Lugh

joined 2 years ago
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[–] Lugh 1 points 2 hours ago

I wonder how soon the day will be that we discover evidence of oxygen on an exoplanet? It would be a very strong indicator of carbon-based life.

 

For some time people have spoken of the concept of sovereign AI. Sovereign AI refers to a government's or organization's control over AI technologies and associated data. At the start of 2025 such an idea isn't just talk any more. It's rapidly happening.

It's most obvious in Europe. Just as the US gears up to become more autocratic, the EU has passed laws to ban the AI that enables it. This week the bloc banned AI it deems 'unacceptable risk'. Among other things, it bans AI that manipulates and deceives, targets minorities, allows biometric profiling, or predictive policing. Almost everything on the list is something American Big Tech is doing with the encouragement of the current administration. To make the point clearer, the EU is building its own AI for European governments, institutions and civil service to use.

China is building AI the equal of any, and in the case of DeepSeek, perhaps the best there is. Not only that, they are Open-Sourcing it. There's no reason to think they will slow down. In fact, China may accelerate in AI; they have a huge trove of public data to use for training that the Chinese government has recently decided to make available for the first time. China is many countries in South America and Africa's main trade and technology partner. Where that is the case they may be its main AI source too.

American Big Tech has historically been used to dominating globally, but there are all the signs that it isn't going to happen with AI.

 

Amazon's plans

Figure's plans

Their plans are separate, but what is significant is that they are just two companies, and the raw numbers can be so huge.

Amazon expects to soon save $10 billion a year replacing humans with robots. Amazon currently employs 1.1 million in the US. If we take the average cost of each as $50K - that's 200,000 jobs. Figure is talking about 100,000 robots.

For now, this issue is still relatively politically muted. But for how much longer?

[–] Lugh 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wow, looks like I was just ahead of the actual news .....

Boeing to Lay Off About 400 Workers on Moon Rocket Program

[–] Lugh 4 points 3 days ago

then we’ll have AI’s trying to scam AI’s…

In a bizarre sort of way this might help AI evolution. With each back and forth, as the scamming and anti-scamming AIs develop themselves, the cleverness they develop may have other wider applications ....

[–] Lugh 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I've always thought it is far more likely robotaxis will be commoditised by cheap Chinese manufacturing. The problem for Silicon Valley and American tech, is that they can only see everything through the idea of building megacorp unicorns that dominate 90% of a market. Is never seemed likely that software brands like Uber could do this.

[–] Lugh 8 points 3 days ago (6 children)

The US has voted for someone who likes to govern via chaos. We've seen it since they took office, and we can assume that is how the next 4 years, and maybe longer will be.

Chaos has consequences, and one area that may soon be felt is space exploration. With regard to the Moon, there's currently two large-scale efforts. NASA's Artemis program, and China's plans to build an International Lunar Research Station at the Moon's south pole. As Elon Musk is now the de facto leader of America's space exploration, is it his plans that will take precedence? He says the Artemis program is a waste of time and the US should focus on going to Mars instead.

All of this has consequences - US partner space agencies from Europe, Japan and Canada are all spending billions on their parts of the Artemis program. Is there any point any more? What alternatives do they have, for not just lunar exploration, but replacing the aging International Space Station.

One thing seems likely, they won't want to spend billions of their taxpayer's money on chaos.

[–] Lugh 6 points 3 days ago

Some people think large industrialized countries being 100% renewables is impossible, but Germany will soon prove that wrong. There's also the idea among some that solar can't be effective at more northern latitudes - wrong again. Solar is cheap and powerful enough to work fine in Northern Europe, it just takes a building a bit more of it than you would in sunny climates.

Germany's switch is being helped by the widespread adoption of cheap home solar. It's cheap not just because the price of solar panels has decreased by 90% in the last ten years, but systems are being sold now you can install yourself, without the cost of qualified installers.

Furthermore, almost two thirds of Germans plan to have a home solar system by 2029. Does this point to a future around the world where most people have some decentralized home electricity generation capacity?

[–] Lugh 12 points 4 days ago

People often talk about the profound first-mover advantages that might come to a nation that first develops AGI, but what about the one who develops workable fusion power first?

We are already seeing the decay of the fossil fuel age, and all the economic and political structures that go with it. The creation of fusion power would speed that up. China seems to be in a positive-feedback loop, where being the world's biggest industrial and manufacturing power is making it the technological leader too. A fusion power breakthrough might be a shot in the arm for that process.

 

If this is paywalled for you, here's the text.

Images from space reveal an enormous X-shaped building rising up from rocky terrain in southwestern China. This is a huge nuclear fusion research facility, analysts say, and it could be a sign China is leaping ahead in the quest to harness this futuristic energy source.

It could also mean they are amping up nuclear weapons development.

Decker Eveleth, an analyst at US-based research organization the CNA Corporation, has been among those watching this facility for years. In 2020, a US official released images purporting to show various potential Chinese nuclear locations, including the site near Mianyang in Sichuan province.

At this point, it was basically “a patch of dirt,” Eveleth told CNN. But after Covid shutdowns were lifted, construction accelerated. The project is described as a “laser fusion” facility in contract documents obtained by Eveleth and seen by CNN.

If the facility is indeed a laser facility, it will offer a unique way of studying materials in extreme conditions. It allows scientists to create “pressures that are typically found in the center of stars or in nuclear weapons,” said Brian Appelbe, a research fellow from the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London.

Eveleth says the four giant arms shown in the satellite image are “bays” which will be able to shoot lasers at the tall, central tower, which houses a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes. The laser energy fuses the hydrogen together to create a burst of energy in a process called ignition.

Nuclear fusion offers the tantalizing prospect of abundant, clean energy without the long-lived radioactive waste problem of nuclear fission, the world’s current nuclear energy technology. Countries and companies across the world are in a race to master it.

The US has long been a leader. The National Ignition Facility in California, which also uses laser-ignition technology, made a huge fusion energy breakthrough in 2022. In a world first, NIF scientists achieved a successful nuclear fusion reaction with a net energy gain (although they didn’t count the energy needed to power the lasers).

It was a big step forward in the decades-long quest to recreate on Earth the reaction which powers the sun and other stars. But this new facility in China could be a sign China is starting to to edge ahead.

“It signals that they are serious about fusion” said Melanie Windridge, CEO of Fusion Energy Insights, an industry monitoring organization. “They are being decisive, moving quickly and getting things done.”

Eveleth estimates China’s Mianyang research center will be around 50% bigger than the United States’ NIF and, once completed, likely the biggest facility of its kind in the world.

Its size could have advantages. A larger laser allows higher pressures and more material can be compressed, potentially increasing the energy achieved from nuclear fusion experiments, Appelbe told CNN. Although, he cautioned, achieving a successful fusion experiment is “extremely challenging” even with a very large laser.

CNN contacted China’s Ministries of National Defense and of Science and Technology for comment but had not heard back at the time of publication.

Experts say the facility also gives China the ability to research nuclear weapons.

China and the US are both parties to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits nuclear explosions.

The level of energy unleashed by nuclear weapons is very difficult to simulate with computers and other conventional methods. This is where laser-ignition fusion facilities can help, Eveleth said. They can shine high-powered lasers onto various materials to simulate the conditions in the first few microseconds after a nuclear explosion.

“Any country with an NIF-type facility can and probably will be increasing their confidence and improving existing weapons designs,” William Alberque, a nuclear policy analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Centre, told Reuters.

A positive interpretation of the facility is that it provides reassurance China isn’t planning any explosive nuclear testing, Eveleth said. But, he added, it could also allow them to develop more sophisticated designs, including smaller nuclear weapons.

Some experts believe the Mianyang site may end being a different kind of fusion facility, a hybrid of fusion and fission.

“If this proves to be true, it is particularly alarming,” said Andrew Holland, chief executive of the Fusion Industry Association. This would be homegrown Chinese tech and “likely more powerful than anything of that type in Western countries.”

Regardless, the facility “is clearly part of an ambitious program,” Holland told CNN.

The US is still ahead in the fusion race for now, he added, but “China is moving fast” and has shown it can move from concept to completion much faster than any government programs.

“It is time to build, it is time to invest,” Holland said. “If the US and its allies do not, then China will win this race.”

[–] Lugh 1 points 4 days ago (4 children)

The depressing reality is there are so many ways this could be happening. Is it unaccounted for methane in melting permafrost? Is it the fact carbon dioxide emissions are still increasing, thanks to India and China. Or perhaps some feedback mechanism we don't know about?

[–] Lugh 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Considering how more damaging it is, I wonder does the world have a handle on how much methane is being released? Especially from thawing permafrost land. Climate change keeps seeming to happen quicker than we expect.

[–] Lugh 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

It is confusingly written, though my interpretation of this is that they are talking about a future variant of Ariane 6. I could be wrong, there are plans for something called Ariane Next in the 2030s, that will also be fully reusable, but this sounds like they intend it to happen this decade for the upper stage at least.

[–] Lugh 3 points 5 days ago

As with everything European there's a bewildering number of acronyms, national, and pan-national agencies involved. The French space agency CNES is leading this, though all ESA member states pool resources, and the Ariane rockets.

Confusingly, there is another ESA reusable rocket initiative centered around building a brand new rocket with a new type of engine, though it doesn't start launch testing until 2026.

Europe is behind the US and China on reusable rockets, but its space program will benefit from the world's move towards protectionist economic policies. It has always been helped by the 'buy European' policies of European governments, & geo-political changes make this approach likely to become stronger.

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