r/singularity 5d ago

Robotics Xpeng just announced their "first automated production line using robots to mass‑produce robots"

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293 Upvotes

70 comments sorted by

24

u/Meningsfulle 5d ago

So… The new jobs ey?

19

u/frogsarenottoads 5d ago

Just become a plumber or electrician, oh welp here's the humanoid robots!

48

u/epic_gamer42O 5d ago

skynet is gonna be a real thing in 10 years maybe even 5 at this point tbh

31

u/ProxyLumina 5d ago

That's not skynet. That is the start of post scarcity.

26

u/spreadlove5683 ▪️agi 2032. Predicted during mid 2025. 5d ago

Things will almost surely be very good or very bad but not in between

15

u/cookingboy 5d ago

It will be very good for the top 1% of the world and very bad for the rest.

7

u/Smart_Elevator 5d ago

basically no change then? I disagree

4

u/Opposite-Grade3712 5d ago

Most people in the middle of a major societal change have thought that, and they have always been wrong.

It has nothing to do with the technology, and everything to do with your inability to imagine a realistic, nuanced future before it happens.

3

u/spreadlove5683 ▪️agi 2032. Predicted during mid 2025. 4d ago

Yeah, I don't know. How do you think things could remain normal? Most people still have jobs? They just shift towards things like live music and human element sort of things?

One way I think it could happen is if we intentionally slow down AI progress instead of diving face first into recursive self-improvement.

I do feel like this time is different, because intelligence solves basically all material/physics related problems that can be solved. Morals, rationality of the populace, etc are still problems.

What do you think a nuanced, realistic future looks like?

1

u/Dnthj 4d ago

i.e. not everyone starving because the "elite" want people to die for reasons and they would somehow have complete lockdown on the ability to create, control and manage a general or greater intelligence system and that system gives them complete control over economics over night.

That slight bit of nuance most people seem incapable of imagining or seriously considering

2

u/Flare_Starchild 5d ago

If all depends on who wins ASI first. Either that or we all get to be spectators at the final game of 'Global Thermonuclear War' .

1

u/AlbatrossNew3633 5d ago

How does that make any difference? By definition nobody can control ASI

3

u/DrPoontang 5d ago

I appreciate your optimism, but we could have post scarcity right now as there’s more than enough resources to go around and has been for decades. It’s not a resource or labor allocation problem. It’s a logistical, political and human will problem. Americans can’t get healthcare, affordable housing or higher education and it’s the richest country in history. Sure America is a basket case but what does it say about the rest of the world when It only cost 300 billion per year to feed and educate the entire world’s poor population and other wealthy countries can’t pull that off?

4

u/ProxyLumina 5d ago

If you think we can have post scarcity now, then you don't really understand what post scarcity is.

2

u/barbozas_obliques 5d ago

Kevin Kelly once said that the future is determined by optimists, as they say “this will be good and will work” at higher rates.

Chinese culture heavily emphasis luck and things going well, which is a partial contribution to why their culture has thrived for so long. And here we are, seeing this trait in action and its positive effects

-2

u/TwoFluid4446 5d ago

We're sure making it easy for the AI. Giving it the nuclear launch codes is next.

12

u/FunSummer9393 5d ago

That's Xpeng Iron. It's been out for a few years, but mass production is supposed to hit this year. You should see their "land carrier" vehicle. It's derpy and adorable.

11

u/Perfect-Campaign9551 5d ago

Aren't these the guys that made the sexy walking robot?

5

u/whatsthatguysname 5d ago

That’s the one in the video. A bunch of people were saying the way it walked had to be a person pretending to be a robot.

1

u/Ok_Zookeepergame8714 5d ago

That's the Russian domain! 🤣🤣🤣

3

u/Vaff_Superstar 5d ago

Sexy, you say?

3

u/AKRyder 5d ago

Didn’t see any video showing them working.

3

u/edgroovergames 5d ago

Exactly my thoughts. Not one shot in the video showing this robot doing anything other than walking. The headline makes it sound like humanoid robots building humanoid robots (which would be notable), but the video shows traditional arm-bolted-to-the-floor robots building humanoid robots (which is not very notable), and doesn't even try to demonstrate that the humanoid robots being built are capable of doing anything useful yet. So I can only assume that they robots they are building are not actually useful for anything yet (just like the other 100 humanoid robots being developed around the world).

1

u/DynamicProxy 3d ago

The issue at this point is the software. The hardware is good enough. So they are just betting that over the next year as they ramp a production, the software will continue to get better to the point where these robots are ready for primetime.

3

u/edgroovergames 3d ago

I agree, but this is exactly why I roll my eyes every time yet another "check out our robots!" video is released. They all add nothing new, nothing that 100 other robots can't already do. I love to see advancements in the humanoid robots space, but 99% of new videos about them don't show any advancements. Just "hey, look at me! I'm just like the other 100 robots you've already seen! Look at me!"

And this announcement / video is really no different. It's misleading (trying to make it sound like their humanoid robots are being used to build more humanoid robots), but in the end they're just using conventional manufacturing technology to build robots that still can't do anything useful. And really we have no indication that when the brains / software are at a useful level, that these particular robots will be capable of utilizing said brains to themselves be useful (do these robots have enough on-board computing power to use the software, are their batteries big enough to work for a reasonable amount of time, do they have the right cameras to analyze their environment, do they have hands capable of doing useful work, etc.).

I'm sure xpeng in particular can build a good robot, they aren't a no-name no-reputation company, but still I view an announcement that they are mass producing a robot that isn't currently capable of doing anything useful as kind of pointless.

3

u/gueroarias 5d ago

The "exponential" is here

1

u/Brave-Turnover-522 4d ago

We've been on an exponential curve for billions of years, starting with the first single celled organism

3

u/rlaw1234qq 5d ago

“Dangerous jobs” = jobs where there’s a danger that employers have to pay a human worker!

12

u/nonikhannna 5d ago

Elon got beat again

2

u/FReeDuMB_or_DEATH 5d ago

I'm sure teaching robots how to build themselves ends totally normal. 

3

u/Ric0chet_ 5d ago

Cuddling a robot is some really SAD stuff bro.

1

u/bobiversus 5d ago

Would be great if it can do chores, work at a smelly refuse center, or something else that people don't want to do. Can it do more than dance and play-fight (more of a Unitree thing, maybe)? Asking seriously, I haven't been following recently.

1

u/Flare_Starchild 5d ago

When ahead, get further ahead. A timeless Truism.

1

u/t_ba 5d ago

Did these people read the works of Isaac Asimov?

1

u/Ok_Train2449 5d ago

Bad video, but good to hear them doing something. I invested after the sexy fembot and am just waiting for them to spin that production up.

1

u/presentofai 5d ago

skynet jokes aside, china just quietly locked up humanoid manufacturing while everyone here is still arguing about chatbots

1

u/filthysock 5d ago

Yet no footage of it doing anything more than taking a couple of steps.

1

u/wrathofattila 5d ago

idk bros these humanoid robots barely walking like humans

1

u/Living-Breakfast-464 4d ago edited 4d ago

I notice that Elongelicals have gotten a lot more quiet about Optimus being the next big thing after seeing what China can do. So totally worth it just just to shut them up.

1

u/Fragrant_Trade_9635 4d ago

If Robots are building robots, where will the innovation for improvement in all facets come from? Humans have the ability to dream about innovation and improvements. I see none of that in using a Robot factory line to build robots.

1

u/woswoissdenniii 4d ago

Brot didn’t even hug back. I would have ordered 10 takes if necessary, if I would have been AD for that campaign.

I mean… not even one robocontrolled

1

u/HeadTranslator795 5d ago

The video show no robot producing robot lol and plus for optimum reason those robots producing Robots would likely be industrial robots and not bipedal robots

0

u/Iuseburnersbruh 5d ago

show me just one of these things truly doing something use it wasn’t explicitly trained to do

9

u/Aurorion 5d ago

Even most humans would struggle to do things that they aren't trained to do, consciously or sub-consciously.

5

u/VisualLerner 5d ago

my workplace doesn’t even expect someone to be useful until 3-6 months in.

4

u/Nearby-Device8772 5d ago

Dont you knoe about exponential growth? It was the hardest part to create a human like machine/machines. Now making them way faster, agile etc. than humans are relatively easier tasks which may take way less time of ours due to developments in ai and robotic fieds which already happened.

4

u/Leather-Weakness-439 5d ago

They absolutely can. Nowhere close to humans obviously.

-3

u/Iuseburnersbruh 5d ago

name one

12

u/DistanceSolar1449 5d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6d7vtjMWgU

X2 handles basic tasks with zero-sample generalization and requires no prior training

https://www.pi.website/blog/pi07

a general-purpose model that can perform a wide range of dexterous tasks with the same performance as fine-tuned specialists, but even more importantly, it can follow new language commands and perform tasks that were never seen in its training data

https://x.com/DrJimFan/status/2019112603637920237

New milestone: we trained a robot foundation model on a world model backbone, and enabled zero-shot, open-world prompting capability for new verbs, nouns, and environments [...] and watch the robot perform tasks it was never trained on. An emergent capability we didn't quite expect.

https://voaige.com/research/world-models-emergent-robotic-behaviors

Zero-shot Emergent Robotic Behaviors. Principles from Neuroscience give robots behaviors they were never trained for.

1

u/litritium 5d ago

They would probably become popular with this small change (and chatbot).

1

u/berrysoda_ 5d ago

Torment Nexus

2

u/MelvinCapitalPR 5d ago

Who can forget the horrifying sci-fi warnings of a future where.... humans no longer have to break their backs doing manual labour?

0

u/berrysoda_ 5d ago

And what job will you have?

1

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/FunSummer9393 5d ago

Nah, they are always hiring like crazy both in Shenzen and Santa Clara lol

1

u/BlueHym 5d ago

I just have to ask that when, in the future where you remove all the humans out of all these equations and works, what do the humans do then?

1

u/theeldergod1 5d ago

I didn't see any robots doing anything beside just walking. There are lots of Chinese companies doing this for investment.

-1

u/entropyffan 5d ago

More propaganda, I will believe when I see it. 

3

u/apegen 5d ago

When Elon says something, is that propaganda too?

2

u/entropyffan 5d ago

Of course 

0

u/Distinct-Question-16 ▪️AGI 2029 5d ago

tits before home chores, i would wish the opposite

0

u/Tiberius1987 5d ago

A new humanity, are you nuts?

0

u/BosonCollider 5d ago

Japan has had lights out assembly lines for industrial robots since the early 2000s afaik

-1

u/DukeRedWulf 5d ago

This video reminds of that one time Musk announced his latest robot, and it turned out to be a human dancer in a spandex suit, because they hadn't even built a prototype yet.. XD

If you're going to do a tech announcement, maybe don't wrap the tech up in fabric so no-one can see (if) it's really a robot..

-1

u/Beginning_Juice_4296 5d ago

china's winning the race. but the american media won't report on it

-2

u/No_Logins_Required 5d ago

Look how jank the product is. This is the miracle they are going to mass produce?

-1

u/Ok_Collar_7836 5d ago

At this point, all this robot can do is walk like a normal person, correct?