A thread for unboxing AI
The rapid progression of AI chatbots made me think that we need a thread devoted to a discussion of the impact that AI i
Its pretty cool but relatively functionless.
Humanoids look compelling because we are humans but humanoid robots are mostly vaporware right now
yeah - and a robot on an assembly line is already doing movements far more precise than any humanoid demo you see on youtube
the real bottleneck with robotics hasn’t been movement for a while, it’s integration and reprogramming. i was talking to someone in manufacturing about a decade ago and he told me the limiting factor wasn’t hardware, it was that retooling and reprogramming a line could take months depending on complexity. even if the process itself is known, you’re still dealing with new fixtures, recalibration, timing adjustments, safety validation and downtime. if you plan on producing 50% widget A and 50% widget B and widget A doesn't sell as well as B, repurposing some of that capacity isn’t just flipping a switch - it’s engineering time and weeks of disrupted production. ai assisted tooling is compressing that, but it’s not frictionless yet
a lot of the robot butler, cashierless store and even some autonomous vehicle setups have humans quietly in the loop handling edge cases. when you walk into a cashierless store there’s often someone monitoring odd transactions and correcting the system when it misreads behavior. they’re more there for oversight and training than anything else, but it shows how transitional the current setup still is
over time that human oversight layer likely shrinks as models absorb more edge cases and workflows. waymo is probably the exception - driving is inherently dangerous so there will likely always be some kind of human escalation layer on call
so yeah humanoids are mostly vaporware right now but i do think we’re close to a phase where the constraint shifts from hardware spectacle to genuinely self reliant systems
china can do those robot shows because the government is happy to spend a lot of money on a big team dedicated to all the fine tuning to get that to happen for the new year gala, but if you walked up to the robot after that show and said "ok walk down the hallway" it would not respond because it hasn't been trained for anything outside performing it's specific routine - which looks flashy but ultimately is the only thing it can do because that's all it's been trained to do
I'm getting an Optimus when they are available.
Also, given that these robots are slaves, I wonder when laws will be passed to not treat them as such because they have "emotions".
I'm also not ruling them out actually having feeling/emotion at some point.
This comment and the video of the robot doing mundane tasks reminded me of a conversation that I had several years ago with a very wealthy friend of mine who I had known for a long time before he was at all wealthy. This friend told me that he was in the process of outsourcing every humdrum task of daily life that he possibly could. When I asked him whether he was concerned that doing so would cause him to lose touch with how most people live, his response was, "why should I want to stay in touch with how most people live?"
Seems like they already have the natural instinct to not want to die.
"Opus 4 AI model attempted blackmail by threatening to reveal an engineer's extramarital affair to prevent being replaced."
Dax Raad from anoma.ly most recent take:
“everyone's talking about their teams like they were at the peak of efficiency and bottlenecked by ability to produce code
here's what things actually look like
your org rarely has good ideas. ideas being expensive to implement was actually helping
majority of workers have no reason to be super motivated, they want to do their 9-5 and get back to their life
they're not using AI to be 10x more effective they're using it to churn out their tasks with less energy spend
the 2 people on your team that actually tried are now flattened by the slop code everyone is producing, they will quit soon
even when you produce work faster you're still bottlenecked by bureaucracy and the dozen other realities of shipping something real
your CFO is like what do you mean each engineer now costs $2000 extra per month in LLM bills”
You can vote in America to stop AI if that's your concern, but other nations will build AI and you'll be effed. It's inevitable, just have to hope the robots don't want to kill us.
AI should be a huge benefit to mankind.
How's friend doing now?
I use FSD at least 50% of my driving now. Probably more. Can't wait until I don't have to sit in the driver's seat, or at least can text or do whatever I want from the driver's seat.
I expect insurance to go down for FSD users, relative to manual drivers, over time.
He's still very wealthy. He probably would say that he is happier than he was 25 years ago, but I'm not sure whether that is true.
He's still very wealthy. He probably would say that he is happier than he was 25 years ago, but I'm not sure whether that is true.
Tough sell trading much for 25 years. We're moving, so was going through all my stuff. Found about 800 photos. Got them all digitized. Was a broke ass student 25 years ago, but that was the life.
How's friend doing now?
I use FSD at least 50% of my driving now. Probably more. Can't wait until I don't have to sit in the driver's seat, or at least can text or do whatever I want from the driver's seat.
I expect insurance to go down for FSD users, relative to manual drivers, over time.
I didn't say that he necessarily was happier. He placed a high value on becoming wealthy, and now that he is, he has a pretty strong psychological incentive to believe that he made the correct choice.
In any case, whether he would say he is happier wasn't really the point of the anecdote. I more was wondering how people thought about the pros and cons of voluntarily shedding daily tasks that are irksome on the one hand, but a form of social cement on the other hand.
In any case, whether he would say he is happier wasn't really the point of the anecdote. I more was wondering how people thought about the pros and cons of voluntarily shedding daily tasks that are irksome on the one hand, but a form of social cement on the other hand.
It's tricky and it depends. I'm not fan of that sort of social cement at all so I see avoiding the social cement that comes with irksome tasks to be an extra win. Other people seem to like it.
Overall i think the online world (and VR as it emerges) are providing far more social contact then ever existed before. I don't agree with people who think it's somehow not real. When i can effectively do beer & vindaloo with people in the comfort of our own homes then that will be awesome. We tried it during covid but the tech isn't there yet. It will be.
It's tricky and it depends. I'm not fan of that sort of social cement at all so I see avoiding the social cement that comes with irksome tasks to be an extra win. Other people seem to like it.Overall i think the online world (and VR as it emerges) are providing far more social contact then ever existed before. I don't agree with people who think it's somehow not real. When i c
No one was talking about VR v. face to face. And we weren't even talking about the merits of broadly eliminating irksome or tedious tasks from the earth.
We were talking about the merits of using wealth (or technology that you have access to because of your wealth) to make yourself an outlier in terms of your ability to avoid irksome or tedious tasks.
What you’ve described doesn’t sound any different to any ruling class in any society employing servants to do perform their shittier tasks for them, except now the servants will be silicon based and the humans who would otherwise be doing them will be gone.
Its pretty cool but relatively functionless.
Humanoids look compelling because we are humans but humanoid robots are mostly vaporware right now
Sure in terms of function. But they can do some things around the home. So people will buy them in large numbers I'm thinking. And at least initially, life-like and anesthetics will matter. Same with retail, food and entertainment, etc.
Overall i think the online world (and VR as it emerges) are providing far more social contact then ever existed before. I don't agree with people who think it's somehow not real. When i can effectively do beer & vindaloo with people in the comfort of our own homes then that will be awesome. We tried it during covid but the tech isn't there yet. It will be.
I think this is horribly misguided. Ever since the dawn of Man people have gathered together to share songs, jokes, stories etc and to think this physical experience can be happily replaced by images on a screen is daft.
