"Given the state of robotics" reminds me a lot of what was said about llms and image/video models over the past 3 years. Considering how much llms improved, how long can robotics be in this state?
I have to think 3 years from now we will be having the same conversation about robots doing real physical labor.
"This is the worst they will ever be" feels more apt.
but robotics had the means to do majority of the physical labour already - it's just not worth the money to replace humans, as human labour is cheap (and flexible - more than robots).
With knowledge work being less high-paying, physical labour supply should increase as well, which drops their price. This means it's actually less likely that the advent of LLM will make physical labour more automated.
Curious if you have any links about the rapid progression of robotics (as someone who is not educated on the topic).
It was my feeling with robotics that the more challenging aspect will be making them economically viable rather than simply the challenge of the task itself.
I mentioned military in my reply to the sibling comment - that is the most ready example. What anduril and others are doing today may be sloppy, but it's moving very quickly.
The question is how rapid the adoption is. The price of failure in the real world is much higher ($$$, environmental, physical risks) vs just "rebuild/regenerate" in the digital realm.
Maybe. There the cost of failure again is low. Its easier to destroy than to create. Economic disruption to workers will take a bit longer I think.
Don't get me wrong; I hope that we do see it in physical work as well. There is more value to society there; and consists of work that is risky and/or hard to do - and is usually needed (food, shelter, etc). It also means that the disruption is an "everyone" problem rather than something that just affects those "intellectual" types.
I wonder if it's because I have instructions for Claude to add comment blocks with explanations of behavior, etc that it can self reference in future. I guess that is filling the role that these .md files would.
In the current AI = LLM world, why have a language model do taxes? Why not just have AI help you adapt your non AI tax planning platform to local tax laws by reading and comprehending them at scale, a language task, instead?
This is such a bad faith article, downtown Dallas is full of homeless and the cvs has everything locked up. If homelessness went down it's because they moved to CA.
We do need more accountability for non profits though.
Hotels in Dallas for at least 15 years have disuaded people from walking even a few blocks downtown because they equate all the homelessness with crime.
I found this funny because by far the biggest danger I have seen there are endless electric scooters littering the sidewalks.
Agreed, but just so no one latches onto what I think you meant as a joke, the overwhelming majority of homeless people in California are native Californians.
I didn't bother to cite my sources at the time, and it seems that was a mistake. I used careless language. The overwhelming majority are Californians, at least as much as I have any right to claim to be. They lived in California for a significant enough period of time that they didn't necessarily intend to just become homeless. However, you're correct that a simple majority, not the vast majority, are native Californians.
> People experiencing homelessness in California are Californians. Nine out of ten participants lost their last housing in California; 75% of participants lived in the same county as their last housing (Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative - UCSF, page 5, June 2023)[0].
> Two-thirds (66%) were born in California[0].
> Where were you living at the time you became most recently became homeless?[1]
85.39% answered Santa Clara county in a survey conducted on homelessness in Santa Clara county conducted by the county government around the same time. 54.12% of those answered that they'd lived in Santa Clara county for more than ten years, with the next largest percentage, 21.26%, having lived there for 1-4 years.
I’ve been to more US states and cities than most Americans and every city I’ve been to has a severe homeless problem.
Whilst it’s true that europe does have homelessness too, and it has gotten worse in recent years, it is incomparable to America.
It doesn’t seem like a problem that can be fixed by some local policy or other. It’s a societal problem.
America also has stratospheric levels of inequality, a terrible healthcare system, and lacks a functional welfare state. I do not think this is a coincidence.
I’d much rather live somewhere more civilised, at the cost of higher taxation.
It always irks me to see Americans taunt Europeans on social media about their lack of very large tech companies, whilst the Europeans are perhaps too dignified to point out the consequences of America’s hypercapitalism (such as homelessness, crime, and trump) in return.
I asked it how to run the image and expose a port. it was just terrible in cursor. thought a Dockerfile wasn't in the repo, called no tools, then hallucinated a novel on dockefile best practices.
I keep hearing this but what does it mean to be 'behind'? Behind what? What actual innovation are we seeing from Silicon Valley that is improving life for humans? The EU has its faults but at least it's willing to take on big corporations. What does Google 'create' these days - other than vast swathes of ad data to sell people? How is AirBnB even a tech company or Uber? There's too much rent-seeking, gamifying, and destructive real world effects of lack of regulation that even some can help people. We've been through this before with industrialization in the modern world - some benefits, many of which go to a small percentage of people; many detriments, which harm all (such as pollution).
Also, 'tech investment' is such BS these days. Infinite venture capital (or at least in ZIRP days) that has led to little real 'innovation', just more BS gamified adtech. And now the US is ripping down any realistic science R&D. It's Europe's moment to take the reins or lose the opportunity. You don't Softbank or some blood-stained oil money from UAE to do that.
I have to think 3 years from now we will be having the same conversation about robots doing real physical labor.
"This is the worst they will ever be" feels more apt.
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