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America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#471

Post by overfeed »

zevon wrote: post #446
roenxi wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, the hardware situation you described sounds very brittle to me. If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic, that sounds like there's very little space of tinkering, exploration or innovation. The technical term for that is "the real world". Moment of perspective on just how weird the software people are that they don't just accept mucking around as expensive and dangerous.

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.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#472

Post by baq »

cpursley wrote: post #437
baq wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a disaster for China's economy in the long term unless they automate themselves, which they'll very much want to do. It isn't a disaster for the natural ecosystem obviously.

Want to do? They’re doing it now, and are ahead of the west in some processes already. It’s a made up concern because they are a geopolitical rival. And their economy is already a major success story; they’ve lifted something like 800 million people out of abject poverty in the last 25 years.

I don't disagree about the economic outcome today, but I don't understand how you can say that demographics issues are made up - either they are made up in the west, too, or they aren't. Nobody knows what will happen in the next 25 years, maybe nothing much, maybe we'll all be replaced by humanoid robots in the west, in the east and in the third world, too.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#473

Post by bogdanoff_2 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #435
rglover wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shockingly rare question to be asked. As best as I can tell, the biggest threat to civilization isn't AI, it's our culture of "that's not my problem" leaving otherwise patch-able holes in critical systems.

The biggest threat to civilization is, in fact, AI. It's a new problem, and one with an utterly ridiculous lethality at its limit. It makes the atomic bomb look benign. "That's not my problem" is something humans have been dealing with since before they mastered the art of sharpening a stick.

> "That's not my problem" is something humans have been dealing with since before they mastered the art of sharpening a stick.

Yes, and that's why civilizations have kept rising and falling throughout history.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#474

Post by lesuorac »

ap99 wrote: post #467
lesuorac wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't have to build it yourself. If China wants to play hardball then Vietnam can make the goods. This is the great system we had until Trump decided he'd piss off every country. We had a very much you vs the world when doing diplomacy as USA but now it's just you vs USA which is a much weaker position.

There won't always be a Vietnam or an India.

Chinas been around for a few thousand years, what's something they can do that nobody else has been able to replicate?

There's always a Vietnam.

Even now with all the talk about "rare earth minerals". They're not rare, everybody has them, its just nobody else wants to pollute their rivers mining and refining them when China is willing to.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#475

Post by ModernMech »

mikewarot wrote: post #451
ModernMech wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I have students who ask me "Why are we learning C++? My dad said it's older than him!"

Ask that question in language arts, and you'll get some very weird looks.

That's pretty much what I told the student, along with "everything you're studying in every other class is also older than your dad, and that's why you study it."

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#476

Post by [deleted] »

pessimizer wrote: post #288
walthamstow wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For that economy to come back, you need all possible competitors to be weak and poor, in the mid 20th century that meant either still agrarian (China) or rebuilding after war (Japan and Europe). It was a unique moment and it's never coming back.

This doesn't make any sense at all. The reason China is dominant in manufacturing isn't because the other countries of the world were weak and agrarian and rebuilding after war. What would be awesome is if half-assed finance bro speeches weren't being thrown around as serious macro.

[deleted]

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#477

Post by kube-system »

jcgrillo wrote: post #419
kube-system wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sound is great because it does not require line of sight. There's a reason why emergency vehicles have both lights and sirens, and it isn't because all of them have unnecessary equipment.

Agreed, but the root cause of the issue the emergency vehicle operator are noticing isn't sound deadening or infotainment gizmos, it's inattentive distracted drivers. Probably playing with their cell phones instead of driving. Similarly, in a manufacturing situation playing with your phone or watching tv is likely to cause problems. Inattention and inability to focus on the job is the problem. You can't solve that wi…

Distracted driving is certainly a problem.

But, have you ever driven a quiet vehicle in an urban area where there are plenty of objects to block your line of sight? It is quite easy for a emergency vehicle to sneak up on you in a modern vehicle even when you are paying attention.

It's really a simple relationship -- if you block sound, it makes it harder to hear things.

This is exactly the reason why newer emergency vehicles have things like rumbler sirens. These sirens don't do anything to make people more attentive, but what they do is generate frequencies that are more likely to penetrate into modern vehicles.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#478

Post by syntaxing »

defraudbah wrote: post #297
syntaxing wrote: post #295

I’m a software engineer now but I was a design mechanical engineer for a decade. In America, mechanical engineers always felt like the bottom of barrel. The pay, benefits, and authority was always worse, even at the big tech companies. Culturally, America wants manufacturing back but doesn’t give it the respect it deserves.

do you still create stuff for fun? As for mechanical engineer many things that are puzzling to average engineer are easy to understand / recreate by mechanical engineer, especially in 3d printing era

I do a lot of small mechanical projects for fun. But designing something for one or two pieces is very different from designing something that is made in the hundreds or even thousands.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#479

Post by Spooky23 »

bluGill wrote: post #412
tim333 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don’t think you understand how primitive American society is compared to Asia. >People in backwards places like rural... That's not actually true. You want to visit rural Asia and compare.

There are backward rural places in America. However the vast majority of rural people have had reliable electric since the 1950s, along with phone (though those lines may not longer work since everyone has gone cellular). They bought their first color TV in the 1960s like everyone else. They drive cars (the image of a red neck mowing his grass and finding a car - they drove that car 30 years ago, when it wore out the…

In the US? Whenever possible, we build industrial facilities in rural areas for a cheaper workforce and to avoid unionization. Meat packing is the textbook example. Distribution centers are the more modern one.

It’s always important to talk about rural citizens because politicians pretend that they don’t exist. The rural poor have a lot in common with the urban poor, but are separated both deliberately and by inertia.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#480

Post by [deleted] »

pessimizer wrote: post #288
walthamstow wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For that economy to come back, you need all possible competitors to be weak and poor, in the mid 20th century that meant either still agrarian (China) or rebuilding after war (Japan and Europe). It was a unique moment and it's never coming back.

This doesn't make any sense at all. The reason China is dominant in manufacturing isn't because the other countries of the world were weak and agrarian and rebuilding after war. What would be awesome is if half-assed finance bro speeches weren't being thrown around as serious macro.

[deleted]
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