I’m not saying we’ll never have a mechanical man/robot pal. I’m saying that when we develop a computer system that has “an intelligence mirroring a human in most respects”, stuffing that system onto a chassis shaped like a human being is going to be the least useful thing you could do with it. So when we create a human-like intelligence, the only reason to make that human-like intelligence control a human-like mechanical body is for fun, to make a cool toy that’s fun to play with.
Putting a bunch of humanoid robots to work on an assembly line to replace the human workers is the sort of nonsense that will never happen. We already have nearly fully automated production lines, and none of the robotic assembly machines look anything like a mechanical man. We already have a robot that can vacuum your floor, and it doesn’t look anything like a mechanical woman who can hold a vacuum cleaner, it looks like a vacuum cleaner that runs itself.
The basic idea of the 50s-style mechanical man is that a robot like that could just slip into our already existing human infrastructure, literally taking the place of a human being and using our existing tools and machines and buildings and infrastruce in the same way existing human beings did. And the idea was, it would be a lot easier to build a general-purpose robotic brain and humanoid body that could operate any existing human tool than it would be to completely rebuild everything we own from scratch.
Except it turns out that building a robotic brain that’s pretty much like a hu-mon brain only without the contractions and emotions is really really hard. It’s much easier to build a system that can navigate around a human living room and cover everything than it is to build a robot brain that can figure out how to operate a human vacuum cleaner. It’s a lot easier to build a little cart on wheels that scoots around than it is to build a bipedal walking robot. It’s a lot easier to to put self-powered wheels on a vacuum cleaner than it is to build a robot hand that can grasp and manipulate a vacuum cleaner designed for human beings.
And so, if your desire is to have clean floors and you don’t want to vacuum them yourself, we already have a robot that can do that for you, and they’re not that expensive. But it has nothing like a brain that is similar to a hu-mon brain. It has a very simple suite of sensors that process input in a very simple way, compared to the complex system of vision and hearing and touch and proprioception that a human has. It has a dedicated built-in vacuuming system rather than something that is supposed to clamp on to an existing vacuum and use it.
And our ability to make effective single purpose machines of this sort is growing rapidly, while our ability to make hu-mon brain equivalent systems is going nowhere, and our ability to make robust bipedal walkers is going nearly nowhere, our ability to make robotic hands that work the same way and have the same flexibility as a human hand is going nearly nowhere.
We’re going to have cars that drive themselves long before we have mechanical men who can sit in the driver’s seat of a conventional car and drive it. We already have planes that fly themselves, are we going to replace those with mechanical men that sit in the pilot’s seat of conventional planes? For every application you can imagine a mechanical man taking the literal place of a human being and accomplishing pretty much the same task in the same way that a human being would, I can imagine a simpler and cheaper way to accomplish the same task in a better way by purpose-built automated systems.
To take one example, we often saw in 50s-style science fiction a robot cook, who would walk into the kitchen, pull out the ingredients, and whip up the food. Of course it would always be Mom who pushed the “make dinner” button on the robot, some things never change amirite? Except we already mostly have the technology to deliver the sort of meals that this robot was supposed to create. Why buy all the raw ingredients and stock your own kitchen and have the robot prepare it all when you can just call the take out place and have them deliver the food in 30 minutes? Or buy the meals already assembled and just microwave them when you’re hungry? It might seem to you to not be the same thing, but it really is. The goal is: I’m hungry, I want dinner, but I don’t want to make it myself. There are plenty of ways to accomplish this goal, but building a humanoid robot to stand in my kitchen and make everything is just about the least efficient method imaginable.
Same with washing the dishes. We already have machines that wash dishes, they’re in just about every home. We also have cheap methods for never really having to wash dishes in the first place, they’re called paper plates, or eating prepared food from a restaurant. If eating off of paper plates doesn’t seem much like a humanoid robot with a scrub-brush in its hand, that’s exactly correct. But throwing away your dishes instead of washing them is an already existing cheap solution to the problem of not wanting to wash dishes, and that humanoid robot is again the least efficient method imaginable.
If you want a robot pal then a humanoid robot with a humanlike brain makes sense. This is what I meant when I said such a system would be a toy. But if we can build a robot pal then we’re already living in a world where non-humanoid automated systems and embedded robotics accomplish almost all work that formerly required human beings.