Robots. The next wave is coming
My dear reader, by now, you might be tired of reading another write up about AI. The promises of the imminent arrival of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) shortly followed by super intelligence (actually, I am not sure if there is any capitalization or if it is one or two words. But we will be told soon.)
Also, we know that the spending will soon be in the trillions of dollars (Stargate - $500 billon, EU AIinvest will 'mobilise' €200 billion, and everyone else will chip in a few billions here and there) and one could conclude that 'AI' is now entering the mainstream of business. No more excitement. Just a boring money making cycle. At least we are told.
But where can we find the next rainbow to follow?
There were two articles this week, which caught my attention.
The first one was about Hugging Face and Physical Intelligence's newly launched foundational AI model. The second one was an announcement of a $350 million funding round for humanoid robotics company Apptronik.
I know, $350 million is not even close to $1 billion, but it is a start. And as Mr. Musk from Tesla - where they are building a competing robot Optimus - mentioned in June 2024, once Tesla makes the robot, it will raise the market cap of Tesla to $25 trillion. As a qualifier, he added 'someday.'
Announcements like this create the impression that this is new and Apptronik or Tesla are leading the way.
The blueprint for today's robots came from the book R.U.R published in 1920. Since then, people have been trying to build something which works as described in the book.
We had Honda's ASIMO. We have Boston Dynamics, Sanctuary AI and many, many others working on humanoid robots. For your curiosity, you can check this link which lists the top patent holders for Dexterous Manipulation and General-Purpose Robots. At the top is Alphabet (proud parent company of Google) together with Hyundai, Sony, Nvidia and other easily recognizable names. Do you know who's not there? Tesla and Apptronik.
Going through the websites of the above mentioned companies, and reading various news stories you start to see emerging themes:
a mission to create human-like intelligence in general purpose robots
deploy millions of industrial-grade humanoid robots to help address growing labor challenges
the dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs
cook or clean for you, do factory work, or even teach your children
unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks
The vision is to start creating human-like robots to first work in factories, in the field, and perform boring, dangerous tasks. Eventually, they will move to your home - in droves - and do cooking and cleaning.
One could deduct that cleaning and cooking are both dangerous and dull. But it made me think and ask the question: 'If I could buy a robot today, what would I make it do for me?' I did highly unscientific research and asked my friends and colleagues the same question.
Here is the sample of their answers:
Clean my place
Go shopping for me
Cook for me
Bring me things from Home Depot
Fold my laundry
Load the dishwasher
They also suggested uses for other people:
A companion for the elderly
Walking a dog
... and that's about it.
I also asked them where they would put this new member of their household. It made them think.
Rather than trying to come up with another clever ending about a new and upcoming recurrent pattern, this time I'll leave it up to you. What would be the things which would make you buy your own universal robot? What would be the recurrent pattern which would make you use it everyday, all the time?
To end with, here’s another thing to ponder. You might have missed one of the announcements from the AI Summit in Paris - France and EU promise to cut red tape on tech. Cutting red tape - among other things - meant that the European Commission withdrew the proposed AI Liability Directive which would have '.. allowed consumers to sue for compensation for harm due to the fault or omission of a provider, developer or user of AI technology.' In the words of the French president, Mr. Macron: 'It's very clear we have to resynchronise with the rest of the world.'
And that's the new recurrent pattern for you. An introduction of technology, which will have a direct impact on your wellbeing with zero responsibility from the people who are building it. That's the next wave.