We were promised robots. Robots as butlers, drivers, housekeepers. And we’ve got some of those, haven’t we? Robotaxis are in the news. Robot arm-powered factories make fancy LinkedIn posts (even though YouTube likes go to some Indian guys making stuff – from car tires to large metal tanks).
Robot butlers are a wonderful idea. The human world is built around the human body – and it’s meant to be operated by it. So what better tool than a human-shaped robot? It can do the dishes, fix the sink, and drive the kids to football practice.
But, aren’t robot butlers a utopia? Surely the VCs want this to happen. It just feels like the hurdle is still too big, even with all that VC capital at play. I do believe in humanoid robots for niche work – take the EU-funded Canopies project that we participated in. Building robots that pick grapes in a vineyard. Niche enough to actually work. But a generalist humanoid robot, to me, still feels like a distant future.
So we wanted a robot plumber, but what we’ve got instead is a robot designer and a robot accountant. Weird. It’s like humans have to do the blue-collar jobs now, while robots do the thinking.
This is not what we were promised, but this is where we are today. Not. Fair.