Okay, complete shot in the dark here - the "humanoid robot" part is an attempt to convince investors they're making AI more humanlike or some shit like that
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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I guess both chatbots and humanoid robots are basically about the fantasy of automating human labor away effortlessly. In the past, most successful automation probably required a strong understanding of not just the tech, but also the tasks themselves and often a complete overhaul of processes, internal structures etc. In the end, there was usually still a need for human labor, just with different skill sets than before. Many people from the C-suite aren't very good at handling these challenges, even if they would want to make everyone believe otherwise. This is probably why the promise of reaping all the rewards of automation without having to do the work sounds compelling to many of them.
I may get this half right as I'm not super hip to this stuff, but I have read that from a design and engineering standpoint humanoid robots are the least efficient possible whereas purpose-build robots (which typically look nothing like humanoid) are the obvious choice in most cases. Having said that, a lot of companies are chasing the humanoid form because they'll be able to immediately adapt to existing infrastructure (to replace human workers). They'll be able to occupy existing work spaces, use existing tools, etc etc. Which from a profitability/capitalism perspective is the goal.
The better these things get at doing general labor and even skilled tasks like harvesting crops, building houses, garbage collection, etc etc... the less jobs for the working class. Libertarians genuinely believe that AI and robotics will create a utopia but the self-same libertarian billionaire assholes will never stoop to paying taxes, or contributing to social safety net programs, etc etc. So for them robotics taking over as many labor markets as possible is a dream come true. They don't give a flying fuck what happens to the rest of us. If we don't have work, we don't have money to participate in capitalism. They're already outlawing homelessness and building concentration camps for the poor.
It's a good time to re-read The Grapes Of Wrath in my opinion.
a lot of companies are chasing the humanoid form because they’ll be able to immediately adapt to existing infrastructure (to replace human workers).
that's the story, but this doesn't work, like, at all, with just a moment's thought.
if humanoid was a good shape we'd have humanoid robots already.
the reason is they're selling sci fi dreams of robot servants even though these dreams are lies.
the reason is they’re selling sci fi dreams of robot servants even though these dreams are lies.
We've seen the same with chatbots, I guess. Objectively speaking, they perform worse at most tasks than regular search engines, databases, dedicated machine learning-based tools etc. However, they sound humanoid (like overly sycophantic human office workers, to be more precise), thus the hype.