[wwwtyro]

Until we get robots with really good hands, something I'd love in the interim is a system that uses _me_ as the hands. When it's time to put groceries away, I don't want to have to think about how to organize everything. Just figure out which grocery items I have, what storage I have available, come up with an optimized organization solution, then tell me where to put things, one at a time. I'm cautiously optimistic this will be doable in the near term with a combination of AR and AI.

[camjw]

Maybe I don't understand exactly what you're describing but why would anyone pay for this? When I bring home the shopping I just... chuck stuff in the cupboards. I already know where it all goes. Maybe you can explain more?

[loudmax]

One use case I imagine is skilled workmanship. For example, putting on a pair of AR glasses and having the equivalent of an experienced plumber telling me exactly where to look for that leak and how to fix it. Or how to replace my brake pads or install a new kitchen sink.

When I hire a plumber or a mechanic or an electrician, I'm not just paying for muscle. Most of the value these professionals bring is experience and understanding. If a video-capable AI model is able to assume that experience, then either I can do the job myself or hire some 20 year old kid at roughly minimum wage. If capabilities like this come about, it will be very disruptive, for better and for worse.

[__MatrixMan__]

It would be nice to be able to select a recipe and have it populate your shopping list based on what is currently in your cupboards. If you just chuck stuff in the cupboards then you have to be home to know what they contain.

Or you could wear it while you cook and it could give you nutrition information for whatever it is you cooked. Armed with that it could make recommendations about what nutrients you're likely deficient in based on your recent meals and suggest recipes to remedy the gap--recipes based on what it knows is already in the cupboard.

[luma]

> why would anyone pay for this?

Presumably, they won't as this is still a tech demo. One can take this simple demonstration and think about some future use cases that aren't too different. How far away is something that'll do the dishes, cook a meal, or fold the laundry, etc? That's a very different value prop, and one that might attract a few buyers.

[SoftTalker]

Yes it's pretty amazing how so many people seem to overcomplicate simple household tasks by introducing unnecessary technology.

[bear141]

Maybe some people just assume there is a “best” or “optimal” way to do everything and AI will tell us what that is. Some things are just preference and I don’t mind the tiny amount of energy that goes into doing small things the way I like.

[jayd16]

Maybe they're imagining more complex tasks like working on an engine.

[Philpax]

Sounds like what's described in Manna: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

[sho_hn]

Dunno, I would not want to bleed my mental faculties for doing even simple planning work like this by outsourcing it to AI. Reliance on crutches like this would seem like a pathway to early-onset dementia.

[meowkit]

Already playing out, anecdotally to my experience.

Its similar to losing callouses on our hands if you don’t labor/go to the gym.

[RedNifre]

I fully agree, building something like this is somewhere in my back log.

I think the key point why this "reverse cyborg" idea is not as dystopian as, say, being a worker drone in a large warehouse where the AI does not let you go to the toilet is that the AI is under your own control, so you decide on the high level goal "sort the stuff away", the AI does the intermediate planning and you do the execution.

We already have systems like that, every time you use you tell your navi where you want to go, it plans the route and gives you primitive commands like "on the next intersection, turn right", so why not have those for cooking, doing the laundry, etc.?

Heck, even a paper calendar is already kinda this, as in separating the planning phase from the execution phase.

[Jarwain]

I'm quite slowly working on something like this, but for time.

For "stuff" I think a bigger draw is having it so it can let me know "hey you already have 3 of those spices at locations x, y, and z, so don't get another" or "hey you won't be able to fit that in your freezer"

[falcor84]

This is almost literally the first chapter in Marshall Brain's "Manna" [0], being the first step towards world-controlling AGI:

> Manna told employees what to do simply by talking to them. Employees each put on a headset when they punched in. Manna had a voice synthesizer, and with its synthesized voice Manna told everyone exactly what to do through their headsets. Constantly. Manna micro-managed minimum wage employees to create perfect performance.

[0] https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

[__MatrixMan__]

I imagine a something like a headlamp except it's a projector and a camera so it can just light up where it wants you to pick something up in one color or where it wants you to put it down in another color. It can learn from what it sees of my hands how the eventual robot should handle the space (e.g. not putting heavy things on top of fragile things and such).

I'd totally use that to clean my garage so that later I can ask it where the heck I put the thing or ask it if I already have something before I buy one...

[lynx97]

A good AI fridge would be already a great starting point. With a checkin procedure that makes sure to actually know whats in the fridge. Complete with expiry tracking and recipe suggestions based on personal preferences combined with product expiry. I am totally unimpressed with almost everything I see in home automation these days, but I'd immediately buy the AI fridge if it really worked smoothly.

[cactusplant7374]

Your solution sounds like the worst cognitive load for getting home from the grocery store and wanting it all to be over.

[hooverd]

You already have one: a brain.

[lucianbr]

You want to outsource thinking to a computer system and keep manual labor? You do you, but I want the opposite. I want to decide what goes where but have a robot actually put the stuff there.

[TeMPOraL]

That's the problem, though - the computer is already better at thinking than you, but we still don't know how to make it good at arbitrary labor requiring a mix of precision and power, something humans find natural.

In other words: I'm sorry, but that's how reality turned out. Robots are better at thinking, humans better at laboring. Why fight against nature?

(Just joking... I think.)

[RedNifre]

I think he means outsourcing everything eventually, but right now, outsourcing the thought process is possible, while outsourcing the manual labor is not.

[malux85]

Yeah there’s more to it than that. Do you want a can of beans to be put in the utensil draw just because it would fit? If it was done as you describe the placement of all of your items would be almost random each time, the bot need to have contextual memory and familiarity with your storage habits and preferences.

This can be done of course, in your statement the phrase “just figure out” is doing a lot more heavy lifting than you allude to

[htrp]

so the kiva-amazon model?