Futurology

Here's the robots in action.

I wonder how far away we are from humanoid robots that can perform most unskilled or semi-skilled work? Cleaning, factory work, stacking shelves etc etc

When you look at this it doesn't seem that far away.

I would also guess that if Chinese manufacturers can make and sell hatchback cars for 10,000 dollars they will be able to make robots like this for less.

When that day comes, we will very quickly have a new type of society and economy, though who knows what that will look like.

https://archive.is/yDSct

More and more it looks like the Western world's embrace of neoliberalism was a catastrophic mistake. Its guiding principle is that capital and the markets are always right, and governments/the people should have no say in what they do. After decades of this, manufacturing and industry have fled to where capital & the markets can get the cheapest labor, leaving most Western countries hollowed out and deindustrialized.

COVID exposed a fresh weakness in this model of organizing economies, but now there's yet another disadvantage coming to light. By making China the world's manufacturing HQ, it is handing it the crown of the planet's No 1 in technology.

By rapidly becoming the world's leading car maker, China is in gear to become the world's leading robotics nation. Add to that, it's also arguably already the world's leading AI nation.

Some people in Western countries see this in terms of wars and arms races, but maybe the solution is to look within at home and dump neoliberalism?

We're getting closer to making SeaQuest DSV a reality.

US Big Tech wants to eliminate the federal government administered by humans, and replace it with AI. Amid all the talk that has generated one aspect has gone relatively unreported. None of the AI they want to replace the humans with actually works.

AI is still plagued by widespread simple and basic errors in reasoning. Furthermore, there is no path to fixing this problem. Tinkering with training data has provided some improvements, but it has not fixed the fundamental problem. AI lacks the ability to independently reason.

'Move fast and break things' has always been a Silicon Valley mantra. It seems increasingly that is the way the basic functions of administering the US state will be run too.

What is more important on the path to AGI - scaling and more training data, or fundamental breakthroughs in AI software developed by humans?

Many people believe it is the former, though Deepseek itself arose from the latter.

If training data is to be significant then Tencent may have given itself a huge boost. WeChat is the biggest and most used app on the planet. The Google suite of products is the only thing comparable in western countries. However, Western countries are starting to split into AI walled gardens, so Google won't be able to take full advantage of all its users.

It may not matter. Some people believe scaling alone won't be enough to get to AGI. Some smart humans somewhere will need to figure out breakthroughs in AI software - and that could happen anywhere.