'World’s first mass-produced' humanoid robot to tackle labour shortages amid ageing population

Veritas@lemmy.ml to Technology@lemmy.ml – 80 points – VIDEO : 'World’s first mass-produced' humanoid robot to tackle labour shortages amid ageing population
euronews.com

AI summary:

The world's first mass-produced humanoid robot was the GR-1, developed by Fourier Intelligence in China[1][2][3]. The robot is 1.64 meters tall and weighs 55 kilograms, and is designed to help tackle labor shortages amid an aging population. It is capable of carrying patients from the bed to wheelchairs and helping to pick up objects[1][2][3][5]. While the GR-1 is often referred to as the world's first mass-produced humanoid robot, it is important to note that it is not the first humanoid robot ever produced. However, it is the first to be mass-produced, meaning that it is produced in large quantities for commercial use[3].

Citations: [1] https://www.euronews.com/video/2023/07/12/worlds-first-mass-produced-humanoid-robot-to-tackle-labour-shortages-amid-ageing-populatio [2] https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/07/12/worlds-first-mass-produced-humanoid-robot-to-tackle-labour-shortages-amid-ageing-populatio [3] https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/fourier-intelligence-gr-1-humanoid-bot/ [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgo-jF4j8g8 [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogiAkllCzA4 [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhOND0JWoGA

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Labour shortages? How about paying a living wage?

The median salary in China is 26,800 Yuan (USD 3,855) per month. ^1

Unemployment is at record lows here but there are still huge staff shortages. It's why my government is pushing for bringing in refugees and allowing more foreign workers.

I've had a job posting up for 3 months in the Midwest USA for a couple of warehouse positions starting at $25 an hour and I'm barely even getting any applicants. We still have a few boomers and GenX in the warehouse but the millennials (like me) and GenZ went to college so they aren't looking for these jobs, at least around here. We're a very small company so the weird thing to me is that this is an easier warehouse than Amazon to work in, by far, and the Amazon hub 10 miles down the road has no problem staffing, even though they only pay $16.00/hr and their benefits sucks ass compared to what we offer. The average warehouse pay in my area for my industry is $18 an hour.

Sounds like you need to get better at recruiting!

Yeah, probably. We have posts up on indeed and in the local papers but we're getting nothing worth following up on. And I don't think anyone hires recruiters to track down manual laborers.

What kind of people are you trying to hire? I mean Amazon will hire anything with a pulse. That may be why they're out staffing you?

I also would hire anything with a pulse since we can train them on the job, but they can't have a criminal record due to the clients we deal with and some work travel is required. It's also messy work -- fiberglass -- and a lot of people don't want to do that (and I don't blame them lol).

Ah there it is yeah that makes sense. Hey at least your doing the right thing offering better pay and benefits. Eventually someone will be willing for the better pay, assuming you offer the appropriate PPE. Hey your user name makes sense now! I love it!

Are these robots going to buy the goods and services?

Seems like full automation creates no consumers.

UBI is an inevitable future. the only question is when, not if. And probably the countries that will be able to create a better law quicker than others will get a decent economic advantage over the conservative ones.

I don't see it. They're fine with letting people fight over garbage to eat.

Yeah but they need people to have enough money to buy their shit so they can get richer.

so, who’s buying their products once everyone is unoccupied?

Will they need anyone to buy their products at that point? They've already won capitalism and they have multiple mansions, robot slaves, AIs, and automated farming.

And that will push capitalism to the breaking point. We'll see what happens then, although many very bad scenarios are possible.

In "Theory" it would drive down priced and the people buying from these places would have more money to spend elsewhere.

Theory in air quotes because regardless if it work out in the end it still takes away a lot of power from labors.

Oh boy here we go. Even the in-person jobs that require mobility are gonna get fucked by AI. I knew it was gonna happen eventually, didn't realize it'd be this fast.

I'm actually pretty sure these robots aren't going anywhere, and that this is a PR push.

The intended market for these robots is countries where there's an aging demographic curve, meaning there simply aren't enough young able-bodied people to fill the jobs that need them no matter what salary you were to offer.

In countries where there's enough people for these jobs I expect human labor will remain cheaper for quite a while yet.

So far, every piece of automatization created more jobs, and those jobs were ultimately better. Unfortunately people who works automated jobs will have to adapt, but the hope is, the society will help them with that.

I don't want a factory job though. I want a world that's organised well enough that people don't starve when you don't have menial labour for them to waste their lives on to justify being fed.

feeding and housing is just logistics and we're good at that. let the robots do physical work and continue feeding people as before.

I'm enjoying the irony of the automatic ai summary to read this for us.

Well, at least this one doesn't look like Arnold Schwarzenegger... yet.

I'm surprised they only made these guys 5' 4" tall. Seems kind of short. Figure they'd have greater abilities if they made them taller, though maybe they'd fall over easier, I don't know.