Reasons Robotics Is Hard

While AI has made significant progress in knowledge work, physical robotics remains largely confined to controlled demo environments with no widely accessible equivalent to ChatGPT. Demo videos are unreliable indicators of actual progress, often showing cherry-picked successful attempts from carefully arranged scenarios, making it difficult to assess how close robots are to performing broadly capable physical labor. The author outlines multiple technical challenges that humanoid robots must overcome to become practical artificial workers, beyond what current demos typically showcase.