Playing God

Why some dreams aren't worth pursuing

I’d be more excited if these robots did the laundry.

Oh man, it looks like Elon Musk is in the news again! But despite my deep desires to amp those subscriber numbers by diving headfirst into controversial content, this will not be about Musk’s purchase of Twitter or his comments about the war in Ukraine. Sadly, I can’t bring myself to engage in the type of discussion that would bring either the Elon “stans” or “haters” flooding this humble little newsletter. I find most Elon Musk discourse (or, Muskourse?) to be driven by tribalism and what Certified Friend of the Stack Klaus calls “Santa Clausing.” We are so obsessed with determining if someone is naughty or nice, we ignore the logical conclusion that almost everyone is some mixture of those. Since my job is not to deliver presents to the nice children and stiff the naughty, I can follow the action instead of the person. So, something like being the public face of the EV revolution and doing infinitely more to actually fight climate change than throwing soup on a painting, I can support that. And something like calling a dude trying to save children trapped in a cave “pedo guy” is something I can decline to offer support for.

That means that without holding a referendum on whether I’d allow him through the pearly gates, I can just talk about the potentially long ranging impact of a hobby horse of my city’s most famous resident. And the one that interests me today is not going to be going to Mars, which is a topic I want to tackle at length in the future. And after last article’s lack of engagement, it certainly will never again be talking about electrical vehicles. Instead, I want to talk about this:

If you don’t want to watch a six-minute-long video, it’s the Tesla Optimus Robot. Elon Musk is planning on having these revolutionize society:

Musk said he wants the robot to be manufactured at scale, sold for less than $20,000, and encompass core physical capabilities, such as the ability to move all fingers independently, and opposable thumbs with degrees of freedom so it can operate tools.

“This means a future of abundance,” he said. “A future where there is no poverty. Where people … You can have whatever you want in terms of products and services.”

“It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it,” he said.

There are parts of this that are very true. A society like this would create immense abundance for the people at the very top. This is why up until the last couple of centuries human society has relied strongly on slavery. Having work done by people you don’t need to pay? That’s pretty ideal, except this doesn’t require any of the moral issues involved with slavery. Of course, this would also put millions more out of work. And although we could theoretically not require people to work to stay alive, let’s be serious, we’re not doing that. For people who can afford a $20,000 robot – and this will mostly be businesses – this is fantastic.

But even leaving aside all the technological challenges – which are many – there’s a much bigger question about Optimus and all the other humanoid robots: Why?

Yes, we covered the concept of it making physical labor obsolete. But what we haven’t covered is why you would build a robot modeled on humans. Yes, humans can do a lot of different physical activities, it’s part of what’s impressive about us. But we don’t do them particularly well. It’s part of why we like tools – the process that eventually leads to robotic, autonomous tools – because they can do things better than we can. It’s why a car isn’t a pair of mechanical legs but has wheels, because we don’t have wheels and are legs are very inefficient for covering large distances quickly. So why would you try and replace human labor by simply making a different version of a human?

The best reason I can come up with for why artificial life should mimic humans is that God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. Except, I somehow doubt many people working at Tesla or Boston Dynamics or Xiaomi have Genesis 1:27 memorized. In fact, I’d go far enough to speculate that few of them even believe that we live in a universe in which any gods exist. Instead, I would wager that most of them believe that once upon a time some fish crawled up onto land and eventually some of those fish became apes and those apes became us, all occurring over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Which made us very well adapted to handle certain tasks – like surviving as apes – and poorly adapted to handle others. Assuming we’re all working off that, why would we want to copy this design?

Before moving on to the one reasonable argument in favor of humanoid robots, I want to note two other things before we move on from the topic of the Almighty. A writer with far more skill and time than I have could write an excellent piece about how an increasingly atheistic West has managed to internalize Christianity to an impressive degree. But I do have the skill and time to note that the idea of robots far predates a turn away from a belief in the divine. Humanoid robots as an idea exist in most technologically advanced societies going all the way back to Homer. Leonardo da Vinci wanted to build one. And the science fiction writers that inspire so much of modern science and engineering all worked within the same intellectual framework. It’s unsurprising that a line from da Vinci to Data would not quickly die out.

There are two reasonable arguments for why we should make humanoid robots. The first is that the world is already adapted for humans. If you could simply interact with the world as a human does, it would be easier to do things. My dog – but not I – would be much happier if opening a refrigerator was not optimized for bipedal, opposable thumbed life existing within a similar range of height and strength. But I reject this because the way we have built the world is mostly to optimize the technologies at our disposal. We completely rebuilt our world around automobiles. Likewise, we changed our world around building techniques, construction materials, elevators, air conditioning, etc., etc., etc. To use but one simple example, it would be difficult for a robot without a human hand to interact with my thermostat. But if I could control the thermostat with my mind – perhaps because we were connected to the same network – it would look very different. Imagine how a robot connected to our home could manipulate smart appliances without the use of hands. Rosie from The Jetsons was apparently inefficient because no one connected her to the wi-fi. Truly disruptive technology does not adapt to our world, our world adapts to it.

Meanwhile, the argument against humanoid robots is strong. First is that they are creepy. Humanoid robots struggle with the uncanny valley, which, if you’re unfamiliar with, I recommend either reading this Wikipedia entry or watching the 30 Rock clip I assume that entry is based on.

There’s a reason humanoid robots range from mildly creepy to downright terrifying. Meanwhile, non-humanoid robots avoid this problem by taking advantage of our natural tendency to anthropomorphize everything. Humans will always be less comfortable with synthetic humans than with something that isn’t attempting to be human.

But most importantly, it’s just inefficient. As discussed earlier, our bodies evolved to meet specific challenges, most of which aren’t a good match for the modern world. We’ve talked a lot about the use of robots in military situations and it’s for good reason: we’re terribly adapted for modern warfare! Our bodies have annoying tendencies like running out of energy and not withstanding bullets. But we also have problems like inability to fly and making large, visible targets. If squirrels could use guns, it’d be a short war for our acorns. To take just one of the examples being bandied about with Optimus, why would we want a robot built in our image to mow the lawn? Our bodies aren’t designed for mowing the lawn. I’d rather a self-driving John Deere for the job than a creepier looking version of me.

It comes back to specialization being good. It’s one of the driving forces of our rises in productivity. There are great benefits to a generalist’s range as a person, but when it comes to technology, I’d much rather have a spoon and a fork than just a spork. There’s more value in a specialized tool than a general one. In part because a specialized tool can be designed for specific tasks. There are few things in my apartment that I loathe more than my Roomba. But it has one major advantage over me, which is that it can go underneath my bed. Because it’s built specifically to vacuum.

The Roomba also demonstrates the other value of specialization. Optimus is supposed to be available for $20,000. And it’ll do a lot more than just vacuum. But my Roomba does a mediocre job of vacuuming for only $200. A robot built to do multiple things needs to be built for all those things, which unless they’re easily piggybacked¹ means it’s going to cost more to make and more to buy. I could afford a hundred mediocre robotic vacuum cleaners for the cost of one Optimus.²

This is where humanoid robots fall apart. We’ve been replacing humans with robots for a long time for a simple reason: it’s more productive. And yes, a Tesla or SpaceX factory with fully functional Optimii would be more productive and profitable than they are now. But if you could do that, you could just adapt the factory for robots that do the specific things you need, and not ones that can also evade a predator on the savannah. Like companies have been doing for decades. This hilariously saccharine promotional video for what Siemens is trying to do is not going to make the kind of waves that a real-life reboot of Small Wonder would, but it’s far more realistic and shows just how unproductive humanoid robots would be in comparison.

If they’re more difficult to make and less productive, why humanoid robots? Because they’re cool. We’ve spent millennia fantasizing about how to humans could do a better job designing humans than God did. It runs through our dreams and our stories and we want to give it a try. And certainly, someday, we may accomplish that goal. But when we do, it’s probably not going to give us the type of sci-fi advantages we’re dreaming of. It’ll be a novelty. The impressive thing about humans is not what our bodies can do, it’s what our mind can do. I don’t need an indestructible, indefatigable version of me that I don’t need to pay wages. I need a slightly smarter disc that vacuums my apartment because I hate housework. It’ll be cool when you have C3P0, but I’ll take my R2D2, thank you very much.

1. Consider the Instant Pot. I cling to my specialized tools, but I have many friends who swear by them because it does multiple things, which saves counterspace (a valid concern!). The difference is that the Instant Pot is essentially doing a lot of the same thing. It’s not making yogurt and walking my dog.

2. The other benefit is that a vacuum cleaning robot and a lawnmowing robot can do those simultaneously, Optimus would need to pick one.