Lugh

joined 2 years ago
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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?

 

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 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

*So, what exactly is this device? That remains one of the biggest questions. According to The Times, Ive and Altman have discussed how generative AI could revolutionize the way people interact with computers. Their vision is to create a device that can handle complex tasks far beyond the capabilities of traditional software. It’s rumored that last year’s discussions were inspired by touchscreen technology, potentially taking cues from the original iPhone.

I am simultaneously intrigued and mystified. I'm trying to figure out how a combination of a touchscreen and generated AI could be a revolutionary new advanced way to interact with software. I guess we will have to wait and see.

[–] Lugh 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think renewable energy's decentralized nature is one of its most underappreciated features. You could never imagine a local community building a conventional electricity plant, they are centralized and that is the job of government.

I suspect the future will have much more local decentralized projects of this nature. When you can have robots running factories without the need for humans, why not self-finance and build these at the community level too? It's entirely feasible, and many people will want to do such things. It's initiatives like this that make me doubt the future will be dystopian.

[–] Lugh 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Rough calculations suggest that, on current trends, adding 12 hours of storage to the entire US grid would cost around $500 billion and pay for itself within a few years. By contrast, upgrading the US transmission grid could cost $7 trillion over 20 years.

Counterintuitively, electricity cables under the North Atlantic might be much more economical. It would not have the eminent domain and construction complexities of upgrading the US continental land grid. If this cost estimate is accurate, it may be much cheaper.

Is it really much more secure though? Wouldn't one well-placed underwater bomb knock it out of action for weeks or months?

If security was your top priority, surely decentralized microgrids with widely dispersed battery grid storage would be much more effective?

[–] Lugh 5 points 1 year ago

Chinese companies often get accused of copying Western technology, so it's unusual to hear the CEO of such a major Western company bucking that assumption by calling on Western companies to copy China.

What Jim Farley is saying about cars is equally true about 21st century energy infrastructure. There is no doubt that China is the global leader in innovation there too.

Meanwhile in many Western countries, debate still centers around persuading some people that the energy transition to renewables is real and the age of fossil fuels can't end quickly enough. Hostility to renewables, EVs and the energy transition gives China the edge.

Next up we can expect China to race ahead in robotics.

[–] Lugh 3 points 1 year ago

If you are an optimist or even a glass-half-full kind of person, sometimes it can be hard to miss the good news among all the doom and gloom that social media promotes. The story of our energy transition to renewables is surely good news. Chiefly because it will help us alleviate climate change, but there is another under-reported and under-appreciated aspect of the energy transition.

As energy production becomes decentralized and in the hands of individuals and small communities it smashes the power of centralized top-heavy states, authoritarians, and autocrats.

Some people have nightmare visions of the future where humans are reduced to powerless serfs. However if you can live in a world where you can generate your own energy off-grid, and AI can provide for many of your other needs, perhaps with robotics helping with local and personal food production - then who the hell is going to want to be a serf-slave in some horrible Hollywood sci-fi dystopia that we know from movies?

[–] Lugh 3 points 1 year ago

Yes, it's an odd statement. The authors are all Harvard scientists, and I have checked what they post on Twitter, they aren't anti vaccine cranks. Though one of them, Al Ozonoff, does try to engage with such people. Perhaps this is a concession in a similar vein of outreach. The Hill is a conservative news website. Perhaps they felt they had to get their own dubious science a mention, and that was the price of publication for the Harvard scientists?

[–] Lugh 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I agree, to me one of the most frustrating aspects of much online discussion of AI is that it focuses on trivial chatter and nonsense. In particular boring fanboyism when it comes to the likes of Musk or OpenAI. Meanwhile the truly Earth shattering long-term events are happening elsewhere, and this is one example of them. Halving unexpected deaths in hospital settings is such a huge thing and yet it goes barely reported, in comparison to the brain-dead ra-ra Silicon Valley gossip that passes for most discussion about AI.

[–] Lugh 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As ever he has got so many interesting things to say. He makes a connection here between the first two centuries after the introduction of the printing press in Europe, and how artificial intelligence is due to affect us very soon. Contrary to the optimistic interpretation that the printing press led directly to The Enlightenment (which was true eventually) for the first two centuries it just led to the medieval version of clickbait, with people consuming content that led to religious intolerance and witch hunts.

[–] Lugh 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, it was an odd example to give. I guess a better example would be if the passengers were talking about how hot they were, and the car just lowered the air con temperature without asking them.

[–] Lugh 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I admit I don't know very much about any of this, but I've never heard of children who grow up in relatively isolated circumstances, for example home schooling, having lower functioning immune systems?

[–] Lugh 7 points 1 year ago

At this point, I'm pretty sure Chinese taikonauts will get to the Moon, before American astronauts return.

[–] Lugh 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't mean to diminish people's fears and anxieties because they are extremely real, but I think it's worth considering other outlooks.  For example, look at how quickly the world changed in March 2020 in response to COVID-19. Isn't there something hopeful about that? Doesn't it suggest that the world can adapt to sudden change far more quickly than we expected?

Sometimes I wonder if some people are too apocalyptic in their ideas especially if they come from a product in an apocalyptic Christian background.  if you look at thousands of years of European history isn't the lesson to take away that revolution and change happen all the time, but eventually, progress is what people settle into and things work out in the end.

I realize that is the most hopeful interpretation of events, and perhaps too hopeful, but I'm optimistically natured and that's what I try to stick to.

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