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The business case will eventually be selling robotic companions to chronically lonely people.

Loneliness is arguably the biggest under-addressed problem in the wealthy developed world.



I can kind of see that, in terms of robot pets or sex robots. Clearly robot pets are going to be more marketable. Sex bots will definitely be a weird niche, until some very revolutionary (if not scary) breakthroughs happen.

Boston Dynamics seems to be making a much broader business case than just lonely people. For instance warehouse workers, factory workers, bartenders, dangerous jobs, interplanetary explorer, etc... There are a lot places where such humanoid robots can end up, which is way beyond a "lonely" people market.


I feel exosqueletons are a more interesting approach anyway. Maybe robots would do less errors but I don't know, most of the times I tried an AI it would understand most of what I asked but if I would miss to precise some details but it would still do the job while an human would ask for more precision on the request.

I would hate my robot to break stuff or put stuff in shelve C while I wanted it in shelve A and have to ask him again. Sure sometimes human workers also assume things instead of asking for more precise direction but I have the feeling we are more easily puzzled while an AI seems to be trained to be overconfident in order to be useful.


Also wage supression towards zero. Some companies do more for UBI then the biggest revolutionary ever could do..




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