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They've been working on AI for ages now with little to show for it. People have been saying the exact same thing about fusion, and it's always "20 years away",

They've been working on AI for ages now with little to show for it. People have been saying the exact same thing about fusion, and it's always "20 years away", but we're no closer to having fusion power than we were 40 years ago.

shawn-furyan 11y ago
The goal posts are continually moved with AI because AI never seems to look quite like human intelligence (though why should it?). AI and ML coupled with robots that are relatively simpler than Rosie from the Jetsons are cheaply out-competing human labor in many sectors today, and an avalanche of new sectors is on the cusp (within 2-5 years, not 20 years). Driverless cars currently outcompete human drivers, and a enormous number of people are currently employed as drivers. The remaining hurdles are regulatory. AI is intelligent enough today to outcompete a lot of humans in the work which is currently putting food on their tables. And I haven't seen the burgeoning industry that readily turns former taxi drivers into productive workers in other industries. The industries that can readily accept taxi drivers are generally shrinking as well (meaning, they've got all the workers they need, more than they need, in fact). Maybe you're right, and it will all work itself out. Some huge growth industry to which humans are uniquely (at least at first) well suited may spring up in the next couple years. But the crisis is awfully close (taking into account driving occupations alone), and there's no market solution in sight, so it seems like prime time to start looking for non-market solutions.
gnaritas 11y ago
>They've been working on AI for ages now with little to show for it. That's just not true, it's just that every time the AI crowd makes something really cool and it becomes used, we stop calling it AI because it doesn't think like we do. > People have been saying the exact same thing about fusion, and it's always "20 years away", but we're no closer to having fusion power than we were 40 years ago. That's also not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  ITER isn't producing any power. If your fusion reactor isn't producing more energy than it consumes, then it's not a useful device. We've had fusion reactors since Philo Farnsworth made his "fusor", but what's always been a pipe dream is one that's actually useful. ITER is not. Go read your own link: they predict it might do something useful in 2027! Whoopee, I can make wild-ass predictions about things over a decade away too, that doesn't mean my predictions are worth anything.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    ITER is designed to make more power than it requires, it's now just an engineering problem rather than a theoretical one. You said we've made no progress; that is progress, a plant is in construction, yes these things take time but to deny progress is being made is simply incorrect. Having useful fusion, i.e. producing more power than being input is a matter of scale, it can't be done without building a full sized reactor and that's what ITER is, the first full size reactor. That's called progress.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      This doesn't sound right to me. The ITER is going to (supposedly, which of course is probably optimistic) take another 10 years to finish. When you have a workable design for something, it does not take multiple decades to build it, unless it's something on a really gigantic scale (like a continent-spanning highway system). It doesn't take remotely as much time to build a full-scale nuclear fission power plant producing many megawatts of power. That means this thing is not a real design, it's still an R&D project where they really don't know if it's going to work as planned or not, and they're going step by step, collecting data, seeing what works and what doesn't, etc. So, sorry, you can call it "progress" if you want, but there's no evidence that it's going to work as planned until they actually can demonstrate it doing so.

shawn-furyan 11y ago

The goal posts are continually moved with AI because AI never seems to look quite like human intelligence (though why should it?). AI and ML coupled with robots that are relatively simpler than Rosie from the Jetsons are cheaply out-competing human labor in many sectors today, and an avalanche of new sectors is on the cusp (within 2-5 years, not 20 years). Driverless cars currently outcompete human drivers, and a enormous number of people are currently employed as drivers. The remaining hurdles are regulatory. AI is intelligent enough today to outcompete a lot of humans in the work which is currently putting food on their tables. And I haven't seen the burgeoning industry that readily turns former taxi drivers into productive workers in other industries. The industries that can readily accept taxi drivers are generally shrinking as well (meaning, they've got all the workers they need, more than they need, in fact). Maybe you're right, and it will all work itself out. Some huge growth industry to which humans are uniquely (at least at first) well suited may spring up in the next couple years. But the crisis is awfully close (taking into account driving occupations alone), and there's no market solution in sight, so it seems like prime time to start looking for non-market solutions.

gnaritas 11y ago

>They've been working on AI for ages now with little to show for it. That's just not true, it's just that every time the AI crowd makes something really cool and it becomes used, we stop calling it AI because it doesn't think like we do. > People have been saying the exact same thing about fusion, and it's always "20 years away", but we're no closer to having fusion power than we were 40 years ago. That's also not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

Grishnakh 11y ago
ITER isn't producing any power. If your fusion reactor isn't producing more energy than it consumes, then it's not a useful device. We've had fusion reactors since Philo Farnsworth made his "fusor", but what's always been a pipe dream is one that's actually useful. ITER is not. Go read your own link: they predict it might do something useful in 2027! Whoopee, I can make wild-ass predictions about things over a decade away too, that doesn't mean my predictions are worth anything.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  ITER is designed to make more power than it requires, it's now just an engineering problem rather than a theoretical one. You said we've made no progress; that is progress, a plant is in construction, yes these things take time but to deny progress is being made is simply incorrect. Having useful fusion, i.e. producing more power than being input is a matter of scale, it can't be done without building a full sized reactor and that's what ITER is, the first full size reactor. That's called progress.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    This doesn't sound right to me. The ITER is going to (supposedly, which of course is probably optimistic) take another 10 years to finish. When you have a workable design for something, it does not take multiple decades to build it, unless it's something on a really gigantic scale (like a continent-spanning highway system). It doesn't take remotely as much time to build a full-scale nuclear fission power plant producing many megawatts of power. That means this thing is not a real design, it's still an R&D project where they really don't know if it's going to work as planned or not, and they're going step by step, collecting data, seeing what works and what doesn't, etc. So, sorry, you can call it "progress" if you want, but there's no evidence that it's going to work as planned until they actually can demonstrate it doing so.