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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2884 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 16, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I see an opportunity to replace certain human labor at my workplace with humanoid robots. For background, I am an equipment engineer at a Fortune 100 manufacturing company and think my job is somewhat low-risk of getting automated soon.

Pros:

  • Good for my career at the company
  • Improves my skillset in case I ever want to switch jobs. I predict humanoid robots will become much more common as more companies adopt them and their skills widen and improve.

Cons:

  • I am putting people out of a job. This would likely substitute for people instead of complement them. The company recently laid off 100s of employees and soon thereafter announced using a robot dog for some of their tasks. Is this just a form of natural selection?
  • Can look bad on me if the robot isn’t as good as promised. There are ways to temper expectations that I plan to do during my pitch to management.

What are The Motte’s opinions on this in regards to:

  • My career development
  • The moral implications of putting low-skilled people out of work
  • Anything else

You're going to have to link me those robot dogs being used for anything practical. I haven't seen any use for them other than toys yet. What could they do that a cartbot couldn't do better?

It’s on our company’s intranet, but IIRC (I’m away from my work computer for the next week) they attached sensors for detecting abnormal conditions with temperature, pressure, etc on various systems.

While I’m sure the headline sensationalizes their results (and the dog just looks cool), the point is not the medium, but the fact that the robot is doing something.

That's actually really cool. I always figured it'd be cheaper to have networked sensors everywhere, but maybe a pipe-climbing trouble-checking robot would be more cost effective in some situations

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