Are the robots coming yet?

ROBOTICS

Cue the Robots

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Xiaomi, Amazon and beyond.

Hey Guys,

While chatGPT gets the?glory of the supposedly good news ?about A.I’s utility, I’m actually in 2022 more impressed with the advent of the robots. I’ve been waiting for years for this kind of progress and mass adoption.

A.I. Survey is about A.I. startups, robotics and other A.I. News, as I can only write so frequently on A.I. Supremacy, my flagship Newsletter.

It’s not all great news for Robot adoption however, like a dystopian movie, the city of San Francisco had recently passed a proposal, which was passed last week by the city's legislators, the board of supervisors, would have allowed police to access robots that can kill. Subsequently it faced fierce criticism from civil liberties groups as you might have guessed.

It’s hard to even imagine such a thing happening. After voting unanimously to pause the proposal on Tuesday, the board sent the issue to committee for further review. Meanwhile you might have heard, Boston Dynamics?filed a lawsuit against Ghost ?Robotics that are making robot-dog killer machines for National security clients.

The Amazon Worker Robot Apocalypse

With a crisis of warehouse workers, Amazon appears to be fast-tracking robots to work at its huge E-commerce warehouses. Apparently the churn rate of workers is very high, and the climate of the conditions and pay is very low.

Amazon.com Inc. has developed a robot capable of identifying and handling individual items called Sparrow. The robotic arm, tipped by a set of retractable suction devices. Automating such tasks may look simple but has stumped Amazon roboticists for years. Machines at the company’s facilities have long lifted pallets, arranged tightly packed shelves and shuttled packages on conveyor belts. But there are some real signs they are now able to do more tasks. Read on Bloomberg:

Cue the Robots

The argument that robots and A.I. will just “augment” people is pretty far-fetched by corporate entities. Sparrow as a new highly automated system featuring its yellow frame can?store?and retrieve millions of items—tasks currently handled by humans.

Amazon, which churns through hourly workers at a brisk pace, has long expected to one day run out of warm bodies for its US fulfillment centers, warehouses and delivery demands. I expect it to automate the entire thing sooner rather than later to save costs. Amazon like many companies, grossly over hired in recent years pre-pandemic.

One answer to the labor shortage, of course, is more robots. But for years, engineers struggled to duplicate a human’s manual dexterity. Sparrow isn’t the final answer, but it’s a major jump to solve the problem.

Make no mistake though, this is a robot taking a human job. Robots will stow and retrieve individual items, move packaged boxes into carts for shipment and pilot those carts to waiting trucks—labor now handled mostly by people.

Sorry for the killer robot and job-replacing robot stories, it’s just what’s happening on the ground. So let’s turn to a lighter story.

Xiaomi’s Humanoid Drummer Beats Expectations

Xiaomi is a pretty innovative Tech company in China, it’s been working on the fun task of solving drum-playing helped quest for whole-body control. Check out the result:

According to IEEE, When Xiaomi announced its CyberOne humanoid robot a couple of months back, it wasn’t entirely clear what the company was actually going to do with the robot.

In a nice surprise, Xiaomi roboticists have taught the robot to do something that is, if not exactly useful, at least loud: to play the drums.

So it turns out it’s not just Tesla that’s working on humanoid robots actually being able to do things.

In truth, 2022 likely saw the most real adoption with robots in hospitality (like Hotels) and restaurants. The robot cooks are indeed getting better with real-live pilots.

Anyways guys it’s not just speculative A.I. like ChatGPT that will change the world, it’s actual robotics that need to solve the productivity issues of aging populations, more educated populations and decreasing fertility. Keep in mind that in the U.S. alone many issues have been identity?regarding the labor force supply-demand?such as:

• Many men disappearing from the labor force.?Here ?and?here .
• Women that haven’t come back to the workforce after Covid due to more family demands.
• Long-covid, an epidemic unto itself. That probably increases in scopre with repeated exposure.
• A slew of early retirements and more retirements than usual during the pandemic.
• Pre Existing trends of major declines in the labor force decade over decade due to social inequality, racial injustice and wealth inequality among other things in the U.S such as the rural vs. urban divide.
• Real data and evidence that productivity is declining post pandemic, largely due to mental health concerns and increased financial pressures.

These and other forces are serious factors in the adoption and increase in automation that will drive the adoption of robots in the 2023 to 2033 period, as well as significant changes in demographics of aging populations in developed countries including China and Germany going the way of Japan.

All of which makes the adoption of robots not just likely, but inevitable.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoy articles about A.I. at the intersection of breaking news join AiSupremacy?here . I cannot continue to write without community support. (follow the link below). For the price of a cup of coffee, Join 130 other paying subscribers.

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