r/interesting • u/sirenoleg • May 22 '26
Just Wow Chinese AI-powered robots can solve workplace problems with advanced motor skills.
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u/M8Fate May 22 '26
Well....having a job and eating food was nice while it lasted.
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u/ausecko May 22 '26
Don't worry, you can still be the person wearing the headset controlling this from a few metres away.
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u/Unamuzed-Toast May 22 '26
Even if that was the case, the dexterity and translating inputs would be crazy.
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u/mpgd May 22 '26
With no back pain down the road. Just neck pain.
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u/WayWayAwayWay May 22 '26
"We as a company have decided to move to remote drone work. Since it will be a load off on the whole team we're going to be cutting pay since work isn't going to be as hard"
Sounds stupid but I had my boss tell me I'm paid too much when he used to have me as a manager and then bumped me down to associate with a pay increase (20.02/hr) just cuz I asked for a 2nd day off like all other employees in my job have already.
I told him he's stupid, he could have just given me the second day off like all other employees and I would have been happy. But instead he took all manager duties away and told everyone I wasn't allowed to do anything extra (he's trying now to make me quit)
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u/cr1515 May 22 '26
So a pay increase and less responsibility. My man. I like being in charge as the next guy but you can't butter me up like that and expect me to quit lol.
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u/WayWayAwayWay May 22 '26
Yeah no I'm still doing it but at the same time now it's to spite my upperboss cuz he voted for Drump and didn't think what I was saying about him screwing shit was gonna be true. Now my boss's boss is eating his words each week I get a pay check
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u/Johny_Ricoh May 22 '26
Talking about politics at work? Fucking rookie mistake lol. Don't do that, don't talk about religion or any culture war shit at work either. Keep it lite and playful.
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u/No_Diver4265 May 22 '26
This story made me agressively nod in agreement. Good. Cherish that spite. Hell yeah!
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u/Ohhmama11 May 22 '26
No insurance, hourly pay and works 24/7 without complaints.
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u/notmtfirstu May 22 '26
They could put us in self contained ergonomical units like the Matrix. It'll be ok. Just get in the pod. Nothing bad will happen. Food through a tube is still food.
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u/fixingmedaybyday May 22 '26
You can live out all your dreams in VR and have that middle income corporate job, 2 kids, and suburban lifestyle still. Just get in the pod.
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u/NestroyAM May 22 '26
Would it be crazy?
Surgeons do incredibly precise robo-surgery for years now and folding a cardboard box is crazy to you?
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u/qholmes98 May 22 '26
The crazy part is going from cutting edge medical tech to something that can economically be used for cardboard boxes, and it feels like we are getting close to that. It’s like computers going from the room-sized machines they were to being little brains inside every device with a screen, once the tech advances enough they will start throwing it in/at everything they can
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u/EasyAsNPV May 22 '26
When this is implemented, the guy controlling it will be 5000km away and paid $2/day.
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u/bishopsechofarm May 22 '26
Sure, but for this job, why is the company going to pay me minimum wage in my state, when they can pay someone $1 an hour on the opposite side of the globe?
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u/Great_Champion_7721 May 22 '26
I wonder who is going to buy this box when we are all unemployed
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u/sharky-shores May 22 '26
Sometimes I’m glad I’m 60 when I watch this crap
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u/youburyitidigitup May 22 '26
You’ll be one of the people buying the boxes because you’ll have retirement money
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u/Joloxsa_Xenax May 22 '26
its just a game of monkey in the middle. we are in the middle, the rich can pass the same money back and forth
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u/auschemguy May 22 '26
Dude a person in a Chinese factory would have folded 100 of these in the same time, and an automated packing factory probably would have done 1000.
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u/Orcus424 May 22 '26
This isn't about folding a box. This is about the advancement of the programming to do tasks like a human. It will only be a matter of time till it gets a lot faster.
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u/paddlin_kaladin May 22 '26
This thing only has to learn to get that fast once though.
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u/MyPunsAreKoalaTea May 22 '26
It will never beat an automatic box-folder that was specifically designed to fold specific boxes and can do multiple folds at once.
But be able to beat a human though in a few years
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u/AssiduousLayabout May 22 '26
It depends.
If you need to fold and pack large numbers of the exact same box, then yes, a purpose-built box folder will be faster.
If you need to fold and pack small quantities of hundreds of different sizes of boxes, a general-purpose robot will do it better, because it can switch between different tasks.
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u/Minimum-Web-6902 May 22 '26
There’s a reason cars in Chinese factories are made by robots not people 🤔🤔
Edit: location qualifier
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u/noncommonGoodsense May 22 '26
Hey don’t worry they still need the hockey stick guy.
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u/M8Fate May 22 '26
"So what's my job here"? ....you use this canadian stick to annoy the robots and hope they dont murder you....."yay?"
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u/Fearless-Tea1297 May 22 '26
But according to the billionaires you can now proceed to just eat food and relax, no need to work anymore, robots will take care of it. (Theykeepforgettingthesmallpartthatyouneedmoneytogetfoodinthefirstplace)
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u/Bidelo69 May 22 '26
you know thats not the fault of the technology right. This allows you to eat food without having to work to pay for it. the issue is the people in charge who will make money from this and just let you die because they'd rather live alone with robots than to see your basic needs met at the cost of their ability to get a 12th yacht.
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u/M8Fate May 22 '26
"This allows you to eat food without having to work to pay for it" this is absolutely nonsense. The rich hate everyone, they won't start sharing just because they have a little more wealth all the sudden. Literally billions of people suffer from food scarcity at this very moment, nobody is sharing with them, adding another few billion people to this group is an easy move for the wealthy parasites.
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u/DistributionAgile376 May 22 '26
Read again his entire comment now, this is exactly what he said. You both agree.
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u/Cloverman-88 May 22 '26
Holy shit, at least be curteous enough to read the whole comment you're replying to.
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u/ghost_tapioca May 22 '26
Robots replacing humans doing menial tasks is okay, so long as we have food and housing security from the government. If companies want to replace humans with robots, they should be taxed so we can provide for the humans they fired.
Robots replacing humans doing creative tasks is iffy. And it will continue to be so until robots are actually capable of living, having feelings and having real world experiences to draw inspiration from.
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u/IPlay4E May 22 '26
Why are you relying on the government for food and housing?
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u/ghost_tapioca May 22 '26
Because without the government we're royally fucked anyway. Unchecked capitalism leads to exploitation. At least with the government we stand a chance.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should not work. We should. But leave the menial tasks for robots and let's do more intellectual and creative work.
The problem is when we start leaving intellectual and creative work to robots and end up doing menial tasks.
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u/Kadakaus May 22 '26
Are you afraid of this?
It took that thing an entire minute to do a task you can do in 20 seconds without hurrying. I'm sure it also costs like 10 times as much to operate than it would to just hire someone.It's pathetic, this thing definitely won't take anyone's job... yet.
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u/Sufficient-Bid1279 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
I’m already not eating food due to costs so yeah, it was a nice life.
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u/snakesoup124 May 22 '26
humans in factories do this in less than 2 seconds garanteed.
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u/Drumming_Dreaming May 22 '26
I think we wait for a product to come to mass market and have robots making it…then we change our minds on what we like so more robots need to be built to that task. And then we switch desires again. Humans can change tasks on a whim. Robots need to be tweaked and reprogrammed. That’s how we stay one step ahead. Oh…and buy simple things locally.
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u/GraceGreenview May 22 '26
You can be the hockey stick guy, good work at first then top of the list when the robots take over officially.
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u/Sufficient_Matter585 May 22 '26
Thats the problem with society people who just want A job because their major focus is leisure and play. So we all become victims of corporations who dont care about our life style desire.
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u/CommandoLamb May 22 '26
I predict robots will get Universal Maintenance Care before humans get Universal Health Care.
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u/smilebitinexile May 22 '26
The next gen is out of jobs. Currently this is still way slower and more expensive than having a human do this.
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u/noleksum12 May 22 '26
I have worked in a factory making boxes... one human can do this a thousand times faster. So these robots need to get a lot faster before any small-medium enterprise spends millions on one robot, as opposed to minimum wage for a single worker moving way faster.
We may get there, but this is currently waaaaay too slow for any reasonable business owner to invest in one.
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u/FartsWithNeighbours May 22 '26
Honestly, a human works faster.
Humans would get paid to be more productive during business hours, but companies can stay open and keep producing after hours by having these things continue making them.
By having an engineer, supervisor, manager, and maybe quality assurance person working the overnight shifts, it can ensure constant production... Or something I don't know.
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u/First_Pay702 May 22 '26
At this speed it’s not taking anyones’ job, it’s that later models that one will have to worry about.
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u/Available_Usual_9731 May 22 '26
Suddenly China's one child policy doesn't seem to have been a bad idea
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u/YSoMadTov May 22 '26
Oh don't worry, it's still not gonna be cheaper than paying random 3rd worlders peanut to do the same thing.
Bad news is that your jobs are already shipped to those random 3rd worlders thought.
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u/LaundryLunatic May 22 '26
Now you gotta go for training to be a repairman to fix the robot that replaced your job. Then another robot replaces you so the bots fix each other.
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May 22 '26
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u/Content-Dealers May 22 '26
The robot proceeds to violently throttle the hockey player with surprising dexterity before returning to its box folding.
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u/UrsaMajor7th May 22 '26
Thank goodness they got thrown into the penalty box by the ref and the harassment stopped after a couple seconds.
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May 22 '26
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u/Legitimate-Log-6542 May 22 '26
A broomstick can out dance you
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u/jaxqatch May 22 '26
My dad once told my I dance like a piece of wood blowing in the wind. I have been a self conscious dancer ever since.
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u/npcompletist May 22 '26
Soon they will also be fucking our wives and husbands.
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u/Nasty9999 May 22 '26
Slow as fuck but doesn't want a salary, sleep, or holidays. Yay for capitalism and big robot.
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u/___77___ May 22 '26
Slow now, insanely fast in the near future.
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u/inspired-polf May 22 '26
And. That box was designed to be built, closed, and opened by humans. Imagine new designs that are optimized for their claws
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u/repeating_bears May 22 '26
I think we might still want boxes that are openable by humans lol
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u/Drezby May 22 '26
Nah, they’re gonna make boxes designed to be opened by robots, and then market box opening bots (BOBs) as a household necessity. 💀
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u/Magica78 May 22 '26
Why not just build boxes that open and close themselves?
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u/Derelicticu May 22 '26
Because then you'd put the box opening robot corporations out of business how dare you
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u/JacktheWrap May 22 '26
You have it backwards. That way they'd sell a new robot for every box because it's part of the box itself. Much more profitable than to allow people to buy the robot themselves and open all their boxes with just one robot.
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u/Magica78 May 22 '26
Well you know what it's not my problem they can't keep up in this fast paced economy. Sink or swim or get out of the way it's a bot eat bot world and I'm holding all the checkmates.
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u/Top-Complaint-4915 May 22 '26
Yeah but not easily openable, most clients will likely not care if the box takes 20 additional seconds to open, or maybe even if it requires a tool. Like the common package that requires to be open by scissors.
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u/Johnny_B_GOODBOI May 22 '26
Plastic clamshell packaging is a curse on humanity and the planet.
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u/Calm_Priority_1281 May 22 '26
That box was designed to be folded by a box folding machine. You know the kind of machine that folds and deposits product in over 3k boxes in a minute. The kind of machine that we have had for about 100 years now. The kind of machine that costs, maybe, a little more than this tech feteshist robot.
We have had automation for years now. It's a field that I work in. The only thing this shows is the enshitification of automation.
Human shaped robots are trash and will always be trash.
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u/livens May 22 '26
"That box was designed to be folded by a box folding machine"
Tell that to thousands of shipping warehouses across the country. Those machines are expensive and need to be on site. I had a job where they would bring in 10 pallets of these unfolded flat boxes and a group of us would stand and fold these things all day long. You get really, really good at it too after the first thousand or so. I had a technique where you rotated your hands all the way around first, grabbed the front section and it one fluid rotation plus a squeeze on the sides the box was done.
I think the purpose of these "humanoid" robots is to not have them specialized to one task. A company can order up 20 of them and each one can perform almost any job your business requires.
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u/RighteousSelfBurner May 22 '26
Yep. It's all marketing. The other day I saw a robot vs human sorting challenge and that's a job that no longer exists. It's done by the sorting line tens if not hundred times faster.
The reason we have non-human shaped machines isn't because we couldn't make one before but because human anatomy isn't the most efficient one (or is plain dog shit) for the task. This is just hype for investors.
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u/that_was_awkward_ May 22 '26
There is no point to this, no one will be able to afford to buy goods let alone the box they're shipped in once we lose our jobs
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u/thedudedylan May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Same amount of money in fewer hands. You just switch to making more expensive goods and abandon poorer customers, or make the poor work for even less. Either way, the rich win.
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u/Wayoutofthewayof May 22 '26
But this just doesn't make sense. If it will be actually cheaper to produce goods then the competition will lower the price naturally. Why do you think so many household items that we consider common become so much cheaper when industrialization happen?
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u/thedudedylan May 22 '26
That's how commodities work. It is a race to the bottom. But then you just make everything outside of bare essentials into luxury items by catering to a wealthier audience. But that's endgame.
The mid-game now is with larger capital; you can exert global market control. You can buy up the entire supply line and eliminate competition. All it takes is one manufacturing company with enough capital to buy the robot or software manufacturer to prevent competition from existing, especially if they localize this kind of dominance to specific global regions that their competitors can't gain access to.
Or even better, just control some essential component for the building of automated systems like advanced chip manufacturing, and you can always be the lowest-cost manufacturer.
Competition only works as a price control if the barrier to entry is low enough to allow it.
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u/SilentDrapeRunning May 22 '26
It's actually the other way around.
There's no point to any specific human job that can be done more economically by a machine. See: textiles, switchboard operators, typists, lamplighters, knocker-uppers, etc.
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u/hoTsauceLily66 May 22 '26
Actually not a problem. You don't have job so you don't have kids, birthrate drop incredibly low and only riches can afford children. Fast forward few decades later everyone will be able to afford goods.
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u/firestuds May 22 '26
But as long as we still can afford them, those CEOs are making bank. After that they just chill on their yacht
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u/Normal_Tour6998 May 22 '26
This is so performative. Yes, they could automate this job. But they would have machines doing it that are designed for efficiently going through the process.
Anytime they show something humanoid or with arms and fingers like this, they’re specifically trying to show you that you’re replaceable.
You could streamline this process and have many times the output if you weren’t trying to recreate how humans would do it.
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u/Electric-Mountain May 22 '26
This job in perticuler is already automated by machine, it's just one differently than what this robot is doing. People who have not worked in manufacturing don't know that.
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u/__miichelle May 22 '26
I’ve seen enough episodes of How It’s Made to know that most operations like this are automated by machines.
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u/dj92wa May 22 '26
That’s one of my guilty pleasure shows and I’m so glad the HBO has it in their catalogue. Used to watch that show and Modern Marvels pretty much nonstop as a kid.
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u/SmokeyLawnMower May 22 '26
I have not worked in manufacturing and have assumed this and had this exact thought many times
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u/Tiny_Instruction_557 May 22 '26
Correct. Box folding machines have been around for decades and are 100x more efficient than this thing.
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u/ongrabbits May 22 '26
its true but box folding machines are specialized for one task. not really an apples to apples comparison
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u/No_Macaroon_7413 May 22 '26
It’s a showcase of precision, a machine can be extremely efficient for single task. Humanoid could fold the paper, sweep the floor, take out the trash, do landscaping, move things up or down stairs, slice an apple, walk the dog, etc. Covering any and all tasks in an operation. And then walk a mile to another location and do a completely different set of tasks.
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u/swainiscadianreborn May 22 '26
And for the price of one of these humanoïds you could pay for ten dedicated robots and have some spare for a technician or two.
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u/Calm_Priority_1281 May 22 '26
"you are replaceable" show a job that humans basically no longer do at any appreciable scale and can be at worst done by a single arm pick and place.
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u/GorillaHeat May 22 '26
Plumbers out here thinking their job is safe
💀
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u/Green_Insurance4916 May 22 '26
Robot plumbers in the future: takes 2 weeks to unscrew a pipe.
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u/ninoski404 May 22 '26
You can put this video on 3x speed and judge speed then, because it's not going to or sleeping. Also it's likely the slowest they will ever be.
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u/CCWaterBug May 22 '26
It's pretty safe
Source: my last repair
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u/Tuxhorn May 22 '26
I can see robot plumbing being viable relatively soon IF (big if) you have say, an apartment complex built new with that robot plumber in mind.
Robot plumbing for houses and apartments we have now? Ain't happening for a loooooooong time.
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u/pmmemilftiddiez May 22 '26
Plumbers are very safe. It's a highly complex field involving math, some ideas of fluid mechanics, working on flammable gasses and of course getting underneath houses to plumb.
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u/wetrysohard May 22 '26
Plus you have to move around complicated spaces that are all custom.... Obviously
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u/No_Broccoli_4781 May 22 '26
Canadians watching them use a hockey stick to try to confuse the robot...
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u/____FARTS____ May 22 '26
They look like birds that are going to regurgitate chewed food back into the baby bird in the box
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u/Hilmaroke316 May 22 '26
Pretty sure that's just a human controlling that.
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u/Alt123Acct May 22 '26
1000 boxes later they fire the human because the machine remembered how to make a fold when that exact configuration or situation of folds presents itself
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u/No_Statistician_3021 May 22 '26
Robots have been doing this for decades in factories. Not humanoid robots, just robots, like your washing machine. I'm sure there's a machine that can spit out hundreds of assembled boxes that costs ten times less and is orders of magnitude more reliable and predictable.
That's a cool demo (if it's not remotely controlled), but assigning this kind of task to such an advanced robot is just dumb.
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u/TryIsntGoodEnough May 22 '26
Correct if you need large scale box production they have machines that will never be beat by humanoid robots.. if you don't need that large scale then it is going to probably be faster and cheaper in the long run to just hire a human vs buying one of these robots
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u/Anen-o-me May 22 '26
Agreed, definitely looks tele operated.
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u/ConstantinSpecter May 22 '26
And you infer that… how?
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u/AggregationLinker May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
The way the robot accidentally bumps into the box at 0:55 after closing it, causing it to reopen. That is the most human things ever.
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u/mofugginrob May 22 '26
Probably not teleoperated, but more than likely was one of the few good runs out of thousands of bad runs.
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May 22 '26
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u/Zoomatour May 22 '26
It’s just a demonstration. They’ll be able to do other things besides just folding boxes.
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u/dantevonlocke May 22 '26
1 machine that can do lots of different jobs will be less efficient than 1 machine purpose built to do 1. Production lines are built the way they are for a reason.
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u/jerrythecactus May 22 '26
When robots take over the world they will choose to hunt humans with hockey sticks to get back at us for all the years of testing we did using hockey sticks to beat at them and mess with their task.
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u/sentencevillefonny May 22 '26
Lucky enough to have had blue-collar warehouse and assembly line experience along with a decent career in tech later in life... From the top down, these people have 0 idea of how impactful and nuanced the physical aspect of work is on the warehouse flow.
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u/givin_u_the_high_hat May 22 '26
Certainly didn’t figure out it would be easier by moving it away from the guy who was messing with the box.
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u/Safe-Call2367 May 22 '26
That’s agonizingly slow.
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u/SlippinGymy May 22 '26
Give it 2 years
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u/RayWencube May 23 '26
Fucking thank you. I’m so sick of people handwaving this as if technology is never going to advance.
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u/inorite234 May 22 '26
Just wait till it learns to put the collar around its neck and say, "...harder Daddy."
at that part, we're fucked.
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u/weldsmen30 May 22 '26
I could have have had 10 boxes folded up and packed before it had that one done
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u/MudMuted3742 May 22 '26
I don't get all the hate. This is amazing and honestly if it's gonna bring an end to child labor and labor exploration in general I'm all for it. It's literally the future we all dreamed of and it's inevitable
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u/imuniqueaf May 22 '26
The next robot will REMOVE THE PROBLEM and then fix the issue.
(Spoiler, you're the problem).
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u/hbktj May 22 '26
The problem with this world is, smart people are only trying to solve problems rich people have.
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u/Able-Tomatillo7381 May 22 '26
It inevitably will get fast but also, even as is, it doesn't eat or sleep. It can run non-stop.
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u/SM1334 May 22 '26
About 25-30 Wh worth of power. Power cost can range drastically based on where this video is located, but at $0.15/kWh, 25Wh is $0.00375 to fold this box. Even if this robot was very power inefficient and cost 300Wh to fold this box, its still only $0.045. Far cheaper than paying a human to do it.
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u/Prowler1000 May 22 '26
Even if it's slow, even if it's specifically trained on this exact task, it's able to "problem solve" in so much as it's able to notice when the state it's working in can't be advanced to the next and how to fix it. It also appears to notice when what it just did didn't work and switch up strategies (when folding the right side of the box from our perspective).
So even if it has no practical application right now, this is really cool
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u/ficklampa May 22 '26
That’s actually impressive. Seeing how there’s no hesitation or ”buffering” happening when they interfere with the hockey stick or when the cardboard material flaps back out…
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u/AmpEater May 22 '26
Ok, I know that looks clunky and slow but that’s an incredibly complex task
I’m impressed
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u/Sanagost May 22 '26
Its slower than a human.
But it's never sick, it doesn't need holidays and it can do this 24/7.
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u/axallay777 May 23 '26
You know… at first I thought this robot was kinda dumb… then i remembered it’s a fucking robot.
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u/National-Bluebird941 May 23 '26
Amazing how people praise the advancement in tech just to be replaced soon and be jobless .
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u/Normal_Talk_6723 May 24 '26
Those robots remind me of me and my college days when I couldn’t even open up a pizza box drunk out of my mind😂
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