overview for Lugh

The US export controls aimed at limiting Chinese AI development are struggling. China's latest AI reasoning models perform well on older, domestically produced GPU chips, with scale being more critical than chip advancement. China is also progressing toward parity in advanced chip production.

These controls have driven Chinese innovation, leading to models like Deepseek, now considered among the world's best. A significant shift is China's embrace of open-source AI models, expanding its talent pool and offering a strategic edge. In contrast, US efforts rely heavily on private investment, betting on future tech "unicorns" to generate massive profits.

In early 2025 another profound global shift favors Open-Source over US tech. As the US disengages from NATO to side with Russia, Europeans are left scrambling to replace reliance on US technology. They, and much of the rest of the world, are now much less likely to adopt new US technology, as it will be seen as adversarial and a security threat.

A couple of years ago the story of Open-Source AI was just a curiosity to be remarked on, perhaps it is about to take the main stage.

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Radioprotection of healthy tissue via nanoparticle-delivered mRNA encoding for a damage-suppressor protein found in tardigrades (www.nature.com)

submitted 4 months ago by Lugh to c/futurology

1 comments fedilink

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Roche unveils novel sequencing by expansion technology (www.pathologyinpractice.com)

submitted 4 months ago by Lugh to c/futurology

0 comments fedilink

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Insilico Deployed the First Bipedal Humanoid at the AI-Powered Fully-Robotic Lab (youtu.be)

submitted 4 months ago by Lugh to c/futurology_youtube

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At UC San Francisco, researchers have successfully enabled a paralyzed patient to control a robotic arm using only their thoughts, thanks to a newly developed brain-computer interface (BCI). (www.eurekalert.org)

submitted 4 months ago by Lugh to c/futurology

1 comments fedilink

Prediction - Luigi Mangione, the arrested UnitedHealth shooting suspect, is about to become an American folk hero and nexus for violent discontent? in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I know some people don't like political/societal discussions about the future, but paradoxically ignoring this aspect of the future is being political too. I can never separate the technological from the political, so my way of thinking about both is always connected.

Prediction - Luigi Mangione, the arrested UnitedHealth shooting suspect, is about to become an American folk hero and nexus for violent discontent? in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I don't spend much time at the DailyMail site, I find its worldview depressing and ugly, but I sometimes check out the comments as a proxy for right-wing thought among everyday people. Its striking how supportive the comments there are for this guy, and what he's done.

It's another way this moment reminds of the French Revolution. The Trump/Musk brigade has sold their victory as a revolutionary victory for the alt-right, yet revolutions have a habit of spawning further revolution, that the original people lose control of.

Worth noting, the DM comments section is reliably and rabidly pro-MAGA on everything, yet here they are supporting this guy's violent revolutionary actions.

Mercedes-Benz says its testing solar power generating vehicle-paint that could coat vehicles, and generate 100% of their power requirements in sunny cities like Los Angeles. in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Without doing the math, that means they’ve broken several barriers in solar panel development,

I'm borrowing this from elsewhere, but someone has done the math and says it works out.

The typical daily driven distance is only around 50 km or 30 miles, EV consumption is around 4 mpkWh so that's sound 7.5 kWh to recover in LA it's 9 hours average sunshine per day. So we need to collect solar energy at a rate of 830 W.

At 25% it's 3.4 kW solar radiation.

Solar intensity in LA is only around 300 W/m2

So you need 11 m2 coverage.

Mercedes-Benz says its testing solar power generating vehicle-paint that could coat vehicles, and generate 100% of their power requirements in sunny cities like Los Angeles. in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The paint thickness they reference here is 5 micrometers, a tenth of the thickness of human hair. If covering a car with this is enough to power an average day's journey in sunny climates, why not paint everything with it? Buildings, garden walls, etc?

Our near future lives may be both energy rich and energy independent. As the meme says, 'Petro-states hate this one simple trick …'

AGI Alignment – Cosmic vs Anthropocentric in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I'd guess people will make many different variants of AGI. The evil sociopathic people (who always seem to rise to the top in human hierarchies) will certainly want an AGI in their image.

Over and over again human societies seem to fall to these people - the eternal battle between democracy and autocracy being one example.

Will we have competing/warring AGI's? Maybe we'll have to.

Waymo One will be expanding to Miami in c/avs

[–] Lugh 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It will be interesting to see how soon this spreads outside of the US and China. Globally, most other Level 4 efforts seem to be centered on buses and transit. Some European carmakers have the tech, but as yet seem uninterested in the taxi business. Knowing how Europe operates, many rules and regulations for this will ultimately be done at the EU level, though that doesn't stop any EU country going ahead with what it wants now.

Waymo One will be expanding to Miami in c/avs

[–] Lugh 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I wonder how many cities worldwide will have robotaxi services by the end of 2025.

How Singapore became the ideal testing ground for self-driving cars - The tiny country has embraced autonomous vehicles as a way to overcome labor shortages and use its scarce land more efficiently. in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The logic with taxis is that rather than everyone have an individual car, people use them as needed, so 1 car serves dozens of people.

China's plan to undermine western AI? Bleed its investor-funded efforts dry, by open-sourcing equal or better alternatives. in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 5 points 7 months ago

Open source model weights are a step towards public ownership over this new means of production.

I agree. People talk a lot about UBI. It makes sense in principle, but I wonder how about the political likelihood of making it happen.

Meanwhile, as you say, paradoxically Capitalism keeps making Marx's 'means of production' with AI and robotics more likely to be in wide and public ownership.

How Singapore became the ideal testing ground for self-driving cars - The tiny country has embraced autonomous vehicles as a way to overcome labor shortages and use its scarce land more efficiently. in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 2 points 7 months ago

Singapore's 6 million people live in an island country only 12 times bigger than Manhattan Island (which for contrast houses 1.6 million people). This makes them an ideal early-adopter for Level 4 self-driving vehicles. They work in geo-fenced areas that are well-mapped, which describes the entirety of this tiny country.

Level 4 robot-taxis, needing little human oversight, finally had their moment in 2024. Commercial services are now in operation in several US and Chinese cities. Their global expansion will be rapid from now on, and 2025 might mark the year they enter wider public consciousness.

Multiple LLMs voting together on content validation catch each other’s mistakes to achieve 95.6% accuracy. in c/futurology

[–] Lugh -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Large language models surpass human experts in predicting neuroscience results

A small study found ChatGPT outdid human physicians when assessing medical case histories, even when those doctors were using a chatbot.

Multiple LLMs voting together on content validation catch each other’s mistakes to achieve 95.6% accuracy. in c/futurology

[–] Lugh 3 points 7 months ago (5 children)

But a domain expert like a doctor or an accountant is way much more accurate

Actually, not so.

If the AI is trained on narrow data sets, then it beats humans. There's quite a few examples of this recently with different types of medical expertise.