3 ms·

"Suddenly", no. They're targeting 2025 for the first tests if everything goes perfectly, 2027 for a first demo reactor, and we don't know how expensive a real r

"Suddenly", no. They're targeting 2025 for the first tests if everything goes perfectly, 2027 for a first demo reactor, and we don't know how expensive a real reactor would be so we have no idea if this is the design that will one day unlock UNLIMITED POWER! but on the scale of civilizations, yeah this could be it.

UncleOxidant 6y ago
4 years in the fusion field is pretty "suddenly".
- hackeraccount 6y ago
  Why is that fusion reminds me of the James Webb space telescope .... https://xkcd.com/2014/ https://xkcd.com/2014/
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Fusion at this point is closer to general intelligence AI than to JWST. JWST is a project level failure not a “field level” failure. Fusion has been 10 years off for the past nearly 100 years. Tokamaks date to the 50’s and the first patents for a fusion reactor were issued in the 1940’s https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=GB&NR=817681&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC...
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Uh, no. We are fairly sure that we can build a working fusion plant and we know with good accuracy what remaining engineering problems are. We have literally no idea what the path to AI even looks like.
      - dogma1138 6y ago
        Energy positive fusion? I’m not so sure that we do...
      - hamilyon2 6y ago
        We already have working AI, not prototypes. Look at big corporations for example.
        ben_w 6y ago
        @dogma1138 said general AI, what we have in big corporations is specialist AI. A general AI must, by definition and at minimum, be capable of doing any intellectual task currently done by humans; right now, they’re good at what they do, but are very limited in what they do, and slow to learn. For example, self driving cars can still only do limited environments and conditions, despite Tesla having over 18,000 human-professional-equivalent years of driving experience as of April last year, which they achieved shortly after they added “Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control” to their feature list — and that item is still listed as “(Beta)”. It’s the same everywhere: GPT-3 is fantastic… but despite having “read” more than any human could in a lifetime, it still struggles with moderate arithmetic; Voice assistants do amazing things… but I’ve literally had easier times attempting to converse with pet dogs; Google Translate has made moving and travelling abroad much less stressful, and it knows more languages than I can name to a higher standard than I know a second language… but I’ve seen it hallucinate words in lawns, and it does make translation mistakes that even I can spot. And even if they were perfected within their domains, none of these are generalists for all domains.

UncleOxidant 6y ago

4 years in the fusion field is pretty "suddenly".

hackeraccount 6y ago
Why is that fusion reminds me of the James Webb space telescope .... https://xkcd.com/2014/ https://xkcd.com/2014/
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Fusion at this point is closer to general intelligence AI than to JWST. JWST is a project level failure not a “field level” failure. Fusion has been 10 years off for the past nearly 100 years. Tokamaks date to the 50’s and the first patents for a fusion reactor were issued in the 1940’s https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=GB&NR=817681&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC...
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Uh, no. We are fairly sure that we can build a working fusion plant and we know with good accuracy what remaining engineering problems are. We have literally no idea what the path to AI even looks like.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      Energy positive fusion? I’m not so sure that we do...
    - hamilyon2 6y ago
      We already have working AI, not prototypes. Look at big corporations for example.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        @dogma1138 said general AI, what we have in big corporations is specialist AI. A general AI must, by definition and at minimum, be capable of doing any intellectual task currently done by humans; right now, they’re good at what they do, but are very limited in what they do, and slow to learn. For example, self driving cars can still only do limited environments and conditions, despite Tesla having over 18,000 human-professional-equivalent years of driving experience as of April last year, which they achieved shortly after they added “Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control” to their feature list — and that item is still listed as “(Beta)”. It’s the same everywhere: GPT-3 is fantastic… but despite having “read” more than any human could in a lifetime, it still struggles with moderate arithmetic; Voice assistants do amazing things… but I’ve literally had easier times attempting to converse with pet dogs; Google Translate has made moving and travelling abroad much less stressful, and it knows more languages than I can name to a higher standard than I know a second language… but I’ve seen it hallucinate words in lawns, and it does make translation mistakes that even I can spot. And even if they were perfected within their domains, none of these are generalists for all domains.