[notfried]

Except that it doesn't need to be consumer to start off. You can build specialized robots that deliver value at a massive scale. Imagine a "Prep Cook" at a restaurant, there are millions of these around the world. If the Optimus can do that job for a price of $1,000/month, that's likely to be more efficient and better quality than a human can do. And there has to be many jobs like this.

[lbreakjai]

Robots that specialise in one thing already exist. In big factories, where they'll peel and dice tons of onions per hour, being fed via unsexy conveyor belts into massive dicers.

That's the problem with robots like Optimus. The "specialized" part (Cutting the onions) is 1% of the skills. You'd still need to other hard 99% (Prehensility, vision, precise 3D movement, etc.).

And if you sorted the hard 99%, what's the point in specialising in cutting onions, when the same exact skills are needed to fold and put away laundry?

[mekdoonggi]

A million robots making $1k a month is $12b a year, but you need to actually produce the robots, maintain them, train the AI, own the data centers.

Also, if you take 1 million jobs, do you think that might cause demand to drop for services?

[ETH_start]

No, automation doesn't reduce jobs, i.e. doesn't reduce consumer spending, as consumer spending is determined by output, which automation boosts.

The savings from automation in a particular sector are spent elsewhere — wherever services are more costly (in labor). That's the dynamic behind Say's law, which shows that spending on less automatable jobs like barbers and physical therapists increases as automation reduces costs in other sectors of the economy.

[NetMageSCW]

A general drop in services, yes. A drop in the services being provided by the robot, probably not. I doubt if many Prep Chefs are regularly eating at the restaurants they work at. When the robots are taking millions of jobs in all areas of service, there might be a problem.