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It's interesting because the heavy machinery already replaced 20-50 humans. Now somehow that one person that has a job is an issue.

by winrid 1y ago

echelon 1y ago
Do you know how much California High Speed Rail is over budget? What if we could bring massive infrastructure projects down from the billions to the millions? Wouldn't that be a great thing for all of society? What if we could build new power plants, connect all cities with HSR, rebuild all our old bridges, add thousands of new skyscrapers, and do it all under budget? Think about what steel did for society. Automated construction is the next highest order step function change. It'll be insanely good for society.
- taeric 1y ago
  It is not lack of knowing how to build rail that is keeping HSR over budget and never finished. It is lack of will. Largely driven from lack of direct need.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    There is direct need but it isn't obvious until 5 years after it is done.
    - taeric 1y ago
      That is indirect, pretty much by definition. Directly, there are few if any jobs that are not getting done due to lack of HSR today. Indirectly, people project a ton of benefits to having HSR.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        The direct need is all the people dieing on the highways.
- winrid 1y ago
  What a joke. HSR is not over budget because of construction equipment. It's over budget because of bureaucracy and useless middlemen.
- daedrdev 1y ago
  CEQA has added a stupendous amount of cost to California's HSR.
namibj 1y ago
If you can automate efficiently enough, you can build far finer structures. For example look at how detailed the structure and weld arrangement is for modern cars, vs. back when robots only just started to take care of the frame welding on the assembly line. Or how optical HDMI cables are affordable because they use fully automated UV-cure-resin-glued fiber alignment straight from the cable end into the optoelectronic chips, without needing optical connectors or any other human-labor to get the light path connected up. That's how they manage to do it the conceptually easiest way: amplifier->laser->fiber->photodiode->amplifier, and repeat for the 4 high-speed pairs. Also handing the low speed communication channel separately with just normal wires as signal degradation isn't an issue for that. Or for example 3d printer infill: that's something no one would do manually in such a way, but if it's just automated it's quite desirable/efficient. App rental e-scooters: they rely on automation to organize even when parked "pretty much anywhere they're not gonna block traffic", and as such become relevant for even short trips. If you have an unsupervised robot that lays bricks for you to build up a house, you can get away with smaller bricks (and thus a lighter/cheaper machine needing a smaller crane to lift up/out of higher floors), than if you need a human to supervise it. Smaller machine if slower means more machines, meaning cheaper production of the machines due to scale. Auto-feeders for nail guns in construction means more smaller nails as placing 3 in a row takes barely longer than just 2. Especially if the nail gun could, say, run like an optical mouse and automatically trigger at a configured spacing while dragged along a surface with the trigger held down.

It's interesting because the heavy machinery already replaced 20-50 humans. Now somehow that one person that has a job is an issue.

by winrid 1y ago

It's interesting because the heavy machinery already replaced 20-50 humans. Now somehow that one person that has a job is an issue.

echelon 1y ago

Do you know how much California High Speed Rail is over budget? What if we could bring massive infrastructure projects down from the billions to the millions? Wouldn't that be a great thing for all of society? What if we could build new power plants, connect all cities with HSR, rebuild all our old bridges, add thousands of new skyscrapers, and do it all under budget? Think about what steel did for society. Automated construction is the next highest order step function change. It'll be insanely good for society.

taeric 1y ago
It is not lack of knowing how to build rail that is keeping HSR over budget and never finished. It is lack of will. Largely driven from lack of direct need.
- bluGill 1y ago
  There is direct need but it isn't obvious until 5 years after it is done.
  - taeric 1y ago
    That is indirect, pretty much by definition. Directly, there are few if any jobs that are not getting done due to lack of HSR today. Indirectly, people project a ton of benefits to having HSR.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      The direct need is all the people dieing on the highways.
winrid 1y ago
What a joke. HSR is not over budget because of construction equipment. It's over budget because of bureaucracy and useless middlemen.
daedrdev 1y ago
CEQA has added a stupendous amount of cost to California's HSR.

namibj 1y ago

If you can automate efficiently enough, you can build far finer structures. For example look at how detailed the structure and weld arrangement is for modern cars, vs. back when robots only just started to take care of the frame welding on the assembly line. Or how optical HDMI cables are affordable because they use fully automated UV-cure-resin-glued fiber alignment straight from the cable end into the optoelectronic chips, without needing optical connectors or any other human-labor to get the light path connected up. That's how they manage to do it the conceptually easiest way: amplifier->laser->fiber->photodiode->amplifier, and repeat for the 4 high-speed pairs. Also handing the low speed communication channel separately with just normal wires as signal degradation isn't an issue for that. Or for example 3d printer infill: that's something no one would do manually in such a way, but if it's just automated it's quite desirable/efficient. App rental e-scooters: they rely on automation to organize even when parked "pretty much anywhere they're not gonna block traffic", and as such become relevant for even short trips. If you have an unsupervised robot that lays bricks for you to build up a house, you can get away with smaller bricks (and thus a lighter/cheaper machine needing a smaller crane to lift up/out of higher floors), than if you need a human to supervise it. Smaller machine if slower means more machines, meaning cheaper production of the machines due to scale. Auto-feeders for nail guns in construction means more smaller nails as placing 3 in a row takes barely longer than just 2. Especially if the nail gun could, say, run like an optical mouse and automatically trigger at a configured spacing while dragged along a surface with the trigger held down.