5 ms·
Agreed, my girlfriend has a biochemistry degree and works in such a lab. It involves some physical work like collecting, preparing and inputting samples, doing
by NoLinkToMe 2y ago
Agreed, my girlfriend has a biochemistry degree and works in such a lab. It involves some physical work like collecting, preparing and inputting samples, doing basic maintenance of the machines, some analysis and then some administrative/secretarial work in feeding the results into a system or by phonecall to the doctor.
All of which can indeed be automated in my view.
I would say it really depends on where you are though. In the US it probably makes sense quite quickly. But she lives in a small EU country where salaries aren't high, and this is very much a junior position with a lot of students looking for such a job. Her position costs about 25k a year.
The NPV of a $1m investment with a 25k cashflow is negative at normal discount rates. Once you get to replace a $120k salary with a $1m robot, it does make sense.
Further I do still expect there to be some jobs in overseeing the robot (e.g. your average factory manager). That makes sense for large centralised production locations, because you can have 1 human job overseeing many robots. It doesn't necessarily make sense with many small decentralised production locations. And that's the nature of most labs, I believe due to the time sensitivity of a lot of lab work they need to be everywhere and close to customers. But maybe that will change.
- bagels 2y agoProduction version of these robot arms would not be anywhere near $1m
- Falimonda 2y agoThat seems to only account for the hardware. How much do you reckon a software license will cost for your fleet of cheap arms?
- thanksgiving 2y agoI got really excited for a second for people who need to work on a lab thinking they will be able to work from home now...
- csomar 2y ago> That seems to only account for the hardware. How much do you reckon a software license will cost for your fleet of cheap arms? Just a bit lower than what a human would cost.
- amelius 2y agoRemember though that AI is a winner takes all space. It will probably be won by a company with lots of cash behind it (like this one which has support from many companies, including OpenAI).
- notatoad 2y agosignificantly lower than what a human already doing the job would cost, until the VC money runs out. And then a whole bunch more than what a human would cost, after they've got you locked in and you've let your staff go.
- llm_trw 2y agoKeep in mind that workers in the EU work for around 6 hours a day, a robot works for 24, so it's replacing 4 of them, not 1.
- kaplun 2y ago6? Not 8?
- llm_trw 2y agoLunch and breakfast are serious business.
- muspimerol 2y agoHuh? The average working week in the EU is 37.5 hours a week, or 7.5 hours a day: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20230920-1 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d... Breakfast and lunch are not paid breaks in any EU country as far as I know.
- Gare 2y ago> Breakfast and lunch are not paid breaks in any EU country as far as I know. One 30 minute break (lunch break) is paid in Croatia and Slovenia
- Ekaros 2y agoIt really depends. For Finland lunch is unpaid unless you are forced to eat at premises. But then you usually have 2 refreshment breaks (10-15min) which are paid...
- bottom999mottob 2y agoAssuming a lunch break is not included as part of 8 hours, do you really think most exmployees are productive for a full 8 hours? Most office workers spend an exorbitant amount of time twiddling their thumbs, reading emails, going to the restroom. On average, I'd say knowledge workers are typically productive for about 2 to 3 hours per day. I'd estimate physical laborers range up to 4 or 5 hours. Assuming 8 hours of full productivity is a strange number to focus on
- ValentinA23 2y agoIt wouldn't cost 1M. The BOM[1] of Stanford's Mobile Aloha[2] (very similar to physical intelligence's robot) is around $30,000. [1]https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_3yhWjodSNNYlpxkRCPIlvIAaQ76Nqk2wsqhnEVM6Dc/edit?tab=t.0 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_3yhWjodSNNYlpxkRCPIlvIA... [2]https://mobile-aloha.github.io/ https://mobile-aloha.github.io/ $7000 for the wheels/navigation module $3500 x2 for the control arms $6000 x2 for the controlled arms I don't think you need a $7000 navigation module and the arms are also probably overkill. To which extent do we need closed-loop Dynamixel servos when the policy diffusion algo already relies on computer vision driven closed-loop control ?