Robots are good at things that are "simple" but where human precision is not good enough, or where people would get bored and make mistakes.
replytechnology gets cheaper over time. If they were always going to cost the amount they do now, you might have a point. But they'll eventually get much cheaper.
replyIf robots ever do get cheaper than humans for it, though?
replyIn natural ecosystems, nobody beats the apex predator directly, and nobody beats the hyperspecialized niche critter at their own game. The new species has some advantage that’s different than what is there.
replyIf a humanoid robot is slower dumber human that is expensive, requires power, can’t get wet, falls over, and doesn’t understand stairs. Is not sleeping and being radiation tolerant enough of an advantage to be worth it?
The nature comparison doesn't work on a fundamental level because you're only getting a fraction of the human's power based on how much they're happy to sell.
replyYou forgot a big one in your description of the hypothetical advantages:
replyNo free will
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replyThey already are, the problem with humanoid robots is that people think that adding legs to the robot will somehow fundamentally make it more intelligent.
replyPeople see a robot arm attached to a stationary platform and understand it requires integration work to perform a single task.
But when those same people see a humanoid robot, they think they can just talk to it like a real human and it will do what you told it to do.
They don't think about the fact that the humanoid robot has to be programmed exactly the same way the stationary robot arm has to be programmed and that programming the legs in addition to the arms is a much more challenging problem.
Robots can be optimized for tasks and if they are, their benefits are greater. When cars replaced the horse, it was because they didn’t poop, and because a car designed only for transport would not suddenly have a heart attack and stop working.
replyFunnily enough, cars have their own way of pooping and dying of a heart attack.
replyCars can stop working suddenly in many many ways, for many reasons.
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