Comment on Surely they yearn for the mines
Bluewing@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It’s pretty simple:
Robots are very expensive. And ones that could do this type of work cost even more. Nor are they smart enough to be able to reason ahead and envision danger. So they would get crushed in cave ins a lot.
Human males, and yes its vastly men that do mining, are cheap and in plentiful supply. They can do at least some rudimentary reasoning and will get crushed less often. And if you lose a few, well they are easily and cheaply replaced. Making them far more profitable to use.
As an aside, companies are designing and building robotic construction equipment these days. It’s just that none of you hang around with such “dirty trades”.
CalypsoGirl@lemmy.today 6 days ago
First you say it can’t be done because it’s too complicated & expensive. Then you say it’s already being done. So which is it?
Alligator@lemmy.world 6 days ago
OP is a robot who is desperately coming up with excuses to avoid being sent to the mines
Bluewing@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I never said it couldn’t be done. Just that it’s really expensive and very complicated, (that’s the whole looking ahead and reasoning the dangers - AI robots are not yet that capable), vs the cost of human life.
What IS being done is above ground human supervised robotics doing VERY simple tasks. Because that’s all they can do right now. But it’s an expensive buy in vs cheap human labor so you don’t see it much.
As I said, none of you here get your hands that dirty with that type of work. You just complain from afar.
NihilSineNefas@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It can’t be done by every company/can’t be done en masse at an economically viable cost.
But it can, and is, done in smaller cases.
These things aren’t mutually exclusive