from Hacker News

Jürgen Schmidhuber – Can All-Purpose Robots Fuel a Comeback?

by rkwasny on 1/23/25, 8:09 AM with 76 comments

• by portaouflop on 1/23/25, 10:40 AM

  General purpose robots don’t make sense - humans are infinitely better for this purpose and way cheaper to produce.

  Sure the robots could do very dangerous or tedious work that would be “inhuman”, but I would argue that for this kind of work a specialised robot will always be more efficient and way cheaper to produce.

  Apart from how science fiction this all is - we can’t even produce a general purpose robot don’t make that does the most basic things like walking or picking up objects in real life (outside of special test environments)

• by leviliebvin on 1/23/25, 11:33 AM

  I think he makes a good point about immigration. Immigration is not going to save Germany, because Germany is not an attractive destination. The only people who move to Germany are the ones who failed to get a VISA from an English speaking country, and even those will leave as soon as they gain enough experience to reapply for a VISA. The only way forward is for Germany to really invest in its own population and to retain them by giving them attractive enough opportunities.

  But how do you accomplish this? Where do you get the money from? Nobody wants to invest in Germany, not even the Germans themselves. So the government tries to jump start investment, but the government is both incompetent and corrupt, so for example the German government bet on Quantum Computing instead of AI. Now the government in investing in AI, but instead of investing in LLMs they are investing in "AI for science" projects, 99% of which are complete deadends. Actually this is a sort of theme. The government funded startups are always doing some sort of "science" based product. For some reason this appeals to the founding agencies because science sounds like a solid investment. But most of these startups are either attacking a problem that is way too improbably of yielding any results, or they are projects that sound good to the uninitiated but are actually fundamentally flawed when you actually dig deep into them (like a lot of AI for science crap).

  I think, if there is a way forward, it's for the government to stop trying to be a startup accelerator. They are too incompetent and corrupt for that. Instead, it should be a mediator between foreign investors and local talent. Make it attractive to build in Germany and use local talent to do that. And make sure the local talent gets competitively compensated so they do not emigrate.

• by hlynurd on 1/23/25, 11:31 AM

  >What many people don't know: The current boom in "Generative AI" using artificial neural networks has its roots in the early nineties at the Technical University of Munich, especially the "G" and the "P" and the "T" in "ChatGPT." At that time, we published "Artificial Curiosity" through what's now called "Generative Adversarial Networks" (1990, now widely used),

  You_again with this_again

• by lnsru on 1/23/25, 11:24 AM

  There will be no all-purpose robots in Germany. Lilium and Volocopter stories (both VTOL aircraft startups who run out of money) show how innovation works in Germany. Getting early stage hardware startup funded in Germany is absolutely mission impossible. Where the company in US would be raising series B round… the same company in Germany would get 50000€ from couple angel investors for 30% shares. Another source of innovation might be some university. But these are too occupied with grant hunt and crazy science, that nothing practical may come out. These all rants, but also backed up by personal experience. Plus as other commenters mentioned - software development is just not a competency in Germany. And software eats the world.

• by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 1/23/25, 5:11 PM

  Top comment: "They are too incompetent and corrupt for that."

  https://www.transparency.org/en/news/cpi-2023-highlights-ins...

  Measuring corruption versus measuring perception of corruption. The former requires evidence of corruption.

• by heisenberg1 on 1/23/25, 11:36 AM

  The basic problem is obvious, no company in Germany would pay a fresh PhD more than 150k, even 100k would be extremely. So AI talent leaves. But this is not the whole story, the bureaucracy, regulation and so on are insane. Then you have high taxes, and especially everyone wants to tax the rich. The rich are too rich in Germany. So why should Germany try to make them richer lol?

• by anonymousDan on 1/23/25, 9:13 AM

  Wow, given his attitudes to unemployed immigrants I can't imagine he'll have much sympathy for the people whose jobs the robots will replace. Nonetheless good article, I think he is right that it is an opportunity for Germany.

• by yuboyt on 1/23/25, 9:17 AM

  "huge opportunity in German mechanical engineering". Ha. He should compare a modern German car, with their 2-3 year warranty, to a modern chinese car such as BYD, with their 8 year warranty.

• by geor9e on 1/23/25, 5:11 PM

  I can't help but think a robot smart enough for all-purpose use would turn their spare cycle thoughts towards engineering a special-purpose butter passing machine to automate their work.

• by ozy on 1/23/25, 11:20 AM

  Why do statistics like GDP in absolute numbers?

  The only thing that graph shows is that China was dirt poor in 1995, and is now still only at 25-35% of USA levels.

• by jwjameson on 1/23/25, 6:04 PM

  No - (skin-like) sensors and (muscle-like) actuators are still not up to the task.

• by kleiba on 1/23/25, 9:38 AM

  The right-wing narrative scattered throughout this article is irritating.

  It's also a bit laughable that Germany could stand a realistic chance to top the world's intelligent robot production - as long as we're talking about general-purpose and hence likely humanoid robots. As far as I'm aware, Germany has no history in building such robots while companies from other countries, both Asian and US, have a big head-start.

  This article reads more like a more or less desperate sounding attempt to somehow save Germany's former manufacturing glory in the 21st century. Alas, without first class AI software, this isn't going to happen, and in that respect, Germany is more or less irrelevant.

  His description of how German politicians have time and again failed to recognize realities and act accordingly seems spot-on, however.

• by mertbio on 1/23/25, 9:27 AM

  The issue in Germany is that most companies don't take software seriously. They often outsource their software to freelancers or establish offshore offices in EU countries that pay less for software engineers compared to Germany or simply hire agencies. For instance, consider Volkswagen’s struggles with its EV transition. Despite this, they ultimately decided to invest in Rivian to leverage their software.

  To create all-purpose robots, we must prioritize both mechanical expertise and software development. However, this mindset problem exists at the top level of management, where senior executives fail to recognize the significance of software, despite the presence of highly skilled software engineers in the country.

  Notably, SAP stands out as the only German company that takes software seriously, and it holds the distinction as the largest public company in Germany.