Optimusal?

Had to rush to get the trash out to the curb this morning, as my wife could already hear the truck moving down our street. Along the path towards automation, I became witness to a transition moment. For while a driver was controlling the truck, for the first time there was no longer a second person hopping out of the cab and dumping the trash into the compactor at the rear.

That sidekick human had been replaced by a mechanical claw. It locates the trash bin, closes around it, then in a circular motion lifts it to the top of the hopper, turning it upside down to empty it, then reverses, returning the now-empty bin to the curb. A marvel of automation.

I presume the other shoe will drop in just a few years. Namely, a self-driving truck. Such is the ongoing reinvention process, driven daily by free-market capitalism. Two jobs have now turned to one, and soon will become none.

I’ll tell you one thing that didn’t happen. When the first job was eliminated, it wasn’t done by replacing the worker with a similarly-sized robot. I’ll tell you another thing that won’t happen. When it’s time to automate the driving, it won’t be done by placing a robot in the driver’s seat of that same truck.

I think it’s pretty obvious why the automation process, which has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands of years, doesn’t proceed by the one-for-one replacement of people with simulacra. Swapping robots for humans would lead to a kind of steam punk modernity, frozen in time. Instead of flush toilets, robot bed pan removers. Instead of combines, teams of robots with scythes walking through wheat fields. Rather than banks of elevators applying queuing theory to minimize wait time, robot elevator operators politely inquiring “which floor?” Meaningful progress comes as the result of wisely rethinking the process end to end, and making it optimal. Remember Elon Musk’s “the best part is no part?” (cf. flufferbot).

Which is why I am so puzzled with Musk’s passion for the Optimus project. I would suggest that Optimus itself could benefit from the kind of “first principles” thinking for which Elon is justly famous, rather than “reasoning by [anthropomorphic] analogy.” (To be continued . . .) 

Feel free to let me know what I am missing.