February 13, 2023

There is no AI singularity yet

The main criteria for an upraising of robotics is mass production of intelligent machines. If advanced biped robots are created with only 1 units it is a boring research-only robot. Such a single unit robot has no relevance to the pubiic but it is a demonstration only project to write a paper about it.
True robotics is equal to increase to amount of units drastically. If millions of customer around the world are motivated to buy a certain product, that it is competitive. In case of robotics the situation is relaxed. The amount of cobots shipped for automation reason is only 45k units worldwide. The amount of miles driven by self driving cars is also very low.
Other household robots like vacuum cleaners and kitchen robots are not produced on a mass scale. Despite its attention on computer fairs the public demand for such technology not there.
Let us imagine who an AI takeover will look like without any real robots. It is a paradox situation because it is the opposite. An AI takeover described in the literature means usually that millions of human robots are produced on a mass scale so every household own at least one. Such a scenario is unrealistic. What is available instead are early prototypes similar to mechanical automaton in the 18th century. These robots are demonstrating the technical skills of university and research institutions but they are created with only 1 unit. This is similar to the famous fictional robot in Star Trek TNG which was also produced in a low amount of units.
What is available today are mass produced classical electronics devices lie smartphone, laptops and watches. But this technology can't be described as intelligent but it is normal pre-singularity innovation.
The opeq question is where robots are not mass produced yet? To answer the question lets take a look at the previously mentioned cobots. Cobots are industrial robots which are more powerful than normal automation technology. In most cases cobots are used for intermediate pick&place tasks at the conveyer. in contrast to a famous myth such a task has a low priority in the industry. Even if cobots are working great they are not used frequently. The amount of annually shipped cobots is 45k worldwide whcih includes all brands and all sort of cobots. so it ic compared to the importance of the industry similar to nothing.
If cobots are not used in the reality, how exactly are the conveyor belts automated? Right it is a rhetorical question. In most cases normal automation technique is used which doesn't need Artificial Intelligence but it is working purely mechanically. And the remaining tasks are highly complex and can't be automated soon. So we can say that the industry struggles even with easy to built cobots. It is unlikely that more advanced human robots are produced on a mass scale soon. Let us make a prediction in numbers who the year 2030 will look like.
the amount of cobots will grow by 5% annually. That means around 65k cobits are getting produced in the future per year. Not a single human worker is getting replaced by this little amount of technology. The chance is high that many of these cobots not even installed on a production facility. The same prediction can be made for self driving cars. The chance is high that because of regulation problems existing autopilots will remain offline and new cars are produced without any sort of AI. The only automation technique which is produced on mass-scale is an automatic door opener. That means, the owner can press a button and the car will unlock the door even if the owner is 1 meter away.
Such an easy to describe outlook sounds a bit boring for an audience which is fear that the robot revolution has already started. Most of the so called Singularity is only available in science fiction literature. The reality is much more conservative in introducing AI technology.