"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?""Oh.
-
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never." -
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."I had a little note in my calendar because this conversation was two years ago.
-
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird what?! how dare you impede the grand progress of Tesla Optimus towards android servitors with this cheap skepticism! Why there's announcements in Fortune magazine every day about them!!
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@futurebird what?! how dare you impede the grand progress of Tesla Optimus towards android servitors with this cheap skepticism! Why there's announcements in Fortune magazine every day about them!!
Nobody wants a robot that's durable, versatile, powerful and sensitive and not too expensive (and self-repairing, obviously) more than me.
It would be so amazing if the problem were software and not software, power, design, everything.
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Nobody wants a robot that's durable, versatile, powerful and sensitive and not too expensive (and self-repairing, obviously) more than me.
It would be so amazing if the problem were software and not software, power, design, everything.
@futurebird I like robots too (well the idea of them, with genuinely independent intelligence and personality) but it's very difficult to imagine the current crowd of tech boys to come up with anything better than dubious toys for military and police use (and they'll spend public money on anything)
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@futurebird I like robots too (well the idea of them, with genuinely independent intelligence and personality) but it's very difficult to imagine the current crowd of tech boys to come up with anything better than dubious toys for military and police use (and they'll spend public money on anything)
"We have a design for a robot, but the parts needed to build it do not exist. We need to use the LLM to design those too now."
Real things people have said.
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"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird We just need the unlimited funding of a Project Hail Mary level extinction threat to give us the motivation we need to make this happen.
We at Torment Nexus Industries are proudly providing that threat.
-
Nobody wants a robot that's durable, versatile, powerful and sensitive and not too expensive (and self-repairing, obviously) more than me.
It would be so amazing if the problem were software and not software, power, design, everything.
@futurebird @mxchara
So much this. The only problem in robotics is everything, because each problem in robotics is every other problem in robotics in a trenchcoat. -
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird nothing's more exciting than the thought of getting trapped under a 200-pound biped humanoid robot made of hard plastics and metal that tripped while exchanging one's soiled bed sheets.
-
I had a little note in my calendar because this conversation was two years ago.
@futurebird It's so great that we've got all these helpful robots taking places in care homes now!
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@futurebird @mxchara
So much this. The only problem in robotics is everything, because each problem in robotics is every other problem in robotics in a trenchcoat.@nonnihil @futurebird @mxchara This so precisely correct. Can I steal it for a presentation?
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@futurebird nothing's more exciting than the thought of getting trapped under a 200-pound biped humanoid robot made of hard plastics and metal that tripped while exchanging one's soiled bed sheets.
@P__X @futurebird Yet another reason why I'm skeptical about humanoid use cases.
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@nonnihil @futurebird @mxchara This so precisely correct. Can I steal it for a presentation?
I would like examples, as a complete non roboticist
-
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird
Funny how ALL the gen Ai LLM benefits are in the (currently) nonexistent future, a time when all of us will be dead, and none of us will be able to either benefit from it or to do anything about it.
We have the misfortune of living in a time when money and marketing-speak talk so loudly that every rational voice is drowned out by the sound of greed. -
I would like examples, as a complete non roboticist
@clew @Robotistry @futurebird @mxchara
Say I want to climb a stair. Now I need a leg (mech e), which needs a balancing controller (classical control), which means estimating payload inertias (learned control), and I need a big battery (materials science) or a passive dynamic walker design (mech e again) and regenerative motor braking (ee).
Say i dig down on regenerative braking. Now I need a high-rate controller (sw. eng), low-backlash geartrain (mech e), high-rate battery charging (f'ing solid state physics) and a plan for overcharge (safety enge, ee). That plan for overcharge has to include emergency stop (classical control) of a possibly dynamically unsafe system (learned control? probably?) while on uneven terrain (mech e) which is.... back to where we started trying to climb a stair.
This is an example of a _mostly solved_ problem. The real world of unsolved problems is much, much worse. Changing any constant by a millimeter blows up all your assumptions everywhere in the stack in a way that no single engineer can have in their head at once.Plantigrade humanoids arguably are the worst case of this problem, but autonomous cars have a few notable strange fractal doom loops where nobody can understand it all at once.
-
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird Somehow you have to separate the car enthusiasts from the people who yell "Get a horse", from the grifters and con men.
We're pretty sure that LLMs are keen but can't do a lot without some actual AI in control.CAD is old hat; hows about CAD+?
Robots? When they show off robots they still point to great new things like ankles(!). The hardware isn't ready yet.
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@nonnihil @futurebird @mxchara This so precisely correct. Can I steal it for a presentation?
@Robotistry @futurebird @mxchara
Go right ahead
-
@clew @Robotistry @futurebird @mxchara
Say I want to climb a stair. Now I need a leg (mech e), which needs a balancing controller (classical control), which means estimating payload inertias (learned control), and I need a big battery (materials science) or a passive dynamic walker design (mech e again) and regenerative motor braking (ee).
Say i dig down on regenerative braking. Now I need a high-rate controller (sw. eng), low-backlash geartrain (mech e), high-rate battery charging (f'ing solid state physics) and a plan for overcharge (safety enge, ee). That plan for overcharge has to include emergency stop (classical control) of a possibly dynamically unsafe system (learned control? probably?) while on uneven terrain (mech e) which is.... back to where we started trying to climb a stair.
This is an example of a _mostly solved_ problem. The real world of unsolved problems is much, much worse. Changing any constant by a millimeter blows up all your assumptions everywhere in the stack in a way that no single engineer can have in their head at once.Plantigrade humanoids arguably are the worst case of this problem, but autonomous cars have a few notable strange fractal doom loops where nobody can understand it all at once.
Hard because changing one of those parts changes what all the other parts need? Because a little change one place might lead to a huge change elsewhere, even a change of direction?
(Zero robotics, but I have some of the math!)
-
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird
This is what I've been bullying my AI hopeful colleagues for for years.
Robotics hasn't gotten better since the 1990s because it turns out human motion is incredibly precise, adaptable, and REALLY COMPLICATED
We physically can't make an arm shaped thing that works like an arm. We can make an arm shaped thing that can do certain arm like tasks, maybe pick up an ergonomic object, press a few buttons, or I guess flip over packages for 4 hours per that one new "AI" stream. But that same arm can't do surgery, it can't drive operate heavy machinery, hell, it couldn't reach behind a couch to plug in a vacuum with near the ease we have.
I will admit, the compute is probably there. We can probably simulate the motion of a person enough that an AI scale compute system could do the math to plug in a vacuum. But motors aren't getting smaller. Not without becoming uselessly weak. We've hit the physics barrier of electromagnetism.
Hell, look at any video of an incredibly sophisticated hand and just conceptualize how many hand positions it can make. Then try to make one you know it can't. Cross your fingers. Touch your thumb to each finger tip, see how fast you can do it. You are so much more sophisticated than a robot.
And obviously, we could just, redesign the whole world to accommodate bots with just a slew of specialized tools to be a portion of human ability, but that's quite expensive since we've already built the world to our liking.
So unless we want to rebuild the world with the logic of an Amazon Warehouse, the bots aren't going to take over for a while. -
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird And this misses the part about which the robot collects data about your health, personal habits, contacts and passes them along to someone who sells them to 3rd parties. Maybe the 3rd parties actually are linked to the robot.
Rosie would never have done that.
