> Rodney: The robots—they’re not embodied. I always say about a physical robot, the physical appearance makes a promise about what it can do. The Roomba was this little disc on the floor. It didn’t promise much—you saw it and thought, that’s not going to clean the windows. But you can imagine it cleaning the floor. But the human form sort of promises it can do anything a human can. And that’s why it’s so attractive to people—it’s selling a promise that is amazing.
> ... I always say about [a language model], the [linguistic] appearance makes a promise about what it can do. [Clippy] was this little [cartoon paper clip]. It didn’t promise much—you saw it and thought, that’s not going to [write the next great novel]. But you can imagine it [offering limited help]. But [human language] sort of promises it can [write] anything a human can. And that’s why it’s so attractive to people—it’s selling a promise that is amazing.
The difference between the promise and reality of LLMs and the difference between the promise and reality of humanoid robots are a different order of magnitude.
When a language model fumbles, its mistakes are still wrapped in convincing writing, so the error is only apparent if the user already knows what the answer should be.
When a humanoid robot fumbles, its mistakes are obvious because the physical world offers immediate feedback.
It's the difference between lying on your résumé that you're a world-class gymnast, and having to actually perform.
Hasnt written a great novel, wont ever write a great novel, will definitely write regurgitated slop that midwit tech slaves steeped in the works of Malcolm Gladwell and Co. will read four words of and proclaim "Dostoevsky!"
This take is so tiring, here's one of the most surprising things we've ever invented, and people are going "IT CAN'T WRITE DOSTOEVSKY". It's fine if y'all are so jaded, but can you at least keep it to yourselves?
All these companies are pursuing humanoids precisely because we've built the world around that "form factor" (and we evolved ourselves to fit to the world). It's a general purpose design. It's the same reason why OpenAI pursued LLMs, as they are general purpose.
Yes, like LLMs, they will over-promise in the beginning. But it still make sense to pursue that form factor from an investment perspective if we think it's feasible.
And whether or not it actually is feasible, many are betting millions that it is, and marketing it as possible to keep the innovation machine running until we achieve it
I don't know why people keep saying "the world" when they talk about extremely small subsets of human civilization. Most roads weren't designed for humans. Flat surfaces in buildings were not designed for humans. Packages were designed to be handled by suction cups. Containers were designed to be intermodal transport, not to be carried by humans.
Space is practically inaccessible to most people.
It's crazy how many people purposefully become ignorant of the things they see every day with their own eyes.
~"Brooks believes the sheer size of Nigeria is going to make it an economic and technological epicenter".
I laughed when i read this. The sheer ignorance and false assumption that large population = epic economic powerhouse is ridiculous. I critize CCP a lot for various reasons but their effective and efficient governance over the last 40 years can not be easily replicated. Good governance is an incredibly rare asset. India has big pupulation but has no good governance. The chance of Nigeria having as good goverance as China is very close to zero.
This reads as rather naive. You think India’s governance is “no good”? It is literally the most culturally complex place on earth, so you might need to recalibrate your metrics and criteria.
Additionally, if you believe Nigeria has a near zero chance at good governance, then I suspect you have not read very much history or anthropology. Every instance of civilizational development looks pretty much impossible, and yet “good governance” emerges over and over again. The story of humanity is one of surprising social innovation, and I would never count Nigeria out.
> India has big population but has no good governance.
As an Indian, I would dispute that. When I look back at what we were as a country, when we became independent, to what we are today, our achievements are really astounding.
No offense but in what non commodity industries is India a powerhouse? Here in the US I never see things made in India, and was just yesterday wondering how India compares to China. I could do some research, but I'm wondering why you think of India as a powerhouse?
Don't. It's good for us that they overestimate China and underestimate us. For the next couple decades, we need breathing room to develop; why would you destroy that space by drawing attention to yourself?
It's worth noting that China is investing heavily in Nigeria and it is also its biggest lender, it might turn out Nigeria's gov is not that far from CCP.
This is roughly the same content Brooks posted himself a few years ago, and was covered on HN last week.[1]
There are already many companies selling automated carts that run around warehouses. Search for "automated guided cart".
I thought the humanoid thing was silly until I saw the pricing. Here's the Unitree G1, starting out at US$22,000, less than a Toyota Corolla. I though these things were going to cost like Boston Dynamics products. No, the hardware is already much cheaper.
This is still a low-volume product and prices are headed downward. Humanoid robots are going to be cheaper than cars. Having more degrees of freedom than you really need for any single job will be outweighed by the cost advantages of mass production and the advantages of interchangeability.
The manipulation problem remains tough, but with moderately priced and standardized hardware available, more people can work on it.
> Here's the Unitree G1, starting out at US$22,000, less than a Toyota Corolla.
The sticker price might look cheap, but what I've heard from people actually looking to buy (even in large quantities) is that by the time you assemble the hardware and the tooling and the dev kit, the cost is $80-100k per robot.
> This is roughly the same content Brooks posted himself a few years ago, and was covered on HN last week.
That Brooks' post is his latest one, from a few days ago.
I really liked this guy. Maybe it's Boston but here's a guy with two wildly successful startups in robotics and he's having trouble raising money because his idea isn't sexy enough!
I thought investors were smart and knew how to calculate odds. There is never any absolutely sure thing. But if a guy has been wildly successful twice aren't the odds pretty good he can do it a third time?
Having been through the VC system, I don't believe his face value statement, and I 100% believe you're right.
They want to invest, but not at his terms that he's demanding.
The thought experiment is - he wants to raise 1m @ 2m val. 50%. There's not a VC/angel/seed who wouldn't take that deal given who he is. So he's pricing himself at a level he "is willing to do this startup thing again" and it's simply too expensive.
A guess: Smart VCs know that they are not smart enough to evaluate a business from a plan or a founder' background and instead wait for the revenue growing explosively.
A smart VC knows they have 0% chance of getting into that round (even the top VC maybe 1/3 chance) much less leading it by then, and only chance is getting into it when it’s still contrarian.
I know a very low profile entrepreneur who has essentially built the exact same business (with slight variations) 3 times over the past 20+ years, selling the first two, so yes I believe there is some corelation between his 2 previous successes and being able to do it again. Even if it's imaginary the funding markets swear by previous success being a strong marker for future success.
Years ago my friend had the best app for a particular game in the App Stores. But competition was rising. So he just rebranded his app with a few changes and then got 3 of the top 5 spots! Same underlying app
I mean, VCs want stories (or at least hype) - not accolades, i.e., Altman, Neumann. Heck, accolades might hurt you. They want the unfound gem/they're so smart/cerebral...
iRobot got crushed by Chinese competitors. Rethink failed early, they had a poor quality product and Universal made a much better cobot. And this new venture is pointless, there are 10 other companies in the Boston area alone doing warehouse automation...
The comment about humanoid forms raising expectations comes from Rethink's hype and failure.
Rethink tried to solve manipulation and failed.
The Rethink hype video, with their cute little face on a screen.[1]
What the Rethink robot could actually do: take PC boards off a conveyor and put them in a fixture.[2] That's a routine robotic load/unload task. Like this one with Fanuc robots.[3]
I'm a huge fan of the ease of cleaning & repairing iRobots, especially the earlier models. I don't know if the competitors match that but I have preferred their simplicity & quality.
China competitors are always going to be tough to beat in terms of margins.
Upvote for you sir. I was writing the same response as you posted the exact response. The only thing I did not mention that I will add here. iRobot was kind of a turd. They basically kept the same turd of a robot for a decade plus. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang…
Define success. Without a doubt iRobot was a category leader for a long time. They created the market but were they ever profitable? At this point it feels like a company on life support that is getting their butts kicked by the Chinese who offer double the product for half the cost. Without a doubt though he created the category. Was the second company ever a success, all I could find is it being trade for parts over and over.
This third company looks interesting but it’s also a flooded market at this point.
So for me the guy never had a real success and is currently building in a market that has been for years flooded with products like his.
From that, they had 13 straight years of profitable net income starting in 2009. Rough recently because they got eaten up by cheaper upstarts; happens to almost everyone eventually. But clearing several hundred million cumulative in net income over a decade+ (peaking 2018-2020, so they were consistently growing from 2009 to 2020 even) is far from "were they ever profitable" territory. They don't have pre-2009 there, but from some other googling it looks like they were profitable by when he left in 2008 after their 2005 IPO. So he was there from inception to IPO and millions-a-year-profitability, and then you're discounting that because 12 years after he left some companies in China had better copies. Building something for 15 years to IPO isn't some VC pump and dump scam, it's harder.
If that's not success you have a ridiculous bar. "So for me the guy never had a real success" - get out of here, do your googling before making claims like that.
Rodney Brooks is widely recognized and celebrated roboticist, ran CSAIL for a while. iRobot as a company created a new market and managed to put a functional household robot out there, whether Chinese alternatives ate the share of it is largely irrelevant to his argument on humanoids, which I find to be completely reasonable.
There is a wide gap between academic and entrepreneur/business operator though. He was one of three co founders of iRobot the company l, is not even credited at the inventor of it, and iRobot has largely been a one hit wonder. They created a category but the underlying product largely was unimproved until China started dominating.
His other business was a failure and his third current is in a crowded marketplace. Humanoids are the minority in warehouse automation.
Who is even talking about his argument on humanoids? What does that have to do with my comment. My response was on a comment praising his triple success in business and I am questioning that definition of success.
> It’s simple intelligence, which is what we can do today and make reliable. It’s not sexy. It’s technology in the service of making things easier for workers and more efficient.
AGI doesn’t need to be “solved” for humanoid robots to be valuable at scale. The role of teleoperation is often underestimated; in the near term, many humanoids will likely be operated remotely by people halfway across the world, performing deliveries and other tasks cheaply.
>At MIT, I taught big classes with lots of students, so maybe that helped. I came here in an Uber this morning and asked the guy what street we were on. He had no clue. He said, “I just follow it.” (‘It’ being the GPS—Ed.) And that’s the issue—there’s human intervention, but people can’t figure out how to help when things go wrong.
I live on a culdesac, and theres no instructions I could give uber drivers to help them find my house, when uber added a random roadblock on our street.
I tried guiding them by voice, but none of them read street signs. Its crazy. They just rock up to the dot and complain. Issue being, the dot was the closest accessible street, so one street in either direction.
One guy made the same wrong turn twice before cancelling.
I hate taxis, but at least taxi drivers can be expected to have some basic local knowledge.
I have a Roomba 980 that I scored off a rich neighbor for $50. It cleans well, makes nice parallel lines on the floor and reliably does not get stuck. I can be out of the house, push the button for it to clean, and will always come back to a clean floor and a charging Roomba. Can't imagine wanting much more.
The 980 was top of the line, and it was also quite expensive when it was new. No wonder it still works quite well (and being so old, it still supports stuff like maps and voice control).
One quote that really stood out to me:
> Rodney: The robots—they’re not embodied. I always say about a physical robot, the physical appearance makes a promise about what it can do. The Roomba was this little disc on the floor. It didn’t promise much—you saw it and thought, that’s not going to clean the windows. But you can imagine it cleaning the floor. But the human form sort of promises it can do anything a human can. And that’s why it’s so attractive to people—it’s selling a promise that is amazing.
> ... I always say about [a language model], the [linguistic] appearance makes a promise about what it can do. [Clippy] was this little [cartoon paper clip]. It didn’t promise much—you saw it and thought, that’s not going to [write the next great novel]. But you can imagine it [offering limited help]. But [human language] sort of promises it can [write] anything a human can. And that’s why it’s so attractive to people—it’s selling a promise that is amazing.
The difference between the promise and reality of LLMs and the difference between the promise and reality of humanoid robots are a different order of magnitude.
In which direction?
When a language model fumbles, its mistakes are still wrapped in convincing writing, so the error is only apparent if the user already knows what the answer should be.
When a humanoid robot fumbles, its mistakes are obvious because the physical world offers immediate feedback.
It's the difference between lying on your résumé that you're a world-class gymnast, and having to actually perform.
Makes you wonder on the outcome, as the current direction is to build humanoid robots communicating via LLM.
So the robot might be equally convincing that it is capable to clean your windows as it is capable to repair your car brakes.
You saw it clean your windows and are satisfied, and both its form and words are promising that it can repair your brakes equally well...
Agree. Not sure what is worse though. Leaning towards the LLM...
Hasnt written a great novel, wont ever write a great novel, will definitely write regurgitated slop that midwit tech slaves steeped in the works of Malcolm Gladwell and Co. will read four words of and proclaim "Dostoevsky!"
This take is so tiring, here's one of the most surprising things we've ever invented, and people are going "IT CAN'T WRITE DOSTOEVSKY". It's fine if y'all are so jaded, but can you at least keep it to yourselves?
All these companies are pursuing humanoids precisely because we've built the world around that "form factor" (and we evolved ourselves to fit to the world). It's a general purpose design. It's the same reason why OpenAI pursued LLMs, as they are general purpose.
Yes, like LLMs, they will over-promise in the beginning. But it still make sense to pursue that form factor from an investment perspective if we think it's feasible.
Well initially we tried to build planes with flapping wings because obviously the only things flying had flapping wings
And whether or not it actually is feasible, many are betting millions that it is, and marketing it as possible to keep the innovation machine running until we achieve it
I don't know why people keep saying "the world" when they talk about extremely small subsets of human civilization. Most roads weren't designed for humans. Flat surfaces in buildings were not designed for humans. Packages were designed to be handled by suction cups. Containers were designed to be intermodal transport, not to be carried by humans.
Space is practically inaccessible to most people.
It's crazy how many people purposefully become ignorant of the things they see every day with their own eyes.
~"Brooks believes the sheer size of Nigeria is going to make it an economic and technological epicenter". I laughed when i read this. The sheer ignorance and false assumption that large population = epic economic powerhouse is ridiculous. I critize CCP a lot for various reasons but their effective and efficient governance over the last 40 years can not be easily replicated. Good governance is an incredibly rare asset. India has big pupulation but has no good governance. The chance of Nigeria having as good goverance as China is very close to zero.
This reads as rather naive. You think India’s governance is “no good”? It is literally the most culturally complex place on earth, so you might need to recalibrate your metrics and criteria.
Additionally, if you believe Nigeria has a near zero chance at good governance, then I suspect you have not read very much history or anthropology. Every instance of civilizational development looks pretty much impossible, and yet “good governance” emerges over and over again. The story of humanity is one of surprising social innovation, and I would never count Nigeria out.
> India has big population but has no good governance.
As an Indian, I would dispute that. When I look back at what we were as a country, when we became independent, to what we are today, our achievements are really astounding.
The parent has no clue what they are talking about, so I wouldn't take it to heart. Its pretty hard to deny that India is a global powerhouse.
No offense but in what non commodity industries is India a powerhouse? Here in the US I never see things made in India, and was just yesterday wondering how India compares to China. I could do some research, but I'm wondering why you think of India as a powerhouse?
> As an Indian, I would dispute that.
Don't. It's good for us that they overestimate China and underestimate us. For the next couple decades, we need breathing room to develop; why would you destroy that space by drawing attention to yourself?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/GDP_per_...
Normalize that to global and it won’t look quite so stark. Not saying India’s development is unimpressive but let’s put things in a real context
I agree about Nigeria but not about India. My understanding is that they have some very able people in government.
There are large countries in Africa that are undergoing fast development though, Kenya for example.
It's worth noting that China is investing heavily in Nigeria and it is also its biggest lender, it might turn out Nigeria's gov is not that far from CCP.
Well since you, of all people, find it hilarious, and honored us with your iron clad, deeply reasoned opinion, it must be immutable truism
Time is not a linear function; creation and decay are not a normalized process. A large number of people can change inductive truism.
To be fair China has a top down control that India and the like don't
This is roughly the same content Brooks posted himself a few years ago, and was covered on HN last week.[1]
There are already many companies selling automated carts that run around warehouses. Search for "automated guided cart".
I thought the humanoid thing was silly until I saw the pricing. Here's the Unitree G1, starting out at US$22,000, less than a Toyota Corolla. I though these things were going to cost like Boston Dynamics products. No, the hardware is already much cheaper.
This is still a low-volume product and prices are headed downward. Humanoid robots are going to be cheaper than cars. Having more degrees of freedom than you really need for any single job will be outweighed by the cost advantages of mass production and the advantages of interchangeability.
The manipulation problem remains tough, but with moderately priced and standardized hardware available, more people can work on it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45392922
> Here's the Unitree G1, starting out at US$22,000, less than a Toyota Corolla.
The sticker price might look cheap, but what I've heard from people actually looking to buy (even in large quantities) is that by the time you assemble the hardware and the tooling and the dev kit, the cost is $80-100k per robot.
> This is roughly the same content Brooks posted himself a few years ago, and was covered on HN last week.
That Brooks' post is his latest one, from a few days ago.
I really liked this guy. Maybe it's Boston but here's a guy with two wildly successful startups in robotics and he's having trouble raising money because his idea isn't sexy enough!
I thought investors were smart and knew how to calculate odds. There is never any absolutely sure thing. But if a guy has been wildly successful twice aren't the odds pretty good he can do it a third time?
Having been through the VC system, I don't believe his face value statement, and I 100% believe you're right.
They want to invest, but not at his terms that he's demanding.
The thought experiment is - he wants to raise 1m @ 2m val. 50%. There's not a VC/angel/seed who wouldn't take that deal given who he is. So he's pricing himself at a level he "is willing to do this startup thing again" and it's simply too expensive.
You assume VCs are rational. They try to be. But they’re not.
A guess: Smart VCs know that they are not smart enough to evaluate a business from a plan or a founder' background and instead wait for the revenue growing explosively.
A smart VC knows they have 0% chance of getting into that round (even the top VC maybe 1/3 chance) much less leading it by then, and only chance is getting into it when it’s still contrarian.
I know a very low profile entrepreneur who has essentially built the exact same business (with slight variations) 3 times over the past 20+ years, selling the first two, so yes I believe there is some corelation between his 2 previous successes and being able to do it again. Even if it's imaginary the funding markets swear by previous success being a strong marker for future success.
Years ago my friend had the best app for a particular game in the App Stores. But competition was rising. So he just rebranded his app with a few changes and then got 3 of the top 5 spots! Same underlying app
And this is why we can't have nice things.
I mean, VCs want stories (or at least hype) - not accolades, i.e., Altman, Neumann. Heck, accolades might hurt you. They want the unfound gem/they're so smart/cerebral...
iRobot got crushed by Chinese competitors. Rethink failed early, they had a poor quality product and Universal made a much better cobot. And this new venture is pointless, there are 10 other companies in the Boston area alone doing warehouse automation...
The comment about humanoid forms raising expectations comes from Rethink's hype and failure. Rethink tried to solve manipulation and failed.
The Rethink hype video, with their cute little face on a screen.[1]
What the Rethink robot could actually do: take PC boards off a conveyor and put them in a fixture.[2] That's a routine robotic load/unload task. Like this one with Fanuc robots.[3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4mULTknb2I
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnzmxJS4Rp4
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za5z1lb0hdU
I'm a huge fan of the ease of cleaning & repairing iRobots, especially the earlier models. I don't know if the competitors match that but I have preferred their simplicity & quality.
China competitors are always going to be tough to beat in terms of margins.
Upvote for you sir. I was writing the same response as you posted the exact response. The only thing I did not mention that I will add here. iRobot was kind of a turd. They basically kept the same turd of a robot for a decade plus. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang…
Define success. Without a doubt iRobot was a category leader for a long time. They created the market but were they ever profitable? At this point it feels like a company on life support that is getting their butts kicked by the Chinese who offer double the product for half the cost. Without a doubt though he created the category. Was the second company ever a success, all I could find is it being trade for parts over and over.
This third company looks interesting but it’s also a flooded market at this point.
So for me the guy never had a real success and is currently building in a market that has been for years flooded with products like his.
"Were they ever profitable" is an easy enough thing to look up, why not just do that instead of use it as a rhetorical device?
https://macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/gross-prof...
From that, they had 13 straight years of profitable net income starting in 2009. Rough recently because they got eaten up by cheaper upstarts; happens to almost everyone eventually. But clearing several hundred million cumulative in net income over a decade+ (peaking 2018-2020, so they were consistently growing from 2009 to 2020 even) is far from "were they ever profitable" territory. They don't have pre-2009 there, but from some other googling it looks like they were profitable by when he left in 2008 after their 2005 IPO. So he was there from inception to IPO and millions-a-year-profitability, and then you're discounting that because 12 years after he left some companies in China had better copies. Building something for 15 years to IPO isn't some VC pump and dump scam, it's harder.
If that's not success you have a ridiculous bar. "So for me the guy never had a real success" - get out of here, do your googling before making claims like that.
Rodney Brooks is widely recognized and celebrated roboticist, ran CSAIL for a while. iRobot as a company created a new market and managed to put a functional household robot out there, whether Chinese alternatives ate the share of it is largely irrelevant to his argument on humanoids, which I find to be completely reasonable.
There is a wide gap between academic and entrepreneur/business operator though. He was one of three co founders of iRobot the company l, is not even credited at the inventor of it, and iRobot has largely been a one hit wonder. They created a category but the underlying product largely was unimproved until China started dominating.
His other business was a failure and his third current is in a crowded marketplace. Humanoids are the minority in warehouse automation.
Who is even talking about his argument on humanoids? What does that have to do with my comment. My response was on a comment praising his triple success in business and I am questioning that definition of success.
> the guy never had a real success
iRobot has sold over fifty million Roombas to date. Packbots are also highly profitable and have saved many lives.
> It’s simple intelligence, which is what we can do today and make reliable. It’s not sexy. It’s technology in the service of making things easier for workers and more efficient.
Perfection.
AGI doesn’t need to be “solved” for humanoid robots to be valuable at scale. The role of teleoperation is often underestimated; in the near term, many humanoids will likely be operated remotely by people halfway across the world, performing deliveries and other tasks cheaply.
Is that supposed to be something we want?
>At MIT, I taught big classes with lots of students, so maybe that helped. I came here in an Uber this morning and asked the guy what street we were on. He had no clue. He said, “I just follow it.” (‘It’ being the GPS—Ed.) And that’s the issue—there’s human intervention, but people can’t figure out how to help when things go wrong.
I live on a culdesac, and theres no instructions I could give uber drivers to help them find my house, when uber added a random roadblock on our street.
I tried guiding them by voice, but none of them read street signs. Its crazy. They just rock up to the dot and complain. Issue being, the dot was the closest accessible street, so one street in either direction.
One guy made the same wrong turn twice before cancelling.
I hate taxis, but at least taxi drivers can be expected to have some basic local knowledge.
How many years were they on the market before they added a dust buster to the dock? 3-4?
Aren't iRobots really not that clever and maybe can be improved with LLMs?
I have a Roomba 980 that I scored off a rich neighbor for $50. It cleans well, makes nice parallel lines on the floor and reliably does not get stuck. I can be out of the house, push the button for it to clean, and will always come back to a clean floor and a charging Roomba. Can't imagine wanting much more.
The 980 was top of the line, and it was also quite expensive when it was new. No wonder it still works quite well (and being so old, it still supports stuff like maps and voice control).
What mechanism are you envisioning here?
I think they're just as smart as they need to be, and no smarter :)
iRobots were intended to clean up slop, not create more of it.