Meet the humanoid robots that might change your future

3-in-3 is a place where all the cool things are boiled down to their essence and then deep-fried into the crunchiest, tastiest snacks.

There are some things I want to make into a full, multiple-course, nutritious meal.

Let me know which of the topics from 3-in-3 would you like to see me expand on in the form of a video.

Thing 1 - Paradox of difficulty

...a.k.a. the perception of difficulty, is the idea that the perceived level of difficulty of a task may be influenced by your psychological factors, like

• your level of self-confidence
• your mindset
• your emotions

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

- Seneca

Read the full post or watch the video, we're saving room for Thing 2 🤖

Paradox of difficulty video (6:34 min)

Thing 2 - Humanoid robots are coming

You are living on the edge of history going into the humanoid robot era.

Almost all the ingredients are here and the tide is coming in. If you could buy - for a price of a car - a humanoid robot that can do 90% of all the menial tasks you can do...

• How would that change our society's relationship with labor?
• How does it change the rate of exploration and conquest of space?
• How does this influence the amount of physical resources we put under our control?

It's not going to happen tomorrow, but it will in our lifetimes.

Let's look at the top contenders today.

Atlas - Boston Dynamics

First unveiled on July 11, 2013, Atlas is the oldest and most famous of the bunch with all the tricks it's been doing for almost a decade.

Latest demo of Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot (1:21 min)

U.S. DARPA - the same agency that invented the base for the Internet - is funding the project designed for a variety of search and rescue tasks.

Doesn't seem like you'll see it doing backflips around your backyard any time soon. But it does set the bar to what's possible when it comes to movement.

Optimus - Tesla

Screenshot from Tesla 2023 Investor Day

Based on self-driving tech in Tesla's cars. Autonomous cars need to understand their environment in order to get you from A to B in one piece.

Tesla vehicles are robots on wheels. Optimus will be (is?) a robot on legs.

Tesla team has the most experience (out of this bunch) in mass-producing high-tech stuff. They delivered 1.3M vehicles in 2022 alone.

We should be able to bring an actual product to market at scale that is useful far faster than anyone else.

- Elon Musk

He expects that humanoid robots will at some point outnumber humans.

I expect to see Optimus bots in future SpaceX missions. It's quite obvious, isn't it?

Figure

New contender coming out of stealth mode with the goal "to develop general purpose humanoids that make a positive impact on humanity and create a better life for future generations".

Screenshot of figure.ai with the key specs

Brett Adcock (Founder & CEO) has 20 years of experience building tech companies to $billions, including an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (VTOL) company.

Brett's master plan consists of 3 steps:

1. Build a feature-complete electromechanical humanoid
2. Perform human-like manipulation
3. Integrate humanoids into the labor force

Clone Robotics

Clone Torso screenshot from clonerobotics.com

Clone Robotics is crowdsourcing the development based on the robotic arm R&D I talked about in 3-in-3 before.

They expect scale-up manufacturing of Clones with a brain capable of 1-shot imitation by 2025!

The race is on.

(source 1, source 2)

Thing 3 - Follow your curiosity

Photo by Joe Green

Two quotes I'm pondering about curiosity:

If you want to be confident, follow your curiosity more than your fear.

Confidence comes from mastery.
Mastery comes from repetition.
Repetition comes from interest.

A child learns to walk not from their fear of falling down, but their curiosity in learning to stand up.

- Cory Muscara

Following your curiosity also leads to fulfillment.

Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.

Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.

- Naval Ravikant

It's the best time in history to do this.

Cheers, Zvonimir