Ek Akela Thak Jaayega...
sathi hath badhana sathi re, sathi hath badhana sathi re
sathi hath badhana sathi re, sathi hath badhana sathi re
sathi hath badhana, sathi hath badhana
ek akela thak jayega mil kar bojh uthana
sathi hath badhana, sathi hath badhana
ek akela thak jayega mil kar bojh uthana
sathi hath badhana, sathi hath badhana
sathi hath badhana sathi re, sathi hath badhana sathi re
sathi hath badhana sathi re
Listen up, children. Long, long ago, there used to be an industry called Bollywood. It used to churn out movies, and humans would go watch these movies in things called theaters. For those of us who got to experience this, it was a very cool thing.
These movies used to have things called songs, and the excerpt above is a part of a song called Saathi Haath Badhana (Compatriot, Give Me A Helping Hand*)
"Mil kar bojh uthana"
That line means let's pick up the load together.
So here's an interesting question for you - if your saathi were to be a robot, how much of the load could you pick up with your hands, and how much would the robot pick up with its hands?
Human hands are very strong while being capable of complex and precise motions, and it’s difficult to match this with a robot hand. Robot hands are often surprisingly weak. An average man has enough grip strength to lift 40 kg or more off the ground (20 kg in each hand), and a strong man can lift upwards of 100 kg. By contrast, NASA’s Robonaut 2 hand had a payload capacity of 9 kilograms, and the Shadow dexterous hand (billed as the “most advanced 5-fingered robotic hand in the world”) has a payload capacity of just 4 kilograms.
And that's just the capacity to pick up weight. There's also cost considerations, and dexterity concerns - please do read the whole thing, as usual. There are many reasons to read this post carefully, not the least of which is the fact that if you think AI is awesome as an LLM on your computer, wait until you see what the next five years are going to bring forth in terms of robotics.
But the most interesting thing in this post, for me, was the list of 21 dexterously difficult tasks (for robots, that is):
Put on a pair of latex gloves
Tie two pieces of string together in a tight knot, then untie the knot
Turn to a specific page in a book
Pull a specific object, and only that object, out of a pocket in a pair of jeans
Bait a fishhook with a worm
Open a childproof medicine bottle, and pour out two (and only two) pills
Make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, starting with an unopened bag of bread and unopened jars of peanut butter and jelly
Act as the dealer in a poker game (shuffling the cards, dealing them out, gathering them back up when the hand is over)
Assemble a mechanical watch
Peel a piece of scotch tape off of something
Braid hair
Roll a small lump of playdough into three smaller balls
Peel an orange
Score a point in ladder golf
Replace an electrical outlet in a wall with a new one
Do a cat's cradle with a yo-yo
Put together a plastic model, including removing the parts from the plastic runners
Squeeze a small amount of toothpaste onto a toothbrush from a mostly empty tube
Start a new roll of toilet paper without ripping the first sheet
Open a ziplock bag of rice, pull out a single grain, then reseal the bag
Put on a necklace with a clasp
I'd personally add "peeling garlic" to the list, but that's not the main point I want to make. The main point I want to make is this:
Set a calendar appointment for one, two and three years from now, and revisit this post. And try and see for yourself how many of these dexterously difficult tasks have fallen by the wayside.
My bet is that about twenty-five percent of these will be knocked off in one year, over half within two, and the entirety of the list will have been subjugated in three years.
What say you?
*Close enough, go with it for now