when it’s a large crowd. Cooking is of course a huge one. The question is really just how much would you pay for a 24/7 live in maid that can cook, clean, repair, etc. with a real human you’re paying them for availability. With a remote operated robot you’re paying for just the labor hours and none of the downtime. It seems kind of fucked up but I do think the economics could work. People do have servants today. I tend to imagine such a service would be cheaper than a servant even at $20k up front cost. I do agree the bipedal legs seem unlikely be cost effective.
Tycho 2y ago
Maybe - $20k is a bit steep, but I would certainly pay a large premium to have my housework done without needing to employ a stranger to actually work in my home.
- jononor 2y ago
  You would rather employ 1k strangers - who are on the other side of an Internet connection - but still control a physical robot in your home that can observe and carry out any action that a human could do? In what way is it actually better?
  - Tycho 2y ago
    The robot can’t take anything out of the home or bring anything into it. The operators are not locals with any connection to the local community. They don’t need a key to my property.
  - codetrotter 2y ago
    You could geofence the robot with indoor positioning so that even if the operator tries to open a window or a door for accomplices, the robot would not be able to reach any doors and windows. You could also have separately controlled curtains and blinds, and before the operator connects to your robots all of those are closed. Now the remote human has no way to even see out of the windows to tell where your house is at. Vs a real life human stranger in your house that could steal stuff and let accomplices into the house.
    - skeledrew 2y ago
      Far easier to have activity monitoring and logging, alerting and pausing on anything suspicious. The rogue operator will then be investigated and terminated, or even arrested, if need be.
  - valval 2y ago
    This is just a strawman. Tesla is developing an autonomous robot, not a remote controlled one.
jncfhnb 2y ago
A house keeper? No. Imo the use case is for jobs that are easy, necessary, and low utilization where you mostly pay people to be present and available but not actually doing anything. The value here is the ability to scale up and down quickly. Can’t do that with real humans. The ease of swapping different expertise in to the same body as needed could also potentially be useful. > If you say yes, ask yourself why even bother reshoring manufacturing at higher cost and with trade barriers. Mostly the reasoning to onshore things is to ensure independence on manufacturing critical resources despite the competitive disadvantage; not a jobs program.
- trzy 2y ago
  How do you scale up and down with $20k robots that have to be operated by individual humans?
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    A human has to be paid for being present. A robot can be remotely activated as needed. If you need 5 minutes of labor somewhere over an 8 hour period, you can pay for 5 minutes if labor by having a person that jumps between bots.
wslh 2y ago
This is beyond Elon Musk and Tesla. How much will they cost in a few years? Has someone watched "Robot & Frank (2012)"?.
griffzhowl 2y ago
Wow, when you put it like that I realised there must be a market for this kind of thing, given that cost and speed of operation are incremental changes that will plausibly improve over the midterm. So you'll have upper-middle class people own a robot and whenever they want a task done they order it from basically a call-centre somewhere in the world... reminds me of the etymology of "robot" - from the Slavic for "slave"... You're right there are ethical issues, but hardly new ones for this context. In response to your question, > Should employers be able to outsource low-skill physical labor to actual humans abroad to circumvent wage and immigration laws? This is a very pertinent question ethically, but this already undergirds our current globalized society, where the the clothes most of us are wearing, the coffee we've been drinking, much of the food we've been eating today, and so on, are produced exactly by such labor. This is the way the world works, for the time being. And it's unfair. But these robotic possibilities don't add to the unfairness in my view, although they definitely would give it a new twist. Given current trends I wouldn't bet against increased twistedness..
- iAMkenough 2y ago
  If there will be mass deportations of people working illegally in the US, having mechanical puppets for low paid international laborers to operate seems like it'd be enticing to a business owner that can no longer pay illegal workers but wants to keep labor costs down. They could rent a fleet of them during the seasons they need bodies.
- trzy 2y ago
  At $20k or even $5k, the alternative is still having a real human do the job better, faster, and cheaper.
  - iAMkenough 2y ago
    But real humans are protected by labor laws. Foreign remote gig workers are not.
nick3443 2y ago
Housekeepers in a lot of places charge $50+ per hour

by trzy 2y ago

fakedang 2y ago

Mining. War. Sewer cleaning. Tons of jobs where it would help not being actively in the call of duty, and where precision isn't as much of a priority.

trzy 2y ago
Teleop is used already in these applications. But a human form factor is not required.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  A human form factor is not required or optimized for any specific task, but it does generalize which is potentially very useful.
  - mckn1ght 2y ago
    Maybe. But if it is a worse design for tasks A, B and C and harder to build, why not go with the simpler and more specialized design for each separate task? Is the economy of scale really that much better with the general design? I’m not convinced.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      If you’re talking about industrial tasks then you want efficiency and precision. If you’re talking about mundane variety of tasks then you want generalizeability. Having a robot bake A cake and then wash the dishes. Not sensical to build a custom bot.
      - mckn1ght 2y ago
        I’m still not convinced a human form factor is the best solution there. Why not fixed articulating arms at the laundry/sink locations instead of bipedal robots that must maintain balance and locomotion between the spots? Maybe if that were possible to do perfectly, but the engineering effort to get there is enormous compared to tech we’ve already had on assembly lines for decades. I’m not even saying we that we absolutely shouldn’t explore the tech, I’m just questioning if it’s objectively the best solution. A humanoid robot wouldn’t completely remove the need for human effort involved in eating or getting dressed and undressed… so is it really a problem that we need to physically place dishes or clothes in a certain spot ourselves for them to be dealt with?
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        Nobody wants mechanical arms attached to their sink and every other object that may require work. Mind you they may not want an android in their home either. Laundry and washing dishes is not just “putting things in a spot”. Perhaps you don’t fold your clothes or separate your clothes or scrub dishes but many people do. Even loading the dish washer is fairly annoying when it’s a large crowd. Cooking is of course a huge one. The question is really just how much would you pay for a 24/7 live in maid that can cook, clean, repair, etc. with a real human you’re paying them for availability. With a remote operated robot you’re paying for just the labor hours and none of the downtime. It seems kind of fucked up but I do think the economics could work. People do have servants today. I tend to imagine such a service would be cheaper than a servant even at $20k up front cost. I do agree the bipedal legs seem unlikely be cost effective.

Tycho 2y ago

Maybe - $20k is a bit steep, but I would certainly pay a large premium to have my housework done without needing to employ a stranger to actually work in my home.

jononor 2y ago
You would rather employ 1k strangers - who are on the other side of an Internet connection - but still control a physical robot in your home that can observe and carry out any action that a human could do? In what way is it actually better?
- Tycho 2y ago
  The robot can’t take anything out of the home or bring anything into it. The operators are not locals with any connection to the local community. They don’t need a key to my property.
- codetrotter 2y ago
  You could geofence the robot with indoor positioning so that even if the operator tries to open a window or a door for accomplices, the robot would not be able to reach any doors and windows. You could also have separately controlled curtains and blinds, and before the operator connects to your robots all of those are closed. Now the remote human has no way to even see out of the windows to tell where your house is at. Vs a real life human stranger in your house that could steal stuff and let accomplices into the house.
  - skeledrew 2y ago
    Far easier to have activity monitoring and logging, alerting and pausing on anything suspicious. The rogue operator will then be investigated and terminated, or even arrested, if need be.
- valval 2y ago
  This is just a strawman. Tesla is developing an autonomous robot, not a remote controlled one.

jncfhnb 2y ago

A house keeper? No. Imo the use case is for jobs that are easy, necessary, and low utilization where you mostly pay people to be present and available but not actually doing anything. The value here is the ability to scale up and down quickly. Can’t do that with real humans. The ease of swapping different expertise in to the same body as needed could also potentially be useful. > If you say yes, ask yourself why even bother reshoring manufacturing at higher cost and with trade barriers. Mostly the reasoning to onshore things is to ensure independence on manufacturing critical resources despite the competitive disadvantage; not a jobs program.

trzy 2y ago
How do you scale up and down with $20k robots that have to be operated by individual humans?
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  A human has to be paid for being present. A robot can be remotely activated as needed. If you need 5 minutes of labor somewhere over an 8 hour period, you can pay for 5 minutes if labor by having a person that jumps between bots.

wslh 2y ago

This is beyond Elon Musk and Tesla. How much will they cost in a few years? Has someone watched "Robot & Frank (2012)"?.

griffzhowl 2y ago

Wow, when you put it like that I realised there must be a market for this kind of thing, given that cost and speed of operation are incremental changes that will plausibly improve over the midterm. So you'll have upper-middle class people own a robot and whenever they want a task done they order it from basically a call-centre somewhere in the world... reminds me of the etymology of "robot" - from the Slavic for "slave"... You're right there are ethical issues, but hardly new ones for this context. In response to your question, > Should employers be able to outsource low-skill physical labor to actual humans abroad to circumvent wage and immigration laws? This is a very pertinent question ethically, but this already undergirds our current globalized society, where the the clothes most of us are wearing, the coffee we've been drinking, much of the food we've been eating today, and so on, are produced exactly by such labor. This is the way the world works, for the time being. And it's unfair. But these robotic possibilities don't add to the unfairness in my view, although they definitely would give it a new twist. Given current trends I wouldn't bet against increased twistedness..

iAMkenough 2y ago
If there will be mass deportations of people working illegally in the US, having mechanical puppets for low paid international laborers to operate seems like it'd be enticing to a business owner that can no longer pay illegal workers but wants to keep labor costs down. They could rent a fleet of them during the seasons they need bodies.
trzy 2y ago
At $20k or even $5k, the alternative is still having a real human do the job better, faster, and cheaper.
- iAMkenough 2y ago
  But real humans are protected by labor laws. Foreign remote gig workers are not.

nick3443 2y ago

Housekeepers in a lot of places charge $50+ per hour