Futurology

If you tend towards conspiracy theory-type thinking, you might wonder if the Chinese government is directing its AI sector to use open-source AI to undermine US AI efforts. If they aren't, is it just a coincidence that this is what is happening?

Two things seem inevitable to me if the trend of Chinese open-source AI equalling Western efforts keeps up. A) - It will eventually bankrupt the Western AI companies and their investors, as the hundreds of billions poured into them will never be realized in profits. B) The 21st century will be built on Chinese AI, as it will be what most of the world uses.

The former seems more dramatic in the short term, but the latter is what will be more significant in the long term.

Moonshot AI just released Kimi K2: China is not so behind in Agentic AI either it would seem.

The new law will allow consumers to install solar in their homes without the need to connect to the grid; however, more needs to be done.

"Regulations and standards governing electrical devices haven’t kept pace with the development of the technology, and they lack essential approvals required for adoption, including compliance with the National Electrical Code and a product safety standard from Underwriters Laboratories. Nothing about the bill Ward wrote changes that."

The fossil fuel industry has the current US administration in its pocket. Once they see they have leverage with national requirements like this, expect them to exploit the situation with delays and blocking tactics.

But it will only work for so long. They can't hide what is happening in the rest of the world, and more and more Americans will be wondering why they can't have the cheap energy everyone else is enjoying.

Balcony solar took off in Germany. Why not the US?

China operates the world's only commercial maglev train. It connects Shanghai Airport and the city center, and reaches top speeds of 430 km/h. China is also testing a near-vacuum-tube train which claims it may achieve speeds of up to 1,000 km/h in the future.

Interestingly this project aims to demonstrate 800 km/h later in 2025. That speed is almost as fast as the cruising speed of commercial airliners.

Will it need special rail tracks? This is the Japanese test maglev train passing people at 500 km/hr.

400 mph in 7 seconds: China’s maglev breaks speed barriers with new record

If you thought the idea of a 100% human-free Ship-Store logistics network was some far-off sci-fi future, think again. It's almost here.

Several ports around the world are almost fully automated with minimal human intervention. Shanghai, Busan (South Korea), and Rotterdam in particular. Fully self-driving trucks that can do highway journeys are a thing too. Now robots have mastered unloading the trucks. Warehouse operations are moving closer to being human-free too.

What's left for humans? Self-driving is still at Level 4, and Level 5 is some way off. That means robo-vehicles can master predetermined routes they are trained on. But more and more they will get trained on highway exit-warehouse and highway exit-store routes. Even with just Level 4 driving this could be almost fully automated.

This all brings closer the day topics like Universal Basic Income go mainstream.

The Holy Grail of Automation: Now a Robot Can Unload a Truck

There are still some people who haven't realized just how fast and vast the global switch to renewables is. If you're one of them, this statistic should put it in perspective. China installed 93 GW of solar capacity in May 2025. Put another way, that's about 30 nuclear power stations worth of electricity capacity. All this cheap renewable energy will power China's industrial might in AI & robotics too. Meanwhile western countries look increasingly dazed, confused, and out of date.

China breaks more records with surge in solar and wind power