🖖 Meet your new co-worker

Get a look at the new guy.

OpenAI and the robotics company, Figure, have recently made a new friend-

Figure 01.

A life-sized, GPT enhanced humanoid robot.

Standing at almost 1.7 meters, it’s designed like a human so that it can work alongside humans in the workforce.

Its hands can use the tools that we use.

Its legs can walk up stairs and over obstacles just like us.

The camera allows it to interact with the environment.

What’s even cooler is that it can look at a given scenario and deduct what happened to cause the scenario.

A simple example:
Imagine a ball on a table along with a cup on its side. If you ask Figure 01 what happened, it can deduce that the ball bounced onto the table and knocked over the cup.

With an OpenAI brain it can asses and adapt to obstacles.

The icing on the cake?

It accepts plain language so that it can take instructions easily and communicate with everyone.

Purpose

According to their website, they’re addressing the shrinking labour force in the US. They mention that there are 10 million unfilled jobs. 7 million of which are in warehouses, the transportation sector and retail.

They are collaborating with a BMW factory to add Figure 01 to the assembly line.

Keep in mind that car manufacturers already use robots for the repetitive tasks.

Advancements like this will go a long way towards improving the lives of humans.

Imagine where this will take us.

Dangerous jobs could get some much need help. Those like:

• Iron and steel workers in construction

• Mining

• Electrical power line installation and maintenance

• Cement masons

• Engine mechanics

• Maintenance workers

The most dangerous profession in the US turns out to be logging. I’m not too sure how good one of these robots would be at climbing trees though.

Any others?

What about jobs that aren’t dangerous but just aren’t too exciting?

• Postal processing

• Crime scene cleaning

• Hot-zone superintendent- they perform maintenance for bio-safety labs working with lethal pathogens.

• Or even dentistry.

Other industries will benefit as well as more robots enter the workforce.

Big rigs, farm tractors and taxis will be driverless.

Personal assistance can be provided for the elderly and sick.

In the future, fast food attendants could be robots.

I hear Cyberdyne Systems are cooking up some interesting robots…

(just kidding)

Unrelated to this AI robot- my peeps know I enjoy my coffee. I just wouldn’t invest in opening a coffee shop. It would be cool though to have units operated by robots. It could be open 24 hours a day if needed.

But I digress.

We could send 1-2 of these robots on lunar and Martian missions to build the habitats before we arrive.

Now I’m picturing a humanoid robot assigned to the BioPods we talked about this week.

Since that system runs on AI to optimise plant growth. Why couldn’t you have an AI gardener harvest the vegetables when they’re ready?

Could an AI nutritionist or dietician prepare meals based on your blood tests and specific needs?

They took r’jobs

I think we can all agree that the biggest argument against adding robots to the workforce is that it will be taking jobs away from humans.

In a way, yes. Very much so. But most of these would be jobs that are either dangerous or not stimulating.

Isn’t that a good thing?

Wouldn’t that free up humans to find more engaging work? Wouldn’t the species improve if we could all step up a level? Wouldn’t we improve individually?

I am in full support of time-honoured traditions. We shouldn’t forget our roots and history.

But we can also all agree that it’s a good idea to ease people away from occupations that cause chronic injury or disease.

Let’s evolve.

Here are some of the companies working on robotics in different sectors: