Lugh

joined 2 years ago
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Unitree's older G1 robot was $16,000 - it will be interesting to see if the R1 has its capabilities. It should be noted that the full spec R1 costs $16,000, but the lowest spec one is $5,900. This has been primarily designed as a research, development, and demonstration platform. The G1 achieved some remarkable success in that. The G1 model has been used in teleoperated medical procedures e.g., ultrasound‑guided injections, emergency ventilation, palpation.

If Chinese manufacturing can build limited test models at this price, then economies of scale suggest that in a few years, it can mass produce them much cheaper. The future will likely be filled with humanoid robots that cost a small fraction of even the cheapest car.

People think of future economies as dominated by UBI & corporate feudalism. But what if it's a world filled with people owning several robot workers each, and bartering and trading the products of their work?

China’s Unitree Offers a Humanoid Robot for Under $6,000

 

Alongside the terrible price in human suffering and death, the two world wars spurred aviation, and with Germany's V2 rocket, started the space age. Hopefully, this time around, we can get some of the technological benefits while keeping the war to a stand-off with no fighting.

Much of this money will be spent in Europe. Germany is passing a law to restrict bidders for new projects to EU-based, and the EU may soon move to ban much of American AI.

Historically, small to medium-sized firms have been the backbone of European industry, and Germany has excelled under this model. Will it be the same for whatever new tech comes out of these developments?

Spy cockroaches and AI robots: Germany plots the future of warfare

 

"In early June, TSMC Chairperson C.C. Wei confirmed that demand for chips used in humanoid robots is growing rapidly. As per the Economic Daily News, TSMC projects that by 2030, 1.3 billion AI robots will be deployed, creating a market worth $35 billion. This number is expected to surge to 4 billion by 2050, including 650 million humanoid robots, the report adds."

Robotics is advancing so rapidly I think these projections may be possible. If anything, the 2050 figure for 650 million humanoids underestimates their numbers. I am sure there will be a vast, perhaps bigger, market of knock-off cheaper Chinese models that won't be as good as top quality producers, but often good enough for the price. That's the way it is with many other products today.

Needless to say, none of these people seem to anticipate any economic problems ahead with all the hundreds of millions of human jobs being replaced.

Million-unit AI robot army no longer a dream: Analyzing Foxconn's three-pronged strategy

TSMC Reportedly Eyes 10-Year Boom from Humanoids, Backed by NVIDIA Jetson and Tesla’s Chips

 

The transition from The Fossil Fuel Age to the Renewables Age continues apace. It's worth noting solar, wind and batteries have years more price falls ahead. In the 2030s, country after country will have near 100% renewables powered grids.

World on brink of climate breakthrough as fossil fuels ‘run out of road’, UN chief says

 

The EU's AI Act, now the law in the bloc's 27 member states, prohibits AI designed to distort a person’s decision-making through deceptive or manipulative techniques. This sets up a clash with the US, who want any AI eligible for federal contracts to only have right-wing viewpoints. Now we may get a glimpse of where the future is headed.

Twitter/X has already altered its algorithms to distort its user base towards right-wing content. That's against EU law, and France seems to have acted on it. It's worth noting that any of the other 26 countries can do the same. Ireland has often administered EU law, as almost all US Big Tech firms have their European HQ's there. But there's been a feeling that Ireland has been too lax in this role, as it gets so much money in corporate tax receipts from Big Tech.

X denies French allegations of algorithm manipulation

 

People have been betting on independent reasoning as an emergent property of AI without much success so far. So it was exciting when OpenAI said their AI had scored at a Gold Medal level at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), a test of Math reasoning among the best of high school math students.

However, Australian mathematician Terence Tao says it may not be as impressive as it seems. In short, the test conditions were potentially far easier for the AI than the humans, and the AI was given way more time and resources to achieve the same results. On top of which, we don't know how many wrong results there were before OpenAI selected the best. Something else that doesn't happen with the human test.

There's another problem, too. Unlike with humans, AI being good at Math is not a good indicator for general reasoning skills. It's easy to copy techniques from the corpus of human knowledge it's been trained on, which gives the semblance of understanding. AI still doesn't seem good at transferring that reasoning to novel, unrelated problems.

 

By AI minus the "woke", they mean 'everything must agree with right-wing viewpoints' AI.

All autocratic regimes prefer citizens to live in a doctored version of reality, so I'm 100% unsurprised to see this pushed by the current US government.

It's ironic that the same US government wants global AI dominance. If this becomes law, most of the rest of the world will reject such AI in their own countries. It would be illegal in the EU.

Ironic that Chinese open-source AI is also doctored (trying to get it to talk about independent Taiwan, Tiananmen Square Massacre, etc) - yet for most of the rest of the world, it will be far superior to whatever 'right-wing only AI' this law will create. Guess which the world will choose, and will win the global AI dominance race?

Trump advisors are pushing a regulation targeting what they call "woke" AI models in the tech sector

 

Capitalism is a long succession of booms and busts stretching back hundreds of years. We're now at the peak of another boom; that means a crash is inevitable. It's just a question of when. But there are other questions to ask too.

If many of the current AI players are destined to crash and burn, what does this mean for the type of AI we will end up with in the 2030s?

Is AGI destined to be created by an as-yet-unknown post-crash company?

Will open-source AI become the bedrock of global AI during the crash & post-crash period?

Crashes mean recessions, which means cost-cutting. Is this when AI will make a big impact on employment?

AI Bubble Warns: Sløk Raises Concerns Over Market Valuations

 

Europe has a long history of fragmented space efforts. France is the leading European nation for space tech and coordinates many of its efforts with ESA. So do other countries, but there are also 13 separate national space agencies. Will this fragmentation help or hinder spaceplane efforts? Maybe having three teams trying different approaches means exploring more options.

Spaceplane 1 - POLARIS Raumflugzeuge is developing one for the German Armed Forces Procurement Office (BAAINBw)

Spaceplane 2 - VORTEX, a French reusable mini-space shuttle that will launch on rockets.

Spaceplane 3 - Britain/ESA - INVICTUS - A reusable spaceplane for LEO using the tech previously worked on by Reaction Engines/Sabre.

Out of these three, the German effort seems most advanced. It has already successfully tested elements of its technology, and it aims for a launch date (2027) far nearer than the others.

[–] Lugh 4 points 4 months ago

Yes, but using AI will greatly amplify what has happened before.

[–] Lugh 1 points 4 months ago

This requires the driver to charge using CATL's own 4C superchargers. Domestic, or most commercial charging won't happen as quickly. Still, this shows the direction of travel - EVs with long ranges that quickly charge. 4C superchargers don't seem to be available outside of China yet, but like everything else hi-tech, I'm sure it won't be long before China will be able to sell it to other countries.

[–] Lugh 7 points 5 months ago

This Astrum video does a good job of explaining things. In short, China's experimental work on its space station is all targeted at practical steps to help it build a Moon base, and have manned missions to the outer solar system.

In particular, they focus on 5 key areas. 1. Orbital Construction Technology, 2. Space Robotics & Automation, 3. Energy and Propulsion Innovation, 4. Life Support & Sustainability, 5. Generic Technology for Spacecraft.

They've already succeeded with key breakthroughs, including a system for producing oxygen that is far superior to the system on the ISS which needs a third of the ISS's energy to function.

America, partnered with Europe, is still pursuing its SLS/Orbital Gateway plans that look ever more doomed as time goes on. A wildcard are commercial space systems that could rapidly take-off. If not, by doggedly pursuing its plans, at some point China may pull into the lead in the space race.

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

I think it is true AI lacks true creativity, but the point is you don't need creativity for lots of commercial art.

Stock music, stock videos, video game environments, etc - the industries that made them have always employed creative humans, but they can be made by AI that doesn't have true creativity.

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

This is a lab result on mice, so likely still years away from treatments available to humans.

Still, here's a thought to ponder. If gene editing treatments to make people smarter, kinder, and more sociable were widely available, do you think some people would feel threatened ?

Those traits and others correlate with political persuasions. People might argue that people being smarter, kinder, and more sociable are worse for society, in order to protect their political power base.

[–] Lugh 1 points 5 months ago

Interesting there's no mention of unemployment via AI/robotics in DW's reporting of this issue.

[–] Lugh 4 points 5 months ago

There are dozens of open-source robotics projects around the world, including another humanoid robot called Tiangong. Hugging Face's actions are significant because of the prominent role it plays among AI developers. It functions as a version of GitHub, but just for AI - except now it may do the same for robotics too. It has always been committed to open-source (its own tools are open-source).

That open-source AI has kept pace, and in some cases bettered, investor-funded AI has taken many by surprise. Could the same happen in robotics development?

More on Pollen's acquisition.

Hugging face lets the public use a lot of the AI tools it hosts.

[–] Lugh 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

but this still makes me sad:

One piece of good news is that solar seems that it may be being adopted as a technology, on the familiar s-curve of technological adoption. So it may go from 6.9% to 50% much quicker than we expect.

[–] Lugh 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well at least they are mental health workers, so they can deal with it better than most.

[–] Lugh 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

That is a terrible guess, and it isn’t even remotely close on the scale of decades.

No. It's based on how technologies are adopted, which tends to follow an s-curve.

Level 4 self-driving cars are already on the road in China & the US.

[–] Lugh 1 points 5 months ago

Yes. The logic of al these changes with AI & robotics being able to do most work, is that some sort of socialism is the only economic system that will work in the future.

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