Robots Are Getting Interesting. That’s Good.
We are entering the most significant phase of a technology about to truly be socially ready and mature; play time.
Across most every social media channel one can see video clips of all kinds of robots doing all kinds of things. From creepy to fascinating. The idea of robots goes back quite a long time in our history, to around 285 BC, so that’s well over 2,000 years. Now, they’re starting to get interesting because we’re in the play phase of this technology.
We might say that robots, or automata as they were terms for centuries, came into societal awareness in a broader sense through the polymath Ctesibius and Alexandrian engineers. They had grandiose plans for automata powered by hydraulics and steam and were most often used in religious ceremonies. And were even mentioned in earlier Chinese Daoist texts.
Since then, robots have mostly been viable in niche applications until technologies that could be combined advanced enough that robots became viable in mass manufacturing in the 1980’s at scale. Fast forward to current times and we’re starting to see more significant advances in robots.
Societally, robots are an interesting technology in that they’ve gone through some hype cycles, but not in the way that cell phones, Artificial Intelligence recently (Generative AI anyway) and the internet among other technologies.
Perhaps because the idea of robots have been around so long that culture has been able to think about them and realize that they weren’t really that much of a threat because, well, they couldn’t do very much. Until now.
In order for robots to be viable across larger parts of society, they need to become faster, much more agile and lower cost. This has been largely achieved in manufacturing and warehouse environments because that has been the strongest business case so far and robot makers can get a faster return on investment.
The most famous and reasonably viable consumer robot is of course, the Roomba and it’s various competitors. But they can only vacuum, which kind of sucks. Now of course, Tesla is promoting its Optimus robot as being just about ready for serving the rest of humanity. Perhaps.
A truer measure of robots being robust enough to enter broader swathes of society would be military use, which demands much more resiliency, easier reparability and use. Aside from drones, robots still haven’t made mainstream use. Maybe that’s a good thing?
With the advent of Generative AI, specifically LLMs (Large Language Models), we are beginning to see robot manufacturers implement them into robot “brains.” Which is a bit concerning given that LLMs are not even a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) yet.
So why is it good that robots are becoming more interesting? Because we’re playing with them. Not just big manufacturers either. There are an increasing number of robot kits for kids, from Lego to startups. Building larger robots has also become much easier than ever before through lower component costs, easy access to chips, ubiquitous WiFi and 3D printing.
When more parts of society can play with a technology is when a technology starts to become interesting. All technologies begin with human imagination and progress through human imagination. They make the most progress when we can play with them.
The internet and resulting social media came about because the hippies came down from their communes and started to play with the bits and pieces that enabled the home PC revolution. Play lead to innovation, which lead to the internet and so on.
We are in this play phase with robots now. We are likely to see significant leaps in what robots can do over the next two decades. And the thing is, we’re going to need a lot of robots, as I wrote before, mostly due to demographic issues. Robots taking away everyones jobs, like AI, is largely a myth. Will jobs be lost? Certainly. But history has shown, technologies tend to create more jobs. Usually new ones that didn’t exist before.
As we advance with robots, we will need to consider and prepare for them in ways that protect us from the potential dangers. While the idea of a dystopian system of robot overlords is wildly fantastical and unrealistic, there are still risks. Warfare, economic risks and safety among others.
But as before with technologies, they first impact and shape culture, but then culture ultimately shapes technologies. So it will be with robots. We may even integrate robots better into society than tools like Generative AI because they’re both a technology that’s been societally exposed for centuries and because they’re much more physical.
We are going to see some very interesting applications of robots in our societies around the world and we are socializing the concept of robots taking a part in our cultures at increasing degrees. Our period of play is hard to predict, but with the current societal mood around technologies like social media, the internet and Artificial Intelligence, we may be entering a phase where we question how we want these technologies to play a role in our lives in more meaningful ways.
But when we play with technologies is often the most exciting time. Robots, like all technologies, will eventually become a part of our everyday lives.
The major hurdles for robots to become more commonplace in our daily lives, beyond sociocultural acceptance will be materials costs, manufacturing efficiencies, energy storage and availability and overcoming speed and agility barriers. And of course, societal acceptance. We will get there, we just don’t know how long it will take.