141–150 of 190 posts
Where I live (in suburbia Virginia), we now can get items from the local WalMart grocery via DroneUp, which kind of blows mind.
For me this predictions are kind of being aware of how progress can happen based on history, but this will not lead to any breakthrough. I am not in the camp of being skeptic so I still like the hype cycle, they create an environment for people to break the boundaries and sometimes help untested ideas and things to be explored. This might not have happen if there is no hype cycle. I am in the camp of people who are p…
How much money has been burned on robo-taxis which could have been spent on incubators for kids.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how I could have been more clear that I'm not suggesting we stop development on robotaxis or anything related to AI. All I'm asking is that we take a moment to reflect on the people who won't be winners. Which is going to be a hell of a lot of people. And right now there is absolutely zero plan for what to do when these folks have one of the few remaining opportunities taken away from them. As awful as t…
This is orthogonal. You're living in a society with no social safety net, one which leaves people with minimal options, and you're arguing for keeping at least those minimal options. Yes, that's better than nothing, but there are much better solutions. The US is one of the richest countries in the world, with all that wealth going to a few people. "Give everyone else a few scraps too!" is better than having nothing,…
But this is the society we live in now. We don’t live in one where we take care of those whose jobs have been displaced.
I wish we did. But we don’t. So it’s hard for me to feel quite as excited these days for the next thing that will make the world worse for so many people, even if it is a technological marvel.
Just between trucking and rideshare drivers we’re talking over 10 million people. Maybe this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and finally gets us to take better care of our neighbors.
It's long, so I'm skimming a little and... flying cars. If you don't know why we don't have flying cars, you're not a good engineer. It really doesn't matter what prestigious lab you ran, as that apparently didn't impart the ability to think critically about engineering problems. [Hint: Flying takes 10x the energy of driving, and the cost/weight/volume of 1 MJ hasn't changed in close to a hundred years. Flying cars r…
The article is responding to claims by CEOs of car companies, industry and business press, and other hype sources that keep predicting flying cars next year or so. It's predicting that, against this hype, it will not come to pass. Not sure why you've worded your comment in such a way as if the article was hyping up flying cars. Not to mention, since we do have helicopters, the engineering challange of flying cars is…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is orthogonal. You're living in a society with no social safety net, one which leaves people with minimal options, and you're arguing for keeping at least those minimal options. Yes, that's better than nothing, but there are much better solutions. The US is one of the richest countries in the world, with all that wealth going to a few people. "Give everyone else a few scraps too!" is better than having nothing,…
I agree. But this is the society we live in now. We don’t live in one where we take care of those whose jobs have been displaced. I wish we did. But we don’t. So it’s hard for me to feel quite as excited these days for the next thing that will make the world worse for so many people, even if it is a technological marvel. Just between trucking and rideshare drivers we’re talking over 10 million people. Maybe this will…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> preferably, much cheaper than today's absurd Uber rates I just want to highlight that the only mechanism by which this eventually produces cheaper rates is by removing having to pay a human driver. I’m not one to forestall technological progress, but there are a huge number of people already living on the margins who will lose one of their few remaining options for income as this expands. AI will inevitably create…
Public transit would also remove lot of jobs and yet nobody suggesting we shouldn't build more public transit because it will remove jobs. This is just coming from using what we already know how to do better.
Self-driving cars will be disruptive globally. So far they primarily drive employment in a small set of the technology industry. Yes, there are manufacturing jobs involved but those are overwhelmingly going to be jobs that were already building human-operated vehicles. Self-driving cars will save many lives. But not as many as public transit does (proportionally per user) And it is blindingly obvious they will make traffic worse.
One thing to remember is that there is more than one target audience in these claims. VCs for example seem to operate on a rough principle of 5 tech companies, 4 make 0x and one makes 10x, for a total 2x on each investment. If you only promise 5x, with 4 failures of 0x and one success at 5x, total return is 1x on each (not worth the risk). You may say "yes, my company is 2x, but it is guaranteed!" - but they all sell this idea. VCs could be infinitely good at predicting success and great companies, but it's based on partial information. Essentially companies have to promise the 10x and the VCs assume they are likely incorrect anyway, in order to balance the risk profile.
I do have a fundamental problem with this "infinite growth" model that almost everything seems based on.
> There is steady growth in sales but my prediction of 30% of US car sales being electric by 2027 now seems wildly optimistic. We need two doublings to get there in three years and the doubling rate seems more like one doubling in four to five years.
Even one doubling in 4-5 years might be too much. There are fundamental issues to be addressed:
1. What do we do about crashed EVs? They are dangerous to store and dangerous to dismantle. There have been quite a few EV fires at places like Copart now. There is little to no value in crashed EVs because they are so dangerous, which pushes insurance up because they cannot recover these funds.
2. Most car dealerships in the UK refuse to accept EVs for trade-in, because they sit on their forecourt until they eventually die. Those who can afford EVs typically get them on finance when the batteries provide the fullest range. Nobody I know is buying 10 year old EVs with no available replacement batteries. Commerical fleets are also not buying any more EVs as they essentially get no money back after using them for 3 years or so.
3. The electrical grid cannot scale to handle EVs. With every Western country decarbonising their electrical grid in favour of renewable energy, they have zero ability to respond to increased load.
The truth is, when they push to remove fossil fuel vehicles, they simply want to take your personal transport from you. There is no plan for everybody to maintain personal mobility, it'll be a privilege reserved for the rich. You'll be priced out and put onto public transport, where there will be regular strikes because the government is broke and wages cannot increase - because who knew, infinite growth is a terrible investment model.
> The other thing that has gotten over hyped in 2024 is humanoids robots.
> The visual appearance of a robot makes a promise about what it can do and how smart it is.
The real sin is not HRI issues, it's that we simply cannot justify them. What job is a humanoid robot supposed to do? Who is going to be buying tens of thousands of the first unit? What is the killer application? What will a humanoid robot do that it is not cheaper/more effective to do with a real human, or cannot be done better with a specialised robot?
Anything you can think of which is a humanoid robot performing a single physical action repeatedly, is wrong. It would need to be a series of tasks that keeps the robot highly busy, and the nature of the work needs to be somewhat unpredictable (otherwise use a dedicated robot). After all, humans are successful not because we do one thing well, but because we do many not-well defined things good-enough. This kind of generalisation is probably harder than all other AI problems, and likely requires massive advances in real-time learning, embodiment and intrinsic motivation.
What we need sub-problems for robots, i.e. like a smart vacuum, where robots are slowly but surely introduced into complex environments where they can safely incrementally improve. Trying to crack self-driving 1+ tonne high speed death machines in your first attempt is insanity.
I don't have a pulse on how far self-driving has come from a tech standpoint, but from an outsider's perspective I'd say it is "achieved" when I can order a self-driving car from an app in all of the top 10 most populated cities in the US (since that's where it is being developed) with as much consistency as uber/lyft. The real final boss for self-driving will be the government red-tape that companies will need to ge…
Of course, then we will eventually see infrastructure become even more hostile to non-drivers and people will have to sue their own governments for the right to exist in public without paying transport companies. Strong Towns tried to warn us
I don't have a pulse on how far self-driving has come from a tech standpoint, but from an outsider's perspective I'd say it is "achieved" when I can order a self-driving car from an app in all of the top 10 most populated cities in the US (since that's where it is being developed) with as much consistency as uber/lyft. The real final boss for self-driving will be the government red-tape that companies will need to ge…
the final boss will be the first big lawsuit against a manufacturer for liability after someone is killed by a driverless car Of course, then we will eventually see infrastructure become even more hostile to non-drivers and people will have to sue their own governments for the right to exist in public without paying transport companies. Strong Towns tried to warn us