Once you have autonomous robots you can use those robots to build more robots leading to an exponential curve. The day they make the first one, we will reach a million in 2-3 years and a billion in 2-4 years after that.
If robots actually replaced all human labour and left nothing for humans to be employed at, then the robots necessarily can do their own resource extraction.
The current cost of a Boston Dynamics Spot is around a year's income, give or take whose income you're measuring against.
If it were able to do any human task at the same rate as a human — and yes, I know it isn't, this is just a anchoring point for the discussion — a group of them would be able to extract and process enough resources in a year sufficient to double their population, all the way from rocks in the ground to a finished deliverable.
n years later, there are 2^n robots. Sure, sure, that's a whole 33 years to go from one total to one per human, not the numbers the other person gave which would need a much shorter (but not wildly implausible) reproduction time of 5-8 weeks, but the point is still valid.
That exponential stops only when some un-substitutable resource is fully exploited, so I'm not sure what the upper limit actually is, but given we exist I assume 8 billion robots is also possible.
It almost makes me wonder if something really intelligent (which is where we are heading according to some) would mean we need as much labor, or things would just be much more efficient ?
I get the feeling less "conventional" robots might be needed someday, rather than more.
keiferski|2 years ago
ben_w|2 years ago
The current cost of a Boston Dynamics Spot is around a year's income, give or take whose income you're measuring against.
If it were able to do any human task at the same rate as a human — and yes, I know it isn't, this is just a anchoring point for the discussion — a group of them would be able to extract and process enough resources in a year sufficient to double their population, all the way from rocks in the ground to a finished deliverable.
n years later, there are 2^n robots. Sure, sure, that's a whole 33 years to go from one total to one per human, not the numbers the other person gave which would need a much shorter (but not wildly implausible) reproduction time of 5-8 weeks, but the point is still valid.
That exponential stops only when some un-substitutable resource is fully exploited, so I'm not sure what the upper limit actually is, but given we exist I assume 8 billion robots is also possible.
inference-lord|2 years ago
I get the feeling less "conventional" robots might be needed someday, rather than more.