281–290 of 564 posts
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Take it up with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are nationwide averages.
Reporting on averages is fine but you've made the mistake of thinking that average is representative of anyone. In all likelihood salaries are not normally distributed around that average, and we'd instead find a low hump (rural) and a high hump (urban, suburban).
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Predicting the next frame from previous frames and learnt sequences is a neat trick, but I think automated game development is already very possible with simple techniques like genetic algorithms, or even a PRNG. I mean Rogue and it's descendants are very much automated game development, but GPT-3 could be useful for something like dynamic quest generation, world-building, narrative, adaptive NPCs (including dialogue…
I'm not sure classic procedural content generation like in rogue-likes is all that comparable to using a GAN to run the whole game? Have a look at the video, it's quite impressive.
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The price consumers pay for something has nothing to do with the cost of producing it. Not counting the cost of the land itself, an identical house built in the city costs the same in hours and materials as one in the country. Price is determined by one thing, and one thing only: how much other people are willing to pay for it (i.e. the market sets the prices). The costs vs sale price are relevant to the builder in m…
This is only true in the short run by the way. In the long run, in a competitive market, cost is absolutely the driver of price.
Falsehoods that computer programmers believe about bricklaying: \ bricks are all the same shape and density \ bricks have flat sides \ mortar batches are mixed to the same consistency \ a batch of mortar has the same consistency over time \ bricks are laid in a climate controlled environment without changes in sunlight, precipitation, or humidity \ mortar solidifies immediately and bricks do not move once laid …I’m s…
Simplifying a complex problem to look like an easily solvable problem is something that businesses and engineers are really, really good at. It's one of the reasons we leave people behind at the margins all the time, and it's one of the reasons that a thousand failed brick laying robots will be built.
The question I would have around automated building construction is "why use bricks?". Bricks are great for humans to build with, they are just the right size and weight for the human hand to manipulate and place. They are not optimised for machine manipulation. I would guess that if you wanted to automate construction you would start by making things like walls on an automated production line, then ship the largest…
Because they’re pleasant to look at. Half the time, the wall isn’t even “needed”, other than for aesthetic purposes. Whenever a wall is purely functional, it’s almost never made of small clay bricks today. I’m talking about foundation walls, subsurface retaining walls, and similar things. The types of walls that aren’t meant to be looked at, but instead meant to hold something back or up. Whenever you see a wall bein…
The article links to the MULE product (which was an evolution or pivot of their 15yr attempt at making a traditional bricklaying robot) makes more sense as it takes advantage of the lifting power of machines and uses much larger/longer bricks that would otherwise be too heavy to pick up by humans while accelerating the process.
https://www.construction-robotics.com/
This is much like why pigeonholing AI into traditional cars is more difficult than say having a fleet of cars region wide which all talk to each other and coordinate movements with roads and crosswalks that are also designed for automated cars.
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> We haven't automated driving Yeah, we pretty much have... it just hasn't been widely adopted yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjztvddhZmI And honestly, from a business perspective, most people really don't care about the skills ordinary people have. Look at the wine industry for example. Top shelf wine is hand-picked, for exactly the reasons you outline, and some people are willing to pay top dollar for that en…
> We absolutely can automate cooking a fucking hamburger, and as soon as it's cheaper than the cheapest labour, McDonald's, Burger King, etc, WILL automate cooking a fucking hamburger. Curiously, McDonald's is probably as close as you can get to automating burgers and fries without crossing that final step of removing human labor entirely. It's not really cooking anymore, it's process chemistry[0], with some final as…
A fun part of cooking by hand is dealing with the quirks of fresh produce. These once-living plants and meats are inconsistent enough to require decisions on the fly, mid cook. One cut is 50g thicker at one end than the other, one parsnip is 10% more dense at the top, this cod retained more salt than yesterday and requires less seasoning, etc.
Of course this kind of cooking is miles from what happens in fast food, but there’s a reason the burger station is the most senior position. Cooking patties properly requires skill to get them crispy, fully cooked, but still juicy. Hot damn I’m hungry now.
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Having respect for the skills of a worker and also believing that they are possible to automate are not mutually exclusive. It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess and chess players, or go and go players, before the problem was solved. And it's not just blue collar workers that are a target of this idea. We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and in…
Are we sure that the ML experts that wanted to beat real human chess players actually respected them? Wouldn't they know that at some point the enjoyment of chess itself might fade if the best in the world is a computer? Maybe chess is having a moment right now due to Netflix, perhaps maybe it's a permanent upswing. But long term, I don't know if it will remain interesting to people.
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I think it is different from people saying we couldn't automate chess or go. The difference is between a purely data domain, chess or go, where it can both be translated 1-1 into a computer simulation of the game AND the inputs are data. I realise that you could define everything as data - laying a brick, you take the inputs of where to position the brick, etc. However I think we can make the distinction between ches…
A big part of ML in robotics is actually making nearly 1:1 simulations of the world and the actuators. It's fairly sucessful. We can simulate for example driving a car really well. Simulating human behaviour is harder, but simulating brick laying is not that hard, we have the technology to do so already.
Simulating brick laying might be able to be done in a controlled environment, is it possible to make it low cost enough and accurate enough for all general purpose brick laying situations? Probably, given enough investment we could get closer. Is ironing out all the nuances cost effective? I don't know.
We can definitely simulate a driving environment but I given the recent struggles of self driving cars I don't think I would say that we are at the point where we've solved the problem of actually driving them in everyday situations.
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Having respect for the skills of a worker and also believing that they are possible to automate are not mutually exclusive. It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess and chess players, or go and go players, before the problem was solved. And it's not just blue collar workers that are a target of this idea. We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and in…
I think it is different from people saying we couldn't automate chess or go. The difference is between a purely data domain, chess or go, where it can both be translated 1-1 into a computer simulation of the game AND the inputs are data. I realise that you could define everything as data - laying a brick, you take the inputs of where to position the brick, etc. However I think we can make the distinction between ches…
Its just a very intricate process, a messy material and probably a manual job for a long time.