A new open-source humanoid robot project suggests dystopian sci-fi tropes may have got it wrong; AI and robots will be decentralized/widely available, not hoarded and controlled by corporate elites.

Many people have been surprised how quickly open-source AI has kept pace with the AI efforts getting billions in investor funding. It’s worth wondering if the same may happen with robotics. After all, robotics are primarily AI too, though embodied in a 3D environment. Recently two major Chinese manufacturers, UBTech Robotics and Xiaomi, introduced an open-source humanoid robot, now there’s another. This is from Hugging Face, the popular AI hosting platform, and French robotics firm, Pollen Robotics.

One of the primary dystopian storytelling sci-fi tropes that feeds into popular ideas about AI & robotics, is that corporations will be all-powerful in the future, with 99% of humanity reduced to downtrodden serfs. Yet open-source AI & robots suggest the opposite. They suggest that power would be decentralized and widely available. The more people can meet their basic needs (food, medical care, etc) from open-source AI & robots, the more power drains away from elites trying to hoard and control these resources.

magnetosphere,
@magnetosphere@fedia.io avatar

Wages are the biggest expense most businesses have. Corporations would be perfectly happy with reducing you to a downtrodden serf as soon as it’s cost effective. Open-source AI might even help that happen sooner.

Don’t underestimate the power of money. Corporations will fight hard to survive. They’ll find a way to stay profitable and make themselves seem indispensable. Theoretically, we could live without corporations now, but we don’t. Why do you think that is?

just_another_person,

Somebody has to make the hardware platforms, and it’s not going to be people at home with 3D printers.

CanadaPlus, (edited )

Yeah, I don’t think design was the problem here, once the software exists. That machine just has a lot of parts, each with a cost attached.

Even if most people owned one robot (humanoid or not), obedient GAI would enable rich people to own armies of them without worrying about pesky things like revolt.

Relatively dumb robots could accelerate inequality just by increasing capital earnings vs. labour, but we’ve been dealing with that for a couple of centuries already.

just_another_person,

Exactly. This who can afford it elevate themselves to a different class of citizen. Those who MAKE the tech just get rich.

CanadaPlus,

Yup.

I’m glad we’re seriously discussing AI safety as a society, but for this exact reason I wish more people questioned whether “obedience” is a good metric of success for it. A paperclip optimisier is bad, but whoever has the password getting unlimited power could actually be more fucked up. A ball of paperclips is at least benign, once it’s finished.

Ledivin,

I want to agree… at least until we outlaw personal implementations for safety or something 🙄

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