You gotta get some of those soccer robots if they're going to realistically dropkick the shit out of the luggage.
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2026
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So the article referenced a "chronic labor shortage", but nobody can afford the little luxuries they afforded 10 year ago.
Have they tried just paying people more?
It's Japan. Labor force is shrinking because not enough kids
it is not just japan, whole world has the same problem. all developed countries have birth rate low below the clean reproduction rate and are slowly dying out.
I know. Japan isn't an exception, it's just early.
One of the economic reasons immigration is good.
that doesn't change anything long-term, since global fertility rate was 2,2 (in 2024) and keeps dropping...
Firstly governments should stop blocking immigration then.
Secondly billionaires have gotten richer globally and you can only get richer if you are making others poorer wether it's directly or by printing money.
Wages have also mostly not kept up with inflation that went nuts starting around Covid times. Some companies have been doing raises, but a lot haven't been able to keep up with inflation.
Humanoid robots are as dumb as a bag of hammers. It's like when the first automobiles looked like carriages because that's what everyone was used to.
The only practical reason to make a robot look like a person is so you can fuck it. That's it. Every other task can be performed better by removing human limitations and complexity.
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World is built for humans. In the near future it could be cheaper to use humanoids for some tasks than to rebuild the whole area for industrial robots.
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Humanoids are excellent for tasks that require human interaction.
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In the far future we could have humanoids that can handle multiple different tasks simultaneously, instead of purpose-built robots.
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Humanoids don't have human limitations. The joints can move inhumanly.
Sounds like they need to fix their immigration policies to attract new young labour
Eh, the Japanese really like their way of life. They don't want their culture to change. If they'd rather disappear from the face of the Earth than accepting foreigners, I think they're free to do so. Personally, as a Japanese-Canadian, I think it's stupid and they should at least allow dual citizenship so they'd get "immigrants" with actual ties to the country, but they don't even wanna do that. So fuck it, let them do their thing. It really isn't up to anyone else to say they "need" immigrants, imo.
That in any case. But honestly, I'm OK with this job being done by robots. It's hard, potentially dangerous work that isn't complicated/complex and that's exactly the kind of work we should strive to automate.
That the money saved probably doesn't end up where it should is a different issue.
That's a fair point
Every country will experience labor shortages at some point, it's unavoidable
But why? Labor productivity is thousands of times higher than before the industrial revolution, and keeps growing exponentially.
We actually should be able to provide all goods and services we need to live comfortably with very few people actually having to work.
But we need most of those people to do bullshit jobs, like spreadsheets and reports no one is going to ever read
But why? Labor productivity is thousands of times higher
because the increased productivity comes from using tools, and so they are introducing another tool to keep increasing the productivity.
The reason for their labor shortages is that they make it so hard to immigrate into their country.
This is a good use for AI if you ask me, since it is doing a Job no one would want to do in the first place.
Aside from being a circlejerk for the companies competing their bots, I've never understood why they use humanoid bots for most tasks. Are they all really that vain to believe the human body, a bipedal body, is the ideal for jobs like this.
In an infrastructure built for bipeds there may be advantages to such a design for flexibility of function. If this is truly a long term monotasker the only real advantage is PR / curb appeal.