Invest two and a half minutes and watch this video to witness the future happening right before our eyes:
I mean, ignore for a second the unbelievable "visual and language intelligence" this machine is displaying.
Look instead at just how naturally and fluidly it moves:
That basically looks like one human being handing an apple to another human being.
Heck, it even cleans up trash better than I do!
(And more importantly, it can explain why it's doing a task while it's doing it, and even rate itself.)
Compare that to Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Terminator" portrayal. One of the jokes that's carried through the films is John Connor teaching the deadly robot how to smile:
Our apocalyptic art that pondered war with the machines would look like didn't even come close to how sophisticated these machines are now, let alone what they will be in the next 10 years ... or 20 ... or 100.
Imagine it now: The year is 2045. You're trying to escape your 15-minute city, but Emperor Soros II has banned the use of anything except electric scooters. You'd take one, but your GPS can be tracked that way, so you decide to hoof it through the woods on the outskirts of town to meet a friend that can get you to Texas.
As you walk, you trigger sentry drones with thermal imaging that are flying a thousand feet overhead. They send smaller drones connected to the internet hivemind. Powered by AI, they nimbly avoid the smallest tree branches and find you in seconds.
You try to run, but a pack of robodogs outfitted with tranquilizer guns is deployed to catch you.
As it turns out, your friend didn't turn in his dad's AR-15 with a Smart Shooter at the mandatory buyback of 2032, so he manages to take a few of the robo-pups down and deploys a jammer to blind the rest.
The hivemind is coordinating well, but a human administrator of the Soros II regime decides this one needs more firepower. Xe/Xem deploys a team of EMP-shielded Parkour bots with onboard, native AI to hunt you down.
You don't stand a chance.
Anyway, back here in the fun times of 2024, the company that produced this wonderbot, Figure, says its goal is "to deploy autonomous humanoid workers to support us on a global scale:"
As automation continues to integrate with human life at scale, we can predict that the labor-based economy as we know it will transform. Robots that can think, learn, reason, and interact with their environments will eventually be capable of performing tasks better than humans. Today, manual labor compensation is the primary driver of goods and services prices, accounting for ~50% of global GDP (~$42 trillion/yr), but as these robots "join the workforce," everywhere from factories to farmland, the cost of labor will decrease until it becomes equivalent to the price of renting a robot, facilitating a long-term, holistic reduction in costs.
That does sound very appealing, although hearing if the "cost of labor will decrease" that greatly, it could very easily redound negatively for the human workers whose work is subsequently devalued by that much.
Figure, however, projects that this will ultimately be a net positive for humanity:
This will change our productivity in exciting ways. Manual labor could become optional and higher production could bring an abundance of affordable goods and services, creating the potential for more wealth for everyone.
We will have the chance to create a future with a significantly higher standard of living, where people can pursue the lives they want.
Here are the steps to the company's "master plan:"
- Build a feature-complete electromechanical humanoid.
- Perform human-like manipulation.
- Integrate humanoids into the labor force.
Looks like we're somewhere between steps two and three. I think we can all prepare to have our minds blown even further in the near future.
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