You’ll Probably Buy a Humanlike Robot
This is a preview of my new project, Build The Culture. It is set to launch in early November. This article exemplifies the tone and topics that this project will explore through video, a podcast, and written pieces. I hope you enjoy! -Chris
If you’re here reading this and it’s still the pre-robot era, then it’s really important that you understand what’s about to happen to you. It’s going to affect your free time, your hobbies, and of course, your work and income. You may already have some assumptions about how the robot age is going to go (or not go), but just for fun, let’s walk ourselves through what’s right around the corner so we can be a little better prepared. If we make a few minor adjustments to our plans and thinking right now, then we may even set ourselves up for a big win when the bots start showing up.
Let’s take it from the top. People have been obsessed with robots for a long time. However long you’re guessing right now, it’s probably not long enough. We have wanted to have mechanical versions of ourselves for thousands of years. Look it up if you don’t believe me - that was a fun and weird wikipedia wormhole I went down. Apparently the core story of the robot hero is one of the less original and more obvious kinds of stories we like to tell. It’s an ancient pan-cultural topic.
As is often the case with sci-fi, these stories ignited the imaginations of engineers and inventors down the ages. Many prototypes, experiments, art pieces, and genuine tries to build humanlike robots have come and gone. This has happened so much that there’s a certain reflexive jaded response that appears sometimes when I talk about the coming day of the bot utopia with my particularly learned friends. Frankly this is a fair response - every nerd since Da Vinci has most likely made the same claim at some point to anyone who would listen. Yet here I am today, with the audacity to earnestly state that this time, it really is different - and here’s why.
Humanlike robots are going to happen a lot like the iPhone happened. In 2006 (a year before the iPhone), today’s insanely powerful device with absurdly excellent cameras, all day battery life, incredible data connection speeds, and super thin form factor would have been looked at as impossible alien tech. We’ve just gotten so used to them that we don’t think about it much anymore. But in 2007, like the first bolt of lightning from a building thunderstorm, the modern smartphone happened. It was the result of a process called Convergence by the people who study technology progress.
A good smartphone has a few key ingredients needed to make it possible - and all of these things must also be able to be mass-produced profitably with a low error rate. Let’s review three of the bigger ones, because this will really help us understand why the humanlike robot is going to be (probably hilariously) gift-wrapped under so many Christmas trees in 2030.
First, to even consider building the iPhone, Apple needed to have a great battery that would allow the device to last an acceptable amount of time between charges. The topic of rechargeable batteries is one that I love to bend people’s ears with, but let’s save that for another day. Suffice to say, the improvement in battery performance and cost had reached a point where a power-hungry handheld computer would be feasible.
The second necessary ingredient was a computer chip architecture that would not suck up that nice juicy battery too quickly. A processor as powerful as the one at the heart of the iPhone had traditionally required a wall power outlet, or at least a hefty laptop battery. By 2005 when iPhone development began, the improvements in chip power consumption (which still continue today!) had reached a point where something pretty fast would run without much of a power drain.
A smartphone wouldn’t make any sense without a good data connection away from wifi. The cellular networks had finally reached a point where not only were voice calls possible, they could also support loading webpages, sending pictures, texts, and email, and even provide some download capabilities. While the iPhone wasn’t the first phone to do all these things, it could fairly be claimed to be the first device to do all these things in a way that most everyone could understand and enjoy.
Thus the iPhone became one of the most revolutionary and highly-demanded consumer items ever created. Today, smartphones have profoundly changed almost every aspect of our lives.
Now let’s walk through why and how convergence is also bringing us all a robot friend. First, like the iPhone, there are some super important ingredients that are just now becoming mass producible. Let’s look at three pieces of a bot. At the end of this breakdown, you will probably be pretty sure as well that after thousands of years of human dreams, robot time is basically here now, and you’ll run out to tell your friends - or at least click Share on my content.
We’ve had some of the pieces needed to build robot pals for a good while. That’s why there have been the Honda Asimo, the Boston Dynamics Atlas, and quite a few other examples that have wowed people for a while. But there’s just something that isn’t there for these, and the long-standing bot disappointment perpetuates. Either they’re too expensive, too hard to use, or just not able to be mass produced. These problems are now in the process of actually being solved.
First, the sensors, cameras, processors, and other techy bits of a good bot just didn’t really exist in great quantity before the smartphone age and the rise of the Internet of Things. The need for vast quantities of good components to build phones, Alexas, smart doorbells, and more has paved the way. These parts are really necessary to create a mechanical hand that can feel what it’s doing and know its own position in 3D space with great accuracy. Precision movement is needed if you expect your bot to be able to do anything useful for you, and it has to be able to be done cheaply.
Secondly, robots had historically been running into the same problem that the smartphone had before it was possible. A power source for a good robot will have to be lightweight and hold a tremendous amount of energy so that it can walk a decent distance and still lift, carry, and work. In fact, robots had to be gas-powered until pretty recently - the older Boston Dynamics robots were really loud. This issue has been addressed by the continual ever-improving progress of rechargeable battery technology. The electric car went from somewhat practical to very desirable within the last 15 years, and the constant R&D applied to EV batteries has created an excellent option for powering humanlike robots.
However, the hardest convergence element for a great humanlike robot has been very elusive. This is the element of intelligence - a brain. Until very recently, a robot’s movements all needed to be pre-coded. The breakthrough in this area happened when Tesla decided to apply their Full Self Driving beta AI to the problem of robot intelligence. This is a vision-based AI, using camera feeds to perceive and understand its surroundings. It evaluates its options 2,500 times a second, and chooses the best safe path as it guides a Tesla vehicle through the road environment. This same approach has been scaled to indoor environments, and prototypes are already completing simple tasks at the Tesla factory in Fremont.
It is this final piece of the convergence puzzle that makes me highly confident that humanlike robots will be commonplace within a few short years. All of the big tech breakthroughs have occurred through convergence. Once the separate elements of a transformational technology exist, they will eventually be combined to create new heights of human convenience, security, health, sustenance, productivity, and leisure. Look around you, observe your environment right now, and contrast it with life 20 years ago, 100 years ago, and 200 years ago. On human scale, that may seem like a long time, but on a universal or even just planetary timeframe, it’s been a stunningly short amount of time since we were living hand to mouth and dying at 30 years old.
The inexpensive humanlike intelligent robot will bring about a huge positive change in your life. Let’s walk through a couple of ways that your world will be different soon.
If the humanlike robot exists, so must self-driving cars. An electric self-driving car will be extremely inexpensive to operate, so for most people, it will make a lot more sense to ride everywhere we need to go in an unmanned Uber. The research team at Ark Invest has estimated that robotaxis will cost about $0.25 per mile. In this world, you won’t need a car payment and car insurance to have access to on-demand transportation.
You can instead take most of the money that previously would have gone to fund your transportation needs and buy a robot. This robot will be able to do all of your chores - laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, dishes, keeping the house and property clean (to a higher standard than you, by the way), and almost anything else. Then, after doing everything you ask it to do, it can then charge itself for an hour and go do work in the community. This work for others will allow you to receive payment for your bot’s services, and would probably even be enough to offset the cost of purchasing and maintaining the robot.
This is the part of the thought experiment where things get really interesting. If your robot is basically free of cost, and it’s doing all your chores, then you have not only a lot more free time, but you still have the resources freed up by not having the costs of owning a car. You realize that now you can buy perhaps two or even three or more robots. Here’s what I would do with these bots.
First, I would set one of the three new robots to always accept jobs from the surrounding community and businesses. This robot’s job is just to pay for the new set of bots. Next, I would set the other two bots to work just making things for me. I would perhaps buy the raw materials to make 2 beautiful sailboats, and upload the blueprints to the bots. One sailboat I would keep for myself to take on adventures, and the other I would sell to cover the cost of the materials and dock slip. Next, I would look for a piece of land in a fairly remote area, and set the bots to work building a cabin. Once I was satisfied that they were competent construction workers, I would sell this service to 10 more people who wanted cabins, and thus pay for my land and materials.
At this point, you might have noticed a rising issue. If I can have bots that make all these things and provide all this work, then can’t you? And if you and I are in the same market, won’t we have to undercut each other on price and drive down the cost of these goods and services?
Yes! That’s the promise of the humanlike robot. The cost of goods and services will be driven far, far below where they are today. This will free up so much human leisure that we can probably also expect great and creative new industries that don’t even exist yet today. When we free a person from meaningless uninspiring labor - whether that’s chores or a job - we are creating a completely new possibility space for them. What things would you create if you didn’t have to waste your time on such tedious things? What could a freed-up culture create if it were more well-rested and less stressed out?
My final thoughts I leave you with on the subject of the imminently possible humanlike bot:
-The iPhone didn’t magically emerge from Apple. Many people had to do a significant amount of inspiring and challenging work to create this device that has brought about such a beneficial change.
-Yes, Tesla is working on this, and will probably succeed in mass-producing an affordable robot that can enable the world we just explored in our minds. However, there is still a lot of work to do, and their success is not a given. How can we help make sure the robot gets built?
-How can you and I prepare ourselves and our community to benefit from humanlike robots?
-This improvement to our lives will be tremendous, and the amount of human suffering it will relieve is vast. It is thus our moral obligation to ensure that it comes to pass as soon and as beneficially as possible.
“This means a future of abundance. There is no poverty. You can have whatever you want in terms of products and services. It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it.”
-Elon Musk, discussing the Optimus humanoid robot project, September 2022
The humanlike robot, like the smartphone, will be another classic example of Convergence. What are some other examples of improved components or newly-cheap elements that could combine into other high-impact products and services?