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FT editor Roula Khalaf will select your favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The author is former editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and writes FuturePolis, the newsletter for Future of Democracy
Imagine it being the tension of a machine that you want to move around. Do you choose the human form?
Probably not. Biologists don’t have a settled theory of how our bipedal walking evolved, but like everything else in biology, it’s not the best design, it’s a cludge. Move and balance two limbs is an impressive engineering feat, but it is dangerous on rough terrain, putting terrible pressure on the spine, which first evolved for quadrupeds. If you didn’t start with four limbs, maybe the shape of the centaur might not be good?
But in the high-tech sector, humanoid robots are artificial general information, which is the cultural handmade of another Holy Grail.
This week, Meta was reported following Tesla, Apple and Nvidia in planning a major investment in humanoid robots powered by AI. Their first focus is housework.
Companies such as Figure AI and Agility Robots have already built electronic vipers for warehouse tasks such as moving goods. However, outside of very specific applications, these machines don’t need much.
It’s no coincidence that humanoid robots and AGIs are the fever dreams of nerds who grew up in science fiction (I call this one of them). Both assume that human form is the pinnacle of evolution, whether physical or mental.
However, the human mind evolved not for the “general” intelligence but for the very specific task of manipulating the human body. That in itself is the result of an evolutionary compromise. A simple computer can surpass us in any number of brute force tasks. Even the power of abstract reasoning is constrained. Visualize 9-dimensional mathematical objects and integrate the discussions from 100 philosophy books at once. AI can already do a better job.
Still, we are extraordinary in other ways. Think simple but delicate tasks, such as washing wine glasses, changing diapers, or placing flowers in your arrangement. Now imagine closing your eyes and doing them. Tasks rarely depend on what you see, and take note of how much they depend on the incredible sensitivity of the skin and the ability to measure tension, pressure and weight through the muscles of your fingers, hands and arms. please. Embedding tactile sensations in every cubic millimeter of the body is an engineering task that is more difficult than vision than vision, and in itself is not a problem that has been completely solved in robotics.
Can home care robots become so sensitive? Even if it is possible, why limit it to two legs and two arms? Why can we comfortably pick up elderly and sick people and move them without fear of stumbling in 4 and 6?
One argument is that they would look scary. The other is that it is tailored to human-shaped robots designed for humans.
Both points have advantages. Anyway, robots, humanoids, or other robots are not as versatile as us. Not a price that everyone can afford.
As AI has a “jagged frontier,” robots’ functionality is probably very contradictory, as one task can cause good systems to get worse with closely related things. Flower arrangements may be possible – after all, the worst that can happen is crushed flowers – but reliable diaper changes and elder care may be out of reach forever.
In short, expect the robot to remain specialized.
That close AI almost certainly won’t move you by choosing one body design. Why limit the calculus to what fits within a single skull? Or do you limit mobility to the ability of certain limbs?
Instead, you sit in the server farm and at the moment you connect wirelessly to a robot shell that suits your needs. Sometimes we may try human forms just for novelty.
