Just as not "anyone" can use power tools to build a house, not just "anyone" can use AI to build software.

I'm not sure why you're making all these points. We don't really disagree.

My response was not intended to be comprehensive, but more of an illustration. There are a million places wheeled vehicles can't easily go, that are easier for a bipedal robot to go.

If you're right, and there's no reason for these robots, people won't buy them, and the market will speak for itself.

Indeed, there are whole categories of human inventions that focus on imitation of human or animal capabilities, from hearing to seeing to speaking to flying to swimming to thinking.

You've got a point about knees!

Who knows what the uses could be! There are a billion places cars or airplanes can't go, that a humanoid robot can. How about, up a flight of stairs, for example. A humanoid robot would need far fewer special accommodations than other types of locomotion, especially indoors. If the only thing the robot can do is carry a thing from one place to another, in some contexts that's already amazing.

We've only just begun the development of humanoid robots. Of course there are many problems to solve. There is plenty of time to solve them.

This is an accomplishment worthy of celebration even if the only application, is the knowledge that was gained in the process of making the robot successful.

Of course, longevity will be an area where a lot of improvement will be needed. In the early 20th century, cars and planes didn't last long either.

Of course you're right, when they're not arbitrarily constrained by being forced to emulate animal motion

Whether you think this is a reasonable constraint or not, it's still an achievement.

There are good reasons to make machines emulate animal motions. For example, a wheeled indoor delivery robot can't climb stairs. A humanoid robot would be able to do this much better. A car can go much faster than a human, but it can't go through the woods where there are no paths, it needs roads.

So every kind of machine has constraints of some sort, just different constraints. If there is no use case for a humanoid robot that can run marathons, it won't sell, and the concept will die. But we will still have learned a lot about how to make robots balance, and operate efficiently, in the process.

Fingerprint locks are notoriously inaccurate. I quit using fingerprint unlock on my phone because, when the humidity is low, it stops recognizing my fingerprints.

This isn't a new problem. In 2001 I worked for a company that had fingerprint locks on the doors. Often, the locks refused to work, unless you first moistened your fingertip. You can guess exactly what happened next!

If it's that hard to get relatively simple fingerprint recognition to work reliably, why do we expect that iris scanning will work *more* reliably?

To me, this is more about the state of the art of robots, than a comparison to human capabilities.

Until now, robots have *not* been able to accomplish such a feat. That in itself makes it noteworthy.

Can machines go faster? Sure. But the robot needed to keep its balance the entire time, and not run out of battery power. These have not been easy challenges for robot designers to overcome.

The embargo was the immediate cause, declining reserves was the underlying cause. https://history.state.gov/mile....

Where Voyager is, they would have already failed to produce enough current years ago.

In the 1970s, we all thought the world was running out of oil, and people started buying tiny cars with better gas mileage. Well, for a few years. Then people forgot about the oil crisis and started going for bigger and bigger cars, to the point that most American car makers don't even make...cars...any more.

There might be a temporary surge, but then people will soon remember how comfortable their massive, luxury SUVs were, and they'll forget all about electric vehicles. Even electric SUVs induce range anxiety, and that's no small hurdle for American drivers.

While I completely agree with you on Trump, that's still a long ways from a situation that would end the human race. Even if nuclear weapons were used in war, that is *still* a long ways from ending the human race. In a nightmare scenario that could result in thousands of nuclear weapons being deployed against civilian targets, the very political structure of our nations would begin to disintegrate. This could lead to anarchy, but still, a far cry from extinction.

Yep, they have a dashboard that shows, for each employee, on which days of the month they used AI. It doesn't matter what they used it for, or how often they used it, just that they used it. And the executives don't want to see any blank days.

For some odd reason, they aren't looking at the other dashboard that shows that pull requests aided by AI, are taking longer than PRs not aided by AI.

The hype is overwhelming at this point. If you dare challenge the "AI makes work go faster" mantra, you are short listed for the exit door.

I'll be thrilled if the hype dies down in only six months.

Agreed, for learning a language, "AI slop" is plenty good enough, and beats the cheesy practice sentences and stories that humans come up with!