Earlier quoted context omitted.
This hierarchy-of-intelligence concept is meaningless.
You might as well have said "intelligence is meaningless". Obviously false.
No, I might not as well have said that. Let me ask you this: huh?
America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
511–520 of 753 posts
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is, minimum wage there pays for 10 people on the floor in Asia and the cost of the factory is approximately the same. There’s no economic sense to build a factory in the states… which is where all the government subsidies enter the stage, but the budget is already running a war time deficit. It’s going to be so much worse for those small used-to-be-factory cities until the printer starts for real, and then…
Tariffs are used all over the world for this exact reason, which is what is being attempted now. It will take time for it to pay off, more time than the current administration has, which is likely why business will drag their feet. I think economic benefit goes beyond just having the lowest price. Having good jobs for people in the country means they have money to spend. If people make next to nothing, all they can a…
If you're building a new factory and the factory needs steel, they'll have to wait for the steel plant to be built before they can start construction. Trump has imposed tariffs on steel imports.
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools My students are shocked (horrified?) to learn that they're basically running 50-yr old Fortran code when they use scipy.minimize to train their fancy little neural nets.
No one uses scipy for anything serious anymore in AI research or on any type of modern models. You're setting your students up for failure if this is how you are teaching neural networks to them. You should switch to pytorch or at least something like tensorflow or jax or you are actively doing intellectual disservice to them and leading them to be actively noncompetitive both in AI academic paper writing/grad school…
Oh my. Teach something that lasts please.
In 2030, pytorch and uv will be so 2025.
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools My students are shocked (horrified?) to learn that they're basically running 50-yr old Fortran code when they use scipy.minimize to train their fancy little neural nets.
No one uses scipy for anything serious anymore in AI research or on any type of modern models. You're setting your students up for failure if this is how you are teaching neural networks to them. You should switch to pytorch or at least something like tensorflow or jax or you are actively doing intellectual disservice to them and leading them to be actively noncompetitive both in AI academic paper writing/grad school…
It sounds like a fundamental education failure and/or an extreme failure of tool design and training in workplaces if new employees with relevant degrees don't have the basic knowledge to pick up new tools on the job. A liberal arts education is for teaching basic transferrable skills, and is not a narrowly tailored job training program.
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
arguably the biggest driver is simply the cost of oil. crumple zones made of styrofoam and plastic bumpers arn't making things heavy. e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2019/01/03/new-ve...
That article is being disingenuous and wrong. It's comparing the lightest possible Civic configuration with the heaviest possible Accord of a different body type. The 2000 Accord sedan is 2,712lbs, not 2,987lbs (which would be the wagon). The 2019 Civic sedan is 2,743–2,923lbs depending on equipment/trim. So yes, the Civic compared to an older car of similar size did get heavier. The Miata proves that cars don't have…
> That article is being disingenuous and wrong. It's comparing the lightest possible Civic configuration with the heaviest possible Accord of a different body type.
Good to know.
> So yes, the Civic compared to an older car of similar size did get heavier.
If the minimum is 1% heavier and the maximum is 2% lighter then I would not say "did get heavier".
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
Global supply chains seem to be gradually breaking down due to a mix of politics, demographics, and armed conflicts. Everyone has become accustomed to the post-WWII system of global free trade but historically it is an aberration and everything will eventually revert to the mean. I wouldn't be surprised if China disintegrates into another civil war within the next few decades. We can't necessarily rely on foreign cou…
> China disintegrates into another civil war within the next few decades I'm curious about your reasoning on this. China was not the one at the top of my list of "Major world powers likely to have a civil war sooner than later"
China has had major internal violent conflicts many times: in 1967, 1960, 1937, 1916, 1856, and so on. Another civil war probably isn't imminent but based on historical patterns it's entirely possible in our lifetimes. There could be an external shock in terms of a severe disruption in food or energy imports, or an internal power struggle between CCP factions. Xi Jinping isn't immortal and no one can predict what might happen when he leaves power.
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a really interesting generation gap issue in the replies to your comment. What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools while the older folks are thinking (I imagine) “if the tools have lasted that long they must be well-honed and very good”. Of course, this could simply be the perspective of someone turning 50 this year.
My first thought is: "when that wears out or fails what the fuck are you replacing it with".
Something newer.
The reason that 50-year-old machine tools are still around isn't that they can't be replaced. It's that there's often no reason to.
To use OP as an example, in a lot of places, you'll find an ancient milling machine or a lathe that's dedicated to running a single job a few times a year. The machine was depreciated decades ago, but it can still do that job and there's no reason to get rid of it.
What modern tools give you is speed and flexibility. Many shops need neither.
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. In my opinion one of the biggest reasons we won't see manufacturing come back to Western countries is that we still believe this is how most factories operate. Chinese people aren't stupid , they have been spending a fortune on automating as much of their manufacturing as possible! Western lab…
I took a tour of the BMW Spartanburg factory a few days ago. It is highly automated with most work done by industrial robots. There are a few human workers manually pulling parts out of bins to feed the robots but nothing like the way that assembly lines used to operate. https://www.bmwgroup-werke.com/spartanburg/en.html
Wow - super automated and they still employ 11,000 people?
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a really interesting generation gap issue in the replies to your comment. What I perceive as younger people are horrified at the idea of fifty year old tools while the older folks are thinking (I imagine) “if the tools have lasted that long they must be well-honed and very good”. Of course, this could simply be the perspective of someone turning 50 this year.
My first thought is: "when that wears out or fails what the fuck are you replacing it with".
Sourcing via eBay.com
Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds catchy but I think it doesn't survive further inspection. People mucking around with machines and processes were rather instrumental in creating lathes, steam power, rockets, computers, looms, software, CNC-machines and all those other puzzle pieces we have available to make stuff. They are also instrumental in developing those things further. I'm also kind of curious as to know what kind of machine shops…
Machine shops, and serious software shops don't fo their mucking about in prod. Any machine shop experimentation that takes fown the production line is like Google or Meta going partially or fully offline - which has happened - but is also financially painful, so they do all they can to avoid it.
Sure - I guess this is generally true for most work domains, not just machine shops and serious software shops. However, the argument I was responding to was that there is no mucking about in the "real world" and that there is this difference between mucky software people and the serious creators of real stuff. Which I don't agree with.
btw: If we understand "machine shop" as a mass production environment with modern, integrated production lines, it is my anecdotal experience that there is a massive amount of muckery and fuckery involved in getting such an environment to run (usually called "integration" or some such which probably looks better on business cards). There's also a good chance that over the years - or decades - different people will engage in further iterations of the muck-pile to modify the system for new requirements from high on up or weird edge cases, to replace components that are no longer available with other stuff or to do whatever else the day might call for.