I believe this conclusion is flawed. The author argues:
1) Unitree robots are largely made by hand.
2) Labor is approximately 8% of cost of manufacturing these robots. Because costs are not prohibitive, there is little incentive to automate.
3) Labor costs are higher in America.
4) Therefore, American companies have higher incentive to automate.
5) Therefore, the West will capture most of the robotics opportunity.
Arguments 1-4 are reasonable, but 5 is a non-sequitur. Higher incentive to automate does not mean a better ability to automate & scale manufacturing.
I believe Unitree is currently assembling robots by hand for practical reasons:
1) Labor is still relatively cheap.
2) Humanoids and robots are evolving rapidly, changing every few months.
3) Custom assembly lines are expensive, and become obsolete when the product changes. It's difficult to maintain an assembly line when the product is rapidly evolving.
4) Tooling is inadequate. American companies are not immune from this - even Tesla is assembling parts of Optimus by hand, because the hand/forearms are extremely complicated and difficult to manufacture.
5) Demand is still relatively niche, these are not mass market products. There is not enough demand to justify massive automated lines.
The author also ignores the biggest counterpoint: the Chinese have already demonstrated mastery in automated manufacturing, and have proven they can run dark factories (factories without humans) at a better scale than the west.
When humanoid robots become a mass market product (they are not ready today because the software is majorly lacking), Chinese manufacturers are in an excellent position to rapidly automate.
their humanoid robots really creep me out. I've been to a few conferences for work over the past few months and they usually have a booth and then have someone walking them around by remote control.
The conference venues have concrete flooring, so I just suddenly hear loud rhythmic thumping as these things stomp around a corner.
After the initial "huh that's a cool robot thing" thought, it really started giving me the heebeejeebees.
Get rid of the cheap hands and the machines win fast…
I’ve really become fascinated by the hypothesis that outlawing slavery supercharged industrialization, and that the global crusade against slavery is why we had this whole technology explosion.
Rome knew about steam power. There’s some tantalizing evidence some ancient cultures played with electricity and maybe even simple forms of electric lights. There’s Greek stories about automatons. But why try to build machines to do real work? Just have a slave do it.
If we’d abolished slavery in ancient Roman times maybe we’d be looking at photos of habitable exoplanets from probes arriving in the Tau Ceti system by now.
Not OP, but if China takes up labor and manufacturing automation with robotics in a big way, there are a LOT of people there that will not have much to do anymore ....
Same can be said for every country right now. And now, there's fewer and fewer reliable greener pastures that unsatisfied people can go to, which used to let off some much needed steam.
The people will always have something to do. What those somethings are is entirely up to the ruling class.
1) Unitree robots are largely made by hand.
2) Labor is approximately 8% of cost of manufacturing these robots. Because costs are not prohibitive, there is little incentive to automate.
3) Labor costs are higher in America.
4) Therefore, American companies have higher incentive to automate.
5) Therefore, the West will capture most of the robotics opportunity.
Arguments 1-4 are reasonable, but 5 is a non-sequitur. Higher incentive to automate does not mean a better ability to automate & scale manufacturing.
I believe Unitree is currently assembling robots by hand for practical reasons:
1) Labor is still relatively cheap.
2) Humanoids and robots are evolving rapidly, changing every few months.
3) Custom assembly lines are expensive, and become obsolete when the product changes. It's difficult to maintain an assembly line when the product is rapidly evolving.
4) Tooling is inadequate. American companies are not immune from this - even Tesla is assembling parts of Optimus by hand, because the hand/forearms are extremely complicated and difficult to manufacture.
5) Demand is still relatively niche, these are not mass market products. There is not enough demand to justify massive automated lines.
The author also ignores the biggest counterpoint: the Chinese have already demonstrated mastery in automated manufacturing, and have proven they can run dark factories (factories without humans) at a better scale than the west.
When humanoid robots become a mass market product (they are not ready today because the software is majorly lacking), Chinese manufacturers are in an excellent position to rapidly automate.
The conference venues have concrete flooring, so I just suddenly hear loud rhythmic thumping as these things stomp around a corner.
After the initial "huh that's a cool robot thing" thought, it really started giving me the heebeejeebees.
Uncanny Valley is an evolutionary advantage, I’ve surmised
Awkward to think about why tho
I’ve really become fascinated by the hypothesis that outlawing slavery supercharged industrialization, and that the global crusade against slavery is why we had this whole technology explosion.
Rome knew about steam power. There’s some tantalizing evidence some ancient cultures played with electricity and maybe even simple forms of electric lights. There’s Greek stories about automatons. But why try to build machines to do real work? Just have a slave do it.
If we’d abolished slavery in ancient Roman times maybe we’d be looking at photos of habitable exoplanets from probes arriving in the Tau Ceti system by now.
What do you mean by this?
The people will always have something to do. What those somethings are is entirely up to the ruling class.
Who here remembers when Japan was gonna take over and the West needed to adapt