Humanoid robots aren’t shaped like us as some vanity project. Rather, they are, (and should be) shaped like us because our whole built environment, (the world), reflects the concepts, tools and interfaces we humans already use.
Everything we’ve ever built is all designed around the human form so a robot with arms, legs, and hands won’t need an entire new world built for it in order to function, even if, intuitively, it might seem that designing some new robotic tool for a specific task might seem the obvious way to innovate.
A humanoid device can just step into our world already prepped (or trained) to navigate and function in our world.
And, until AI based systems complete the inevitable task of diluting and bastardising our, previously, precious 5 million years of upright ape problem solving, ingenuity and genius, (soon to be replaced with some emotional-less generic cerebral equivalent bereft of the wondrous spirit of humanity), we will appreciate the human like form of our usurping non living new friends because, until we are replaced entirely, we will be able to ‘read’ the body language and actions of these things without needing translation.
And, with the cost of really cheap humanoid machines falling below $10,000 (or even $5000) per unit, (and one day becoming as cheap as a mid priced bicycle), assuming there is still a place for a human to exist in the future we are pirouetting into, we’ll have human like machines and devices capable of delivering 3 human ‘work shifts’ a day and many industrial and agricultural concerns will thrive and grow in ways that we, today, cannot even imagine or comprehend.
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