I'm thoroughly convinced those humanoid robots are just a way to bypass immigration law. The actual AI to run a robot like that in a domestic setting does not exist and will not for decades, if ever. Would you trust ChatGPT to run a robot, in your home, where your family lives? That's how you end up with your baby in an oven when the damn robot mistakes it for a turkey.

All the tech demos for those robots are actually being live-piloted by human operators wearing haptic suits and VR headsets. They claim this is temporary, but it's not. We already have doctors doing remote surgeries across the planet. If you can do brain surgery remotely, you can wash dishes remotely.

These robots are not going to be autonomous. They're going to be deployed in rich countries, remotely piloted by people in poor countries. Workers in poor countries will telecommute to rich countries for menial labor jobs. The rich countries will get the benefits of immigrant labor without providing any of the benefits immigrants normally get. They won't have a path to citizenship. Their children won't get citizenship or education. They won't get healthcare or income assistance benefits.

It seems absurd to go to all this trouble just for some domestic work, but it's really not. Imagine you can save $10/hour on labor by using one of these robot systems piloted remotely by workers in low wage countries. Even if the robot costs $50k, if you can work them 12 hours per day, that $50k robot will pay for itself in 14 months.

This is also why the robots need to be humanoid. It takes time to train a pilot to remotely operate a robot with a very nonhumanoid shape. But a humanoid robot? You can take someone who never finished the 8th grade, hand them a haptic suit and a VR headset, and they'll be able to pilot such a robot instantly. But any human without severe neurological illness, regardless of education or background, can safely operate a robot like this. You don't need to know English or the intricacies of American culture to know that you shouldn't put a baby in an oven. And if the robot does do something horrible, there's a human on the other end you can hold responsible for its actions.

This is the critical application of these humanoid robots. We don't have and may never have the AI to let these things run truly autonomously. Their real killer app is bypassing immigration law, taking advantage of immigrant labor, while offering the immigrants very little benefits beyond a meager wage.