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AlphaFold/AlphaProteo are direct examples of how AI can allow us to bypass experiments when doing science. More importantly, though, is that insufficiently pow

AlphaFold/AlphaProteo are direct examples of how AI can allow us to bypass experiments when doing science. More importantly, though, is that insufficiently powerful AI has been a limiting factor in robotics. That seems to be coming to an end now. And once we have humanoid robots powered by superhuman intelligence entering the workforce, the impact will be massive. Quite possibly mostly for the bad for most people.

arsenico 2y ago
In reality though, do we actually need humanoid robots, and if so, for what?
- ben_w 2y ago
  Need? No, absolutely not. But they do conveniently fit into the century old buildings we put many of the factories into, which makes them a useful upgrade path for those unwilling to build structures around more efficient robots (the kind we've had for ages and don't even think of as robots, they just take ingredients and pump out packaged candy or pencils etc.)
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    There are incredible technological barriers to humanoid robots who have equivalent skills and stamina. Keeping old factories running seems a very weak reason to do that, when our industrial base regularly retools production methods and brings in new equipment when old machines wear out. If what you are saying is that many factories cannot run with humans running around fixing things, I agree. But that’s pretty different than using humanoids to put items in boxes.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Yes indeed. Even just 3.5 years ago, seemed like everyone was saying that humanoid robots were a dead end or an unnecessary part of Isaac Asimov's vision of the future or similar. I think much of the current interest is because Musk watched some scifi, ordered the Optimus project, and loads of others decided it would be a mistake to bet against him. I put them in the same category as 3D printers: they can do anything, but you can always find a better special-purpose alternative for any specific goal. Still a lot of people using 3D printing productively despite that; likely also will be for humanoid robots. Well, if the AI is good enough. Remote control has its uses, but even then you need enough on-board AI to avoid playing QUOP as live action with a robot holding industrial equipment instead of in a safe flash game. That said, stamina is probably the least important aspect — in an industrial setting you probably have a lot of power lines already installed.
      - throw4950sh06 2y ago
        Sometimes you need to produce megatons of a thing, but sometimes you need to produce a million different things. I bet on the humanoid robot in that case.
- trashtester 2y ago
  The human form is very versatile. While most robots may end up taking a different form, once we have sufficiently advanced humanoid robots, robots may replace human workers in almost any role.
  - bamboozled 2y ago
    I still have a hard time understanding what this future would look like? Will we just sit around and do nothing then? I'm not saying we have to work, but there is some level of work that I think is required for happiness / fulfillment etc. I'm not even really against the idea, it just sounds quite dystopian to me.
    - trashtester 2y ago
      I don't think it matters much if we're for or against such a future. If robots can do the same job as humans, but faster, cheaper and at a higher quality, out employers/customers will most likely replace us. If we're lucky, we may find some niche, be able to live off our savings or maybe be granted some UBI, but I absolutely do think it's concerning. What is worse, is that if we become obsolete in every way, it's not obvious that whoever is in power at that point will see any point in keeping us around (especially a few generations in).
      - kiba 2y ago
        Who will be able to afford all of this if they're not getting paid?
        bamboozled 2y ago
        Replying to both of you, I'm a little bit less scared about this "not having any money or food" scenario, presumably, if we have such incredibly sufficient machines at our disposal, I can't imagine they would have trouble being used for farming etc. It's more the philosophical side that concerns me. I don't really worry about this being a billionaires only club either. We've seen it already with AI products, there is just an abundance of competition and open source competition already available. It will be the same with robotics. Also scary, is military robots gone rogue. Definitely not a fun prospect. I'm personally really into surfing and skiing, honestly, if some how the robots kind of let me spend more time fishing, surfing and skiing, I'm pretty cool with all of that, I know a lot of people who don't have these passions though and work is a strong reason for their existence.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Retric 2y ago
You’re overstating what AlphaFold can do. Without validation the predictions aren’t dependable, but it can cut down on what’s worth investigating. There’s definitely a point where models get good enough you can trust them, but super intelligence doesn’t mean it can both come up with a model and be able to trust it without validation.
- trashtester 2y ago
  The need for validation is itself something that needs to be validated. If models can make predictions that are true >99.99% of the time, validation may only be needed for situations where even 0.01% error rates are intolerable. In any case, even if some validation is needed, AI can speed up this kind of science by at least an order of magnitude.
  - Retric 2y ago
    The question becomes how do you calculate that 99.99%. As soon as you use reserved training data to pick a model the score it got on that data is no longer a valid answer due to selection bias.
    - trashtester 2y ago
      You validate a random selection of results using actual experiments. If you validate 10k results and a maximum of 1 of the validations contradicts the prediction, you're at about 99.99% accuracy. 10k experiments may seem like a lot, but keep in mind that if we can engineer nanobots out of proteins the same way we build engines from steel today, the number of "parts" we may want to build using such biological nanotech may easily go into the millions. And this kind of AI may very well be as useful for such tech as CAD is today. Or rather, it can be like the CAD + the engineer.
      - Retric 2y ago
        > using actual experiments That’s the bottleneck the model was trying to avoid in the first place. The goal of science is to come up with models we don’t need to validate before use, and it’s inherently iterative. Nanbots are more sci-fi magic than real world possible. In the real world we are stuck with things closer to highly specialized cellular machinery than some do anything grey goo. Growing buildings from local materials seems awesome until you realize just how slow trees grow and why.
bglazer 2y ago
You realize AlphaFold was trained on thousands of protein sequences generated via (I'd guess) tens of millions of hours of human labor.
- svieira 2y ago
  How does the old saw go ... "past results are no guarantee of future performance"?
  - alphan0n 2y ago
    Guarantees are, by their nature, always periodic, or episodic, only by confidence of the issuer of their longevity or the issue are they ever given. The amount of time invested in the understanding of this issue amounts to many lifetimes, where an adverse outcome would be the equivalent to the cessation of breathing being a cause for life.

arsenico 2y ago

In reality though, do we actually need humanoid robots, and if so, for what?

ben_w 2y ago
Need? No, absolutely not. But they do conveniently fit into the century old buildings we put many of the factories into, which makes them a useful upgrade path for those unwilling to build structures around more efficient robots (the kind we've had for ages and don't even think of as robots, they just take ingredients and pump out packaged candy or pencils etc.)
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  There are incredible technological barriers to humanoid robots who have equivalent skills and stamina. Keeping old factories running seems a very weak reason to do that, when our industrial base regularly retools production methods and brings in new equipment when old machines wear out. If what you are saying is that many factories cannot run with humans running around fixing things, I agree. But that’s pretty different than using humanoids to put items in boxes.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Yes indeed. Even just 3.5 years ago, seemed like everyone was saying that humanoid robots were a dead end or an unnecessary part of Isaac Asimov's vision of the future or similar. I think much of the current interest is because Musk watched some scifi, ordered the Optimus project, and loads of others decided it would be a mistake to bet against him. I put them in the same category as 3D printers: they can do anything, but you can always find a better special-purpose alternative for any specific goal. Still a lot of people using 3D printing productively despite that; likely also will be for humanoid robots. Well, if the AI is good enough. Remote control has its uses, but even then you need enough on-board AI to avoid playing QUOP as live action with a robot holding industrial equipment instead of in a safe flash game. That said, stamina is probably the least important aspect — in an industrial setting you probably have a lot of power lines already installed.
    - throw4950sh06 2y ago
      Sometimes you need to produce megatons of a thing, but sometimes you need to produce a million different things. I bet on the humanoid robot in that case.
trashtester 2y ago
The human form is very versatile. While most robots may end up taking a different form, once we have sufficiently advanced humanoid robots, robots may replace human workers in almost any role.
- bamboozled 2y ago
  I still have a hard time understanding what this future would look like? Will we just sit around and do nothing then? I'm not saying we have to work, but there is some level of work that I think is required for happiness / fulfillment etc. I'm not even really against the idea, it just sounds quite dystopian to me.
  - trashtester 2y ago
    I don't think it matters much if we're for or against such a future. If robots can do the same job as humans, but faster, cheaper and at a higher quality, out employers/customers will most likely replace us. If we're lucky, we may find some niche, be able to live off our savings or maybe be granted some UBI, but I absolutely do think it's concerning. What is worse, is that if we become obsolete in every way, it's not obvious that whoever is in power at that point will see any point in keeping us around (especially a few generations in).
    - kiba 2y ago
      Who will be able to afford all of this if they're not getting paid?
      - bamboozled 2y ago
        Replying to both of you, I'm a little bit less scared about this "not having any money or food" scenario, presumably, if we have such incredibly sufficient machines at our disposal, I can't imagine they would have trouble being used for farming etc. It's more the philosophical side that concerns me. I don't really worry about this being a billionaires only club either. We've seen it already with AI products, there is just an abundance of competition and open source competition already available. It will be the same with robotics. Also scary, is military robots gone rogue. Definitely not a fun prospect. I'm personally really into surfing and skiing, honestly, if some how the robots kind of let me spend more time fishing, surfing and skiing, I'm pretty cool with all of that, I know a lot of people who don't have these passions though and work is a strong reason for their existence.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Retric 2y ago

You’re overstating what AlphaFold can do. Without validation the predictions aren’t dependable, but it can cut down on what’s worth investigating. There’s definitely a point where models get good enough you can trust them, but super intelligence doesn’t mean it can both come up with a model and be able to trust it without validation.

trashtester 2y ago
The need for validation is itself something that needs to be validated. If models can make predictions that are true >99.99% of the time, validation may only be needed for situations where even 0.01% error rates are intolerable. In any case, even if some validation is needed, AI can speed up this kind of science by at least an order of magnitude.
- Retric 2y ago
  The question becomes how do you calculate that 99.99%. As soon as you use reserved training data to pick a model the score it got on that data is no longer a valid answer due to selection bias.
  - trashtester 2y ago
    You validate a random selection of results using actual experiments. If you validate 10k results and a maximum of 1 of the validations contradicts the prediction, you're at about 99.99% accuracy. 10k experiments may seem like a lot, but keep in mind that if we can engineer nanobots out of proteins the same way we build engines from steel today, the number of "parts" we may want to build using such biological nanotech may easily go into the millions. And this kind of AI may very well be as useful for such tech as CAD is today. Or rather, it can be like the CAD + the engineer.
    - Retric 2y ago
      > using actual experiments That’s the bottleneck the model was trying to avoid in the first place. The goal of science is to come up with models we don’t need to validate before use, and it’s inherently iterative. Nanbots are more sci-fi magic than real world possible. In the real world we are stuck with things closer to highly specialized cellular machinery than some do anything grey goo. Growing buildings from local materials seems awesome until you realize just how slow trees grow and why.

bglazer 2y ago

You realize AlphaFold was trained on thousands of protein sequences generated via (I'd guess) tens of millions of hours of human labor.

svieira 2y ago
How does the old saw go ... "past results are no guarantee of future performance"?
- alphan0n 2y ago
  Guarantees are, by their nature, always periodic, or episodic, only by confidence of the issuer of their longevity or the issue are they ever given. The amount of time invested in the understanding of this issue amounts to many lifetimes, where an adverse outcome would be the equivalent to the cessation of breathing being a cause for life.