That’s what I mean by ideological blindspot. The only thing any of these articles say about the use of humanoid robots is
Robots like the H1 that performed at the gala have moved into Chinese EV factories thanks to partnerships between Unitree and EV makers like BYD and XPeng.
Which isn’t much, nothing concrete.
This is already much more than Musk or any other American or European humanoid robot constructor can say about their robots. So no, I agree that it’s not much, but it is very much concrete. And remember this is a very recent development, a few years old at most, it’s a bit early to make definitive conclusions about how well or poorly it’s going.
Incidentally, the appeal of humanoid robots isn’t just automating production (because if it was just that specialized robots would be far better than any generalist humanoid), instead I think the appeal of humanoid robots is as a tool to manage the balance between employment and production output. As a socialist society you want to become able to guarantee jobs and access to the products of labor to your citizens. Which means you have to balance level of automation with necessary output: too many robots and there’s not enough work for everyone, too few and there might be shortages of certain things due to underproduction. This means that ideally you want to be able to retire a few machines when there are peoples in need of a job and bring more machines in when workers retire or stop working for whatever other reasons. But you can’t make the switch quickly enough with specialized robots because these require conditions so vastly different from human workers that you need to refit the entire factory floor or at least part of it both to bring robots in or to get them out, which can take months to years. With humanoid robots though, they can work with the exact same factory floors the human workers use, meaning switching between robots and humans is as easy as ordering the robots to walk in or out of the factory. That’s the best argument for humanoid robots in my opinion, and because of that I think it makes a lot of sense for a socialist country to develop the technology.
And the videos are straight up slop.
Well these are youtube videos. I don’t see what the quality of the video has to do with whether or not the robots do work in factories though.
If this was about hyping up Musk, you’d get absolutely dunked on if you presented that as evidence of humanoid robots getting used in factories.
I’d get dunked on for presenting images of robots getting used in factories as evidence of robots getting used in factories? I don’t get your point here. Is it the fact that it’s only a handful of factories?
This is already much more than Musk or any other American or European humanoid robot constructor can say about their robots. So no, I agree that it’s not much, but it is very much concrete. And remember this is a very recent development, a few years old at most, it’s a bit early to make definitive conclusions about how well or poorly it’s going.
Incidentally, the appeal of humanoid robots isn’t just automating production (because if it was just that specialized robots would be far better than any generalist humanoid), instead I think the appeal of humanoid robots is as a tool to manage the balance between employment and production output. As a socialist society you want to become able to guarantee jobs and access to the products of labor to your citizens. Which means you have to balance level of automation with necessary output: too many robots and there’s not enough work for everyone, too few and there might be shortages of certain things due to underproduction. This means that ideally you want to be able to retire a few machines when there are peoples in need of a job and bring more machines in when workers retire or stop working for whatever other reasons. But you can’t make the switch quickly enough with specialized robots because these require conditions so vastly different from human workers that you need to refit the entire factory floor or at least part of it both to bring robots in or to get them out, which can take months to years. With humanoid robots though, they can work with the exact same factory floors the human workers use, meaning switching between robots and humans is as easy as ordering the robots to walk in or out of the factory. That’s the best argument for humanoid robots in my opinion, and because of that I think it makes a lot of sense for a socialist country to develop the technology.
Well these are youtube videos. I don’t see what the quality of the video has to do with whether or not the robots do work in factories though.
I’d get dunked on for presenting images of robots getting used in factories as evidence of robots getting used in factories? I don’t get your point here. Is it the fact that it’s only a handful of factories?