Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

Yeah so in 2-4 years you can throw out your whole expensive robot because battery wears out? I hate this argument that just to be a bit thinner, the whole device has to be be made throwaway.

Talking about the thinness of a humanoid, maid robot is pretty hilarious.

Humanoid "maid" robots will never be popular in the home until they can effectively simulate the appearance and form factor of a woman or teenage girl. It is what it is.

Bollocks. I wouldn’t care if it looked like Chewbacca if it did the household chores, had a good warranty and was repairable, and cost under $30k.

I’m not f##king the robot maid, I don’t care if it looks like a girl. If I was into that, there are other types of ‘robots’ for that.

I'm not saying everyone, everywhere, wants to fuck their robot maid, I'm saying thousands of years of patriarchy, hundreds of years of popular culture, fetishization of domestic labor roles and simple human nature will have an influence on the adoption of humanoid domestic robots that companies ignore at their peril.

Some people are Honda Civic people, only concerned with utility - that's fine, I'm the same way. But the money comes from cars designed to evoke eroticism or animal aggression. The humanoid robot in the article is, aesthetically speaking, horrifying to most people. It doesn't even have a face, it doesn't look pleasant, it doesn't invite an emotional bond, it isn't friend shaped, and that isn't what most people will want, or would spend money on, regardless of how efficient it is.

Humanoid robots will have a context within the same gender and cultural dynamics as human beings, by virtue of looking and acting human enough. People already have relationships with AI, and that will only become more normalized over time. Most people will personify and anthropomorphize humanoid robots just as much as they do AI, and this will be necessary for their popular acceptance and adoption. And yes, many people will want to fuck them, or at the very least, want them to look fuckable.

That seems like more of a reversal of causation. Women are more likely to be maids or home care workers because "domestic" work is perceived as women's work. Maids are often young women, "teenage girls" as you say, or older women because they either haven't started a family yet or have already raised their children to adulthood. This is because many women are expected to take on the majority of unpaid domestic labor while men take on the traditional wage-earning paid labor.

The sexualization of young women working domestic labor is the result of the general sexualization of most young women in most contexts. It isn't that domestic labor is some sort of pretext to get a young woman into the home. It is that once they are there, men sexualize them.

People do that with phones. Given that humanoid robots are very early in their development cycle why wouldn't they need to be replaced physically?

Joints will need replacement, lubrication, other maintenance. Same with motors, so why not replacing power/battery as part of a part?

It's not about making them "thinner". The idea is that they are human sized, because they're designed to operate in human occupied areas.

The first places are going to be like Amazon warehouses doing pick and pack because of the speed and all the variations of boxes and packages.

That's a relatively controlled environment, they'll evolve from there.

People already buy robot vacuums to do a decent job of vacuuming a decent amount of their floors. It is a $4.48 billion industry. Roombas don't look like people. They don't even look like pets or animals. They look like big hockey pucks. I have one and I have it run as soon as I leave for work because I don't want to interact with it, I want to have clean floors. If there was a robot that could fold clothes, load and unload the dishwasher, dust, and general purpose clean, I would have it run when I wasn't home too and would prefer if it folded up into a little box in the corner when I was home.

Roomba uses AI in some of their models, but people aren't trying to have a relationship with them. Because it is AI to serve a utilitarian purpose that does not involve imitating human behavior. People have relationships with chatbots because they are specifically imitating human behavior. Putting googly eyes on your Roomba isn’t the same as falling in love with a chatbot.

Cars are very very publicly visible, so they are used to project some sort of image to others; like the clothes people wear. Most people don't wear clothes or drive cars for purely utilitarian purposes. Often people will buy clothes or cars that look utilitarian to project an image about themselves. People buy furniture and decorate their homes to project an image. People do not buy their water heater to project a certain image about themselves. Robot vacuums are frustrating to watch. They get the job done in the end (most of the time) but their random zig zags or difficulty navigating around objects is something most people don’t want to see. They just want the result. Huminoid robots will be like that for a significant amount of time, where they can empty the dishwasher, but it will be painfully slow, odd looking, and very unhuman-like. People won’t want to see this but they will want the job done so they don’t have to do it. A robot that can perform utilitarian household chores would be a huge industry and would be used by most people like a dishwasher or water heater, primarily for its utility.

A robot that reaches the level that it could be a companion, operating visibly with/around people (bringing you and your guests refreshments rather than slowly, awkwardly folding clothes alone in a bedroom while you are at work or downstairs watching a movie) would very likely have a huge pressure to fit cultural and gender dynamics.