Robotics and the invention of neoluddism

On the first look, humanoid robotics is the forefront of technological progress. Building a biped robot who can do a task is equal to introduce futuristic technology to the world. The interesting point is, that especially advanced robotics is providing an anti-technology standpoint. The reason is, that a robotics project contains of two elements. First the robot itself and secondly, the explanation about the robot. The second part of the system can be called neoluddism because it won't bring the world forward but it is spreading misinformation.

Let us go into the details, how humanoid robotics are explained in the literature and in videos. In most cases, it's described as a successful project. The humanoid robot walks through the house and is doing useful tasks for example cleaning the kitchen. The audience gets the impression, that the robot is a product which will increase the productivity in reality. What makes the story problematic is, that no alternative is presented. The audience has no opportunity to validate if the robot is useful in reality or not.

To make the bottleneck clear it's important to tell a different kind of story. Suppose, there is a practical joke, which is a machine who can't provide anything. And the story is, that this non-sense machine will become a useful product. If the story is told the right way, the audience will laugh about it, because it makes no sense at all. Do the people laugh if they read stories about household robots? No they don't because the plot prevents that the audience gets the full impression. If the audience is not allow to laugh about the product it gets indoctrinated.

Laughing is equal to freedom. It allows somebody to stand above a subject. Telling a joke is equal to spread the truth. In case of humanoid robotics the amount of jokes is rare. That means, that there is no intention to explain what a robot is really doing. And the user is fooled with misinformation.

Productivity

There is a reason why the productivity of robotics is incredible low. By self-definition a robot is trying to replace the control part of a system with automated algorithm. The robot isn't working like a classical industrial machine but the robot is using sensors and actuators to decide something. The car is driven by the motor, and the robot is controlling the wheel of the car. The crane is driven with electric current but the robotics crane operator controls the buttons.

Unfortunately this part is hard or even impossible to automate. Most robots are working great from the technical side. But they fail in doing the sensor-actuator task in a meaningful way. The work hypothesis is, that only human level Artificial Intelligence is able to replace human workers. Right now, no human level AI is available and as a consequence robots have to fail in increasing the productivity.

The problem is located in missing research about failed industrial robots in the past. Many attempts were made over the decades. But the amount of productivity was never measured. If a company who has sold industrial robots went into bankruptcy it's ignored by the robotics community. They pretend, the case was never there. Instead they are talking about future robots which are more powerful.