In 50 years human-size labor robots will be common in households that are middle class and above. They'll recharge locally, and won't be meant to travel great distances while powered on, so their battery packs won't need to be massive. They'll be capable of performing a decent variety of mundane household labor, including laundry, dishes, mowing the lawn, picking up / organizing rooms of the house, mopping floors, cleaning the bathroom. We'll organize these spaces to an extent for their benefit, to better comply with how they do what they do. Appliances will be marketed for use by humans only, or mixed use (either robot or human can operate).
As a consequence of these robots humans will increasingly forget how to pick up after themselves (as a routine) and or never learn it in the first place as children.
What, you don't have a refrigerator? What, you don't have a washing machine? What, you don't have a television? What, you don't have a dish washer? What, you don't have a microwave? What, you don't have an Alice bot? And so on it goes.
Work spaces will have similar robots to pick up after employees and perform other assisting tasks in the office. Silicon Valley or its equivalent will get these robots first as a new perk that will be lampooned initially (the nerds that can't even take care of themselves) and then it'll spread across corporate America because of the productivity benefits and convenience aspect.
The same bots will displace very large amounts of labor in retail outlets like Walmart, Target, Walgreens, CVS, Costco; and fastfood chains.
It's not a question of if this is going to happen. It's a question of whether it takes closer to 25 years or closer to 50 years (I'd bet on 35-50 years) to hit an inflection point where the robot avalanche gains significant momentum. These won't be hyper competent everything robots, like you see portrayed in eg I, Robot (the Will Smith movie), they'll be quite specialized and quite limited compared to science fiction, but still very useful.
In the style that the smartphone ate one thing after another, the humanoid robot assistant will eat one labor task after another, and that's how they'll be advertised initially. Robot v1 does X; Robot v2 now does X, Y; Robot v3 now does X, Y, Z. It'll be a productivity arms race in the early days, and then the improvements will rapidly slow down and the robots will become a fashion competition or something else, as they saturate the easy wins in labor elimination.
I've actually wondered if we'd be faster to full home automation if you made slight modifications to the home itself to enable more purpose built factory style automation to take over.
My wife watched that video, and was nodding along... "It's a bit wasteful of water, but I like the idea!" And then the video ended with "And the latest version is transparent."
She yelped "why the HELL would they end with a statement like that, and not explain or go into any kind of detail?!?!?"
The only doubt I have about this is the amount of electricity this personal labor servant robot will cost. I can imagine that what you describe is a certainty for the rich, but I do wonder where the cut-off will be for the rest of society. I can imagine a reality where those who don’t have such robots, will want to work hard to get them, and a number of lower-cost, less energy intensive helper bots will cater to the needs of those of us who can’t afford the full standalone-Alfred model.
There will be a billionaire with a 100 of these to do random shit with.
Electricity is super cheap, really. You can move an entire car a mile for $0.025 - $0.125, depending on your state. I can’t see electricity prices being an issue unless we really bungle the building of energy capacity in the near future.
Electricity is usually much much cheaper than food calories — 2500 kcal is about 3 kWh, apply your local energy and food costs — so electricity won’t be the limiting factor, but construction cost/longevity and AI quality will be.
Assuming equal capacity (not any time soon but might happen eventually), anywhere that electricity was cheaper than Germany’s famously expensive average of US$0.45/kWh would be able to afford to replace any human labourer with a robot, even if the humans were at the UN threshold for abject poverty (US$1.90/day, which is why I gave German electricity in USD rather than EUR) and that human somehow worked productively for 33h45m per day.
Some people might (probably not that many on an absolute level, tens of millions worldwide possibly), most people will have what they have now but much less new and more beat up, as the market gets saturated with used/fixed appliances. That's the good future, the bad one is where everything is garbage and can't be fixed at all.
Everything is already garbage and can't be fixed at all, so I'm afraid I can't see why that would change.
Individuals can put in the effort and make their life more repairable, maintainable and higher quality. But it takes time and money, which is short supply for most.
While I agree-ish, we already have very cheap general purpose cleaners you can hire. I imagine a robot will be more expensive and less robust. I can see stores and corporate offices, but idk about a middle class home.
As a consequence of these robots humans will increasingly forget how to pick up after themselves (as a routine) and or never learn it in the first place as children.
What, you don't have a refrigerator? What, you don't have a washing machine? What, you don't have a television? What, you don't have a dish washer? What, you don't have a microwave? What, you don't have an Alice bot? And so on it goes.
Work spaces will have similar robots to pick up after employees and perform other assisting tasks in the office. Silicon Valley or its equivalent will get these robots first as a new perk that will be lampooned initially (the nerds that can't even take care of themselves) and then it'll spread across corporate America because of the productivity benefits and convenience aspect.
The same bots will displace very large amounts of labor in retail outlets like Walmart, Target, Walgreens, CVS, Costco; and fastfood chains.
It's not a question of if this is going to happen. It's a question of whether it takes closer to 25 years or closer to 50 years (I'd bet on 35-50 years) to hit an inflection point where the robot avalanche gains significant momentum. These won't be hyper competent everything robots, like you see portrayed in eg I, Robot (the Will Smith movie), they'll be quite specialized and quite limited compared to science fiction, but still very useful.
In the style that the smartphone ate one thing after another, the humanoid robot assistant will eat one labor task after another, and that's how they'll be advertised initially. Robot v1 does X; Robot v2 now does X, Y; Robot v3 now does X, Y, Z. It'll be a productivity arms race in the early days, and then the improvements will rapidly slow down and the robots will become a fashion competition or something else, as they saturate the easy wins in labor elimination.