Lugh

This will be a great way to channel vast sums of money from the American taxpayer to rich elites, for which the taxpayer will see little or nothing in return. Something the US public are about to see a lot more of.

While people usually focus on carbon neutrality, I often think decentralization is renewables' most underappreciated aspect. Everything it touches can happen at the home and community level. The Haber-Bosch process is the epitome of the 20th century large scale heavy industry model. Now here is a solution replacing it at the level of individual farms.

I suspect much of robotics will be decentralized too, and with that, they may decentralize automated manufacturing. In a few decades, it may seem quaint that people shipped so many things halfway around the world.

Now that the new US administration is about to gut AI regulations, this idea gets even worse.

He said it again a few days ago on a Reddit AMA.

Perhaps the most interesting comment from Altman was about the future of AGI - artificial general intelligence. Seen by many as the ‘real’ AI, this is an artificial intelligence model that could rival or even exceed human intelligence. Altman has previously declared that we could have AGI within "a few thousand days".

When asked by a Reddit user whether AGI is achievable with known hardware or it will take something entirely different, Altman replied: “We believe it is achievable with current hardware.”

https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-5-wont-be-coming-in-2025-according-to-sam-altman-but-superintelligence-is-achievable-with-todays-hardware

Why are they making it so needlessly complicated? They can just use existing highways and vehicles with Level 4 self-driving. They don't need new separate roads.

That said, this points to the future. Even if true Level 5 self-driving is several years off, there is plenty Level 4 can do now. That includes all cargo driving on highways. I doubt most trucker jobs have long to go. Some will say they are needed for last-mile delivery. Some companies are soon going to figure out a profitable system for having human drivers locally for that, but self-driving vehicles for the long stints on highways.

Will we see a day when manually driving a car is as illegal and socially unacceptable as driving drunk or without a seatbelt? I'd guess so. Tech like this will become standardized along the way to full Level 5 self-driving.

There's a whole demographic of people aged 80+ who face restrictions on their driving as they age further. I would expect Volkswagen and others to be marketing car software along these lines tailored to their needs and problems.

Why would people be eager to have a place like them joining the fedi?

If BlueSky were federated it would mean you could move to another server and keep the followers you built there. All the Big Tech offerings keep you locked in, and at risk of losing the work you put in at their whim.

Apart from getting funded by crypto-bros, BlueSky promised to allow federation, and hasn't. Seems any time VCs or talk of IPOs happens, the only way is down.

Most people seem to hate the idea of AI versions of dead celebrities, but I can't help but be a bit intrigued. I'm a fan of golden-age Hollywood movies from the 1930s to 1950s. Most of that era's stars are dead now, but I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before we see some of their likeness in 'new' versions of old movies. Some people may not like it, but where there are dollars to be made, things tend to happen.

What would 'Casablanca' be like with Spencer Tracy instead of Humphrey Bogart? 'Gone with the Wind' with Vivien Leigh swapped out for Bette Davis. Orson Welles always said his masterpiece would have been 'The Magnificent Ambersons', not 'Citizen Kane', if the former hadn't been destroyed by the studio in editing. Maybe his vision of it can be resurrected by AI versions of the actors recreating scenes from the original script.

"Of the world’s four largest greenhouse gas emitters the EU has made by far the most progress in slashing emissions. A report released last week by the UN Environment Programme calculated that EU emissions fell 7.5 percent last year -- compared to a 1.4-percent drop in the United States, and a jump of 5.2 and 6.1 percent respectively in China and India."

This is largely driven by swapping out coal for renewables, which means the EU is on track for its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. China and India have growing electricity demand, that even China with its vast renewables manufacturing capability, can't meet from renewables alone. There is talk in the EU about speeding up efforts to try to reach carbon neutrality sooner. Crucially, this can now be tied to a pro-economic growth agenda which will get more right-wing parties in the European Parliament on board.

Researchers have been trying to get robots to autonomously wipe tables and fold towels for years with only very limited success

Yes, this has been true up until now, but I think we are in a phase of rapid advancement. Look here at how DeepMind is using current LLM AI so that robots can train themselves - https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/shaping-the-future-of-advanced-robotics/

I would guess robots capable (perhaps messily at first) of general purpose skills like cleaning aren't far off.

The UBTECH one is definitely not as advanced as the Atlas one. But I would expect, like everything electronic, China will eventually have commoditized versions of robots that are functionally almost as good as more expensive ones, but much cheaper.

https://www.techeblog.com/unitree-g1-humanoid-robot-mass-production/