The Internet can’t stop watching Figure AI’s humanoid robots handling packages
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Hi, Internet here. Nothing but contempt for these and other "AI" technologies that serve to enrich fascists and further harm humanity and the environment.
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WigglesVonSpiggles
Seniorius Lurkius
Watching that is weirdly hypnotic until you see young Jim there repeatedly swiping at and failing to pick up a slippery bag at the same time as trying to move another one across.
There’s no “this isn’t working, let’s try a different strategy” motions unless you count the “DOES NOT COMPUTE. HARD RESET” thing I saw it do. The box twizzle motion is cool too, but the mistake rate seems rather high.
It seems eminently qualified already to work as an airport “no shits given” baggage handler.
There’s no “this isn’t working, let’s try a different strategy” motions unless you count the “DOES NOT COMPUTE. HARD RESET” thing I saw it do. The box twizzle motion is cool too, but the mistake rate seems rather high.
It seems eminently qualified already to work as an airport “no shits given” baggage handler.
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eduardopozo56
Ars Centurion
Most of us agree with you, but this specific task (just putting packages in a conveyor) is the perfect task to replace with a robot, as humans tend to not enjoy standing 8 hours doing a repetitive task and the hands/joints tend to suffer after some months in the job.
The problem is, those being replaced wont receive training for another non-automated task or being taken care of, when they are out of jobs.
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Not going to take this at all seriously until the company can set up a demo with 3rd party verification that’s there’s no human intervention. Until then I’ll assume it’s the Mechanical Turk.
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It's fun that these idiots fundamentally don't even understand the job they're training robots to do.
No warehousing or distribution center operation would orient packages on a conveyor belt such that the barcode, which is used everywhere else in the conveyor network to control sorters and diverters, is face DOWN. It's so irritating a setup that the fact that the robot is doing a pretty decent job (though not exactly gentle) is kind of besides the point.
No warehousing or distribution center operation would orient packages on a conveyor belt such that the barcode, which is used everywhere else in the conveyor network to control sorters and diverters, is face DOWN. It's so irritating a setup that the fact that the robot is doing a pretty decent job (though not exactly gentle) is kind of besides the point.
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In this scenario humanities most advanced robot is used just turn a package on a belt so its label is facing downward? Really?
Marvin from HHTG comes to mind: "Here I am, a brain the size of a planet, ..."
Marvin from HHTG comes to mind: "Here I am, a brain the size of a planet, ..."
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There is absolutely no reason it needs to be humanoid. A gripping arm on rails would do the same job. Probably better.
This whole thing just looks like an investor trap.
This whole thing just looks like an investor trap.
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We've seen those kind of faked demos before, and between lag and the awkwardness of moving objects while wearing a VR headset, it looks nothing like this. Plus they have the camera running for dozens of hours a time nonstop. I don't doubt this is entirely autonomous for a second.
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This is what could be the downfall, or at least huge hiccup in the supposed AI revolution.
The people who are leading the charge almost universally have zero experience doing the jobs they are trying to replace.
Case and point: LLMs, has anyone asked a top level executive assistant what the essential tasks and ways of keeping things organized are? By the looks of all the advertised use cases, it doesn't seem so.
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What an incredibly useless task! Congrats on solving "which side of the easily manipulated and not heavy or oddly shaped package has a bar code!" A problem that's only been solved for decades, by cheaper and simpler robots, but still, add a few trillion to the valuation.
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Yeah I read/listened to something that made a very good case for this. The "tech oligarchy" class is so far far removed from normal human existence they don't even see people that clean/cook/etc as real humans, they assume their task is so trivial and simple it can just be replaced.
There will never be a toilet cleaning, dinner cooking, floor sweeping robot. Literally never.
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Here's where Boston Dynamics are
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Because everything is already built for humans.
And we've had non-humanoid robots for the better part of a century. Humanoid robots are the technological advancement to allow robots to operate anywhere humans can already be, rather having to adapt the environment.
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And here's Unitree deliberately using a remote connection for interpretation before the robot responds
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ubercurmudgeon
Ars Praefectus
I don't see the entertainment value of watching production line work. But that's Modern Times, I suppose? As for robot workers in general, I'd be all for it, if the aim wasn't to enrich the few and make tramps of the rest of us.
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Until every single human being is guaranteed food, shelter, and healthcare, it's flat out immoral to work on anything that will replace someone's job.
This isn't efficiency, this is resources going towards a new species to replace you.
The capitalist fantasy does not involve other people, it involves them and an army of robot slaves to do their bidding.
This isn't efficiency, this is resources going towards a new species to replace you.
The capitalist fantasy does not involve other people, it involves them and an army of robot slaves to do their bidding.
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My first summer job involved standing at a conveyor belt flipping cookies right side up before they were getting glazed. A crappy job, but it paid. I am sure there are still plenty of jobs like that. And I would be very nervous about my future if I were to work at an Amazon warehouse...
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" “This is the last time a human will ever win,” the Figure CEO predicted in his post on the competition."
Cool. Cool Cool.
Then what?
Apply a Theory of Constraint and just, I dunno, get rid of humans? because since we ain't winning any more, and we got no job, no income, no future....
Oh asshat, how do you make money when us losing humans well, we can't buy shit.
Is there a special "I learned to be Stupid" class for CEOs, because they seemed to forget that when human beings get tired of losing so much, when there is nothing much else to lose, they tend to turn on those that put them there...Times past, it was not a pretty moment for the Gentry.
CEO = idiots
CEO of AI = fucking idiots.
Cool. Cool Cool.
Then what?
Apply a Theory of Constraint and just, I dunno, get rid of humans? because since we ain't winning any more, and we got no job, no income, no future....
Oh asshat, how do you make money when us losing humans well, we can't buy shit.
Is there a special "I learned to be Stupid" class for CEOs, because they seemed to forget that when human beings get tired of losing so much, when there is nothing much else to lose, they tend to turn on those that put them there...Times past, it was not a pretty moment for the Gentry.
CEO = idiots
CEO of AI = fucking idiots.
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That's just like saying there's absolutely no reason self-driving cars need to be the size and shape of a regular car, and something more designed for its purpose from the ground up--say, autonomous pods or trams or something on a road or rail system designed for that purpose would be more efficient.
In a perfect world, it's absolutely correct. If we could redesign all our infrastructure to accommodate robotics and AI from the ground up, it would look nothing like what we have today, the cars wouldn't look like cars and the robots wouldn't look like humans. But that's really, really hard to do. We have the technology to automate all these processes massively more than they already are anyway without needing robots or AI, but the engineering and rebuilding costs are a huge hurdle. Humanoid robots, just like self-driving cars, are a quick shortcut to bridge the gap and start implementing automation without having to redesign your entire infrastructure from the ground up. If a factory is already totally built around breaking each task down into jobs for one human to do, and you can get a drop-in humanoid to do the easy ones, that's way easier to roll out gradually on top of existing infrastructure.
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Utter nonsense absolute-ism
By your definition there would be no factory improvements anywhere. There would be no process improvements.
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That robot would smash every cookie to bits. Why I included the "easily manipulated not heavy not weirdly shaped package" part.
This is the simplest, lowest barrier, easiest "flip to the right side" problem in existence. It's downright pathetic and on par with a undergraduate student's semester project.
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It's fun that folk fundamentally believe they know things that they don't. Just Google "bottom side scanning" - it's actually a significantly better logistics flow. It ensures barcodes are visible at a fixed distance from the scanner/camera (where as top side scanning introduces variances based on the size of the package). Bottom side scanning is neither new nor novel, and is, in fact, fairly common. KEYENCE and Cognex are the larger suppliers of bottom side scanning logistics infrastructure, but there are numerous companies that do this.
https://www.cognex.com/en/products/bottom-side-barcode-reading-system
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Working in the industry:
Actually it's quite a common use case, especially on the induction sorters - the ones where the parcels are being unloaded from the trucks and placed on the conveyors.
The code reading devices are mounted typically underneath the conveyor and read the parcels from underneath through a gap between two separate conveyor belts.
No focussing needed on the code reading device, easier and cheaper....
Cheers !
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Company demonstrates cutting edge robotics
Random internet commentator "on par with a undergraduate student's semester project"
Seriously there are comments in this thread that are delusional.
The answer isn't to burn it all down. The answer is to make sure it works for us all.
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While I get the general ire about things like this with relation to "enriching the rich", this sort of work is necessary if we ever want to get to a post-scarcity society. Everyone wants Star Trek, but wants to rail against technology necessary for Star Trek. Yeah, shitty humans will profit on it for a while, but it's necessary. Folk felt this way about automated looms, too - and if the Luddites had their way, we'd all be working in sweat shops and technology would likely be a century behind where it is today (or more). Big picture thinking is critical.
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But that is exactly what this is about. Robot workers are not there to enhance existing workers with all their "needs", they are there to replace, to cut costs. They are, in a way, the next slave race and perfect since they truly are (for now) just machines.
I don't worry about singularity, I worry more that asshole CEOs never look up till a mob is surrounding the encampment and much of the world is very messed up for the rest.
If we do not vote for people who will slow this progress down, much of what we call middle class will be destroyed.
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chateauarusi
Ars Praetorian
I upvoted you re the general principle you're expressing (capitalism is not our friend). However, I do want to add a little nuance.
It's a little misleading, I think, to hold up as sacrosanct the idea that a human must be the primary option for any given task, under the label of a "job" — because some jobs really, really suck. If you've never been inside an Amazon distribution center, or listened to an employee describe their work conditions, you have no idea how inhumane and demoralizing the environment is. Amazon treats its humans, quite literally, as machines, to be tuned and optimized for peak efficiency without any regard for their humanity. It's frankly abusive.
Which is where the nuance lies. Either we force these companies to treat their people humanely ... or we accept that this will never happen, and ask whether in fact it's more humane to replace the workers with machines so we can stop treating people like robots. (And, of course, in that case, we then need to consider the human cost of that displacement.)
I'm not saying it's an easy question to answer. I'm just saying that "let people keep their jobs" is an overly simplistic way to look at it.
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This is an excellent framing. Without these exact types of advances in the past, people would still be doing a lot of dangerous labor that takes a toll on health and general wellbeing, society would be significantly further behind where it is today, and most of the luxuries that modern humans enjoy would simply not exist.
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Disclaimer: I work for a robot company in this slice of warehouse automation.
Totally agree! Induction has a super high turn-over rate, and most of the locations for it are (1) remote and (2) poorly conditioned (think no AC in the summer or heater in the winter). The risk of RSI is high, the work itself is mindless, and it's SO LOUD in the warehouse. For the average line worker, this is a job that shouldn't exist and after 4-8 months they walk away for exactly that reason. Our sales pitch used to be "If you can find humans to do this, do that instead".
For the long-timers, there is often some opportunity to cross train as fleet management and exception handling - they oversee the robots instead of conducting the actual parcel handling - or to maintenance actions like cleaning and replacing grippers and tidying the work cell. If you ship 1B parcels a day, a 0.01% exception rate is still 10M parcels.
Obviously, there are still systemic issues with the ownership of the "thing" and how that influences wealth distribution. This technology has a better than average chance to widen that disparity, and we should be very intentional about protecting our communities.
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It's the logical sounding moonshot goal that makes Flying Cars look trivial.
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As someone who has a fair deal of experience with line-based industrial robots, this is entirely the wrong tool for the job. There is absolutely no good reason to use a humanoid robot for something that requires a single grip arm, a flip arm, and a couple computer vision booms. It's extremely disappointing to see Ars running marketing copy as news.
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This will continue to be a complete non-starter until someone figures out how to balance a humanoid robot without using a zero moment point system. Until then it is far, far too dangerous to have a human-shaped robot in any human-occupied space.
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Sounds a bit of a specious argument. Going into dangerous buildings and whatnot, yes, but that robot, if it was positioned across the conveyor belt with multiple arms could surely dramatically increase its output/productivity (whatever you want to call it), and without "adapting the environment" too much. I can't help the sneaking feeling that we just want to see humanoid robots somehow.
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MilanKraft
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Agreed. There is a much about these demos which are annoying or flat out stupid.
On several levels, including a large, mostly unquestioning human audience being fascinated by this, and even buying merchandise and placing literal bets on this. Insert obligatory WTF. And goes without saying that this "fully autonomous demo" is 100% not to be taken seriously, on the level of humans experimenting with robots.
No serious company is going to risk buffoonarizing (new word!) themselves by running an actual, uncontrolled demo on a live stream and then heavily promoting it. Instead they portray it as fully autonomous but actually control key aspects of it so it goes well, which is what gets the millions of eyeballs, followed by a Marketing pizza party because it went viral, followed by a venture-bro somewhere calling the CEO and saying "take my money." That's it.
On the serious level of "should we be happy about this?" the knee jerk response is to:
a) gripe that replacing human workers is never good; and
b) group this in with all things AI. However, I don't agree with either association here.
As someone else noted, if there is soon a robot that can reliably replace human workers where you're standing by a conveyor or work table for 8-10 hours (even with breaks), mindlessly moving or orienting items in ways that over a few days or weeks will almost certainly cause you health problems — knees, lower back, even mental health issues — by all means, replace us! Humans... all humans willing to put in a day's work... are worthy of something better. Obviously we can't all become impressionist painters, gourmet food truck owners, or rocket engineers (great jobs are hard to get / create), but "better than standing by a conveyor, mindlessly moving things around," is a very low bar for most workers.
For AI, this is a symptom of bros deciding anything with a learning algorithm attached "is AI", making it impossible for people to discuss things and gain a shared understanding, vote on referendums, whatever. But FWIW I don't have a problem with this particular sub-genre of "AI" replacing people (as opposed to mindless, clueless chatbots replacing people who have worked hard to find their niche in the business world, which is an abomination).
What I also will have a problem with, knowing this fucked up, graft-happy society for what it now is, is that few companies (or governments at any level) be required to give the replaced a useful hand in re-training, finding better work, or "here's three months rent so you don't don't have to go flip burgers while re-training and looking for a job." Instead we'll be waved away in most cases, "every man for themselves... gotta adapt to my AI... not sorry, bro!" Which naturally will lead to at least a half dozen or so national-news-worthy mass shootings, and probably hundreds of suicides when considered over a period of several years... maybe thousands if you rope in drug overdoses.
So yeah, Pauly the Package Flipper robot is fine as far as it goes, just be prepared for what comes next if you live in an area with large numbers of warehouse workers. Their days are almost certainly numbered and nobody profiting from same is going to give any fucks.
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I can't wait to see these in the streets. It will give me a good excuse to carry a crowbar.
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If you watch the stream, there are regular moments where the robots freeze in various poses for 10+ seconds where it would be very easy to swap operators.
There are also several moments in the stream where the robots appear to grab at their heads, like a teleoperator trying to scratch an itch, or even take their VR/AR helmet off. There's a thread on X where someone attempts to debunk this by showing a clip of something completely different, but it's not remotely (pun intended) convincing to anyone with eyes and a brain.
My money would firmly be on teleoperated.
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