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> robotic servants that can do everything for everyone. Why do people keep positing this? The robots get better every year, but they don't get better fast en
by stonogo 1mo ago
> robotic servants that can do everything for everyone.
Why do people keep positing this? The robots get better every year, but they don't get better fast enough to make me think there will be a robot servant doing anything for anyone in my lifetime. As has been the case for the past fifty years or so, they're either hyperspecialized or remote controlled by people, and neither of those spell doom for the economy.
- arionhardison 1mo agoHonest question, did you foresee the last 2 or 3 years happening as fast as they have? Edit: In terms of AI/LLM's etc..
- atriarch 1mo agoIndeed. The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space, it's game over. We don't need to engineer plumbing robots - they will engineer themselves. We will see a silicon Cambrian Explosion. Maybe next year maybe in 500, but it's inevitable with the current economic incentives.
- trickypr 1mo agoBold of you to assume that “current economic inventives” will remain around for 500 years, especially given the American-style neo-liberal economy is only like 70 years old.
- beej71 1mo agoWhat if the creation of such robots destroys the economic incentive for doing so?
- BobaFloutist 1mo ago>The moment these LLM brains are given access to natural selection and evolution in the hardware space Ok, but that's still sci-fi. We've made a huge advancement in automation of knowledge work, but hardware still has no clear path to what you're describing, or even to anything similar to it.
- mullingitover 1mo agoHonestly everything about the future has been about fifteen years behind schedule (or more!) from what I was expecting in 1999. I was fully expecting affordable lunar tourism for the middle class by now.
- atriarch 1mo agoI know, right? Where's the space ship in my garage? I first heard about Elon Musk in my teens when I was reading astronomy magazines and wishing Robert Zubrin was running NASA. Why wasn't Nasa progressing? We stopped going to the moon and made a space truck to ferry satellites and ISS nodules into LEO for $2B a pop and 1/100 odds of fatality. Anyway here comes this SV guy wishing he could put a greenhouse on mars and see if a plant would grow in Martian regolith... I'm still waiting for that experiment, Mr. Musk.
- mullingitover 1mo agoDon't hold your breath. Musk was never sincerely planning any kind of sci-fi future, the fact that SpaceX was built with help from Mike Griffin (who was a key player in the 80s 'Star Wars' SDI program) and the fact that Starlink's roadmap is basically reheated leftovers of Brilliant Pebbles[1] really gives the game away. He's just a generic military contractor with (well, used to have) good PR. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles
- CamperBob2 1mo agoI'm still waiting for that experiment, Mr. Musk. Me, too. He's just another Lucy, holding just another football.
- stonogo 1mo agoSure, we went from 'writing software is a grueling effort for many people' to 'writing software is a solo effort with a few chatbot subscriptions' but I think that my colleagues in the IT world tend to overestimate the effects LLMs have had on the wider populace. Folks mostly use them as search engines and there hasn't been a qualitative change in their lives. People keep talking about how we're going to enter some kind of positive feeback loop where the chatbots design better chatbot chassis but so far we've just started generating articles about that prediction at a higher rate. This is typical of the gains from LLMs: not a qualitative improvement, but a quantitative improvement. I'd sooner believe we're about to build a Paperclip Maximizer than a Singularity Machine.
- 3ddff 1mo agoI think most people in tech, in particular SV live in such a huge bubble they are completely out of touch with the common person. Then they stand there and say 'how come they can't see what I see? Hmm'. Oh the answer is - inertia! Lets see how long they toe that line for.
- bigstrat2003 1mo ago> Sure, we went from 'writing software is a grueling effort for many people' to 'writing software is a solo effort with a few chatbot subscriptions' But we haven't. The only kind of software you produce in the latter scenario is unmaintainable and full of flaws. It's not at all a replacement for a team of experts.
- stonogo 1mo agoStatistically, all software is unmaintainable and full of flaws. If it weren't, there wouldn't be so many rich software engineers.
- grebc 1mo agoYou’re largely talking to people paid somewhere along the lines by all the AI equity that’s being raised. AI has made making a demo easy and sometimes it’s might present more than a quick trip to wikipedia would surface. Edit: also it makes making mistakes in Excel easy(analysis). Best give up all hopes of a future now.
- 3ddff 1mo agoYou do realise theres easy push back for this? Go back to the movies of 30-40 years ago... that's what people envisioned about the future.
- arionhardison 1mo agoYes, but I believe (perhaps incorrectly) that the is easy push back for most things. My question stands, is this rate of change something that the commenter could foresee. If not; it sands to reason that we should not assume the next leaps would be something that we will naturally foresee.
- bigstrat2003 1mo agoI disagree that things have improved with any particular rapidity. The LLMs of today are not really much more capable than GPT-3.5 was.
- arionhardison 1mo agoExcellent point, I should have expanded to the previous; 5 years or even better post and pre covid.
- xyzelement 1mo agoA non-trivial percentag of readers of HN have used a robotaxi or own a self driving vehicle. Most of us have asked an AI to write software for us, plan our trips, etc - and importantly perform tasks requiring visual recognition. These signals seem to validate rather than disprove the direction.
- grebc 1mo agoA non-trivial percentage are employed by the makers of said products. Cui bono?
- xyzelement 1mo agoHave you never been in a Tesla or Waymo or used AI?
- grebc 1mo agoYes.
- xyzelement 1mo agoThen I'm confused about your point.
- grebc 1mo agoYou can’t fathom why being paid by the companies producing this technology doesn’t skew opinions?
- xyzelement 1mo agoIt's a thing kne can observe for itself (did the Tesla drive itself or not) without relying on opinions. That's why I used these examples.
- 1mo ago
- eddyg 1mo agoHave you been keeping up with where China already is with robots? https://x.com/GalbotRobotics/status/2091210523916607613 https://x.com/GalbotRobotics/status/2091210523916607613 https://x.com/unitreerobotics/status/2089240553682809175 https://x.com/unitreerobotics/status/2089240553682809175