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

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

#491

Post by morshu9001 »

crote wrote: post #69
mullingitover wrote: post #44

The US spent decades transitioning from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, deliberately. Now there's a populist making political hay, throwing out numbers about trade deficits, which ignores revenue from services . Yes, there is have a trade deficit on goods, that was a long-term strategy because services were a superior investment. Manufacturing is an inferior way to make money unless you're planning to g…

> Nukes make conventional war for survival irrelevant. So how come Russia hasn't annexed Ukraine yet? And why spend literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year maintaining a conventional military when you already have nukes? And when are you going to press that button? Do you nuke Eurasia the second they cease diplomatic communications? When a cargo ship heading to LA founders for mysterious reasons? When a smal…

The other comment said "for survival." But yeah there are still nuclear powers fighting conventional wars, or posturing against each other with conventional weapons.

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

#492

Post by knowaveragejoe »

shawn_w wrote: post #157
ryandrake wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people romanticize 1950-style manufacturing jobs so much, like they are some kind of objectively ideal job. These jobs really weren't great. Bunch of dudes standing at an assembly line all day physically busting their asses and sweating it out. Sometimes in a physically hazardous environment. Sometimes breathing stinky and/or harmful chemicals. Sometimes surrounded by ear-damaging loud noises. Someti…

Back then a couple could buy a house and raise a few kids on the paycheck that factory job of the husband's earned. These days even someone with a 6 figure tech job has trouble with that goal, but I think a lot of people think they can go back to the good old days.

What's missed in that nostalgia: the house was crap; the appliances, if any, were crap; the car(if you had one, and only one), was crap. On and on.

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

#493

Post by SpicyUme »

ux266478 wrote: post #420
simgt wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you end up with 10-15 years? China is almost perfectly vertically integrated from raw materials to highly advanced finished products. Their industrialization started in the 70s. Getting to that level would require a lot of planning as well as the kind of hard constraints imposed on China through embargo. We're not even getting back to that level, we've never reached iPhone level of manufacturing in the US or E…

It was not linear growth. The 70s and 80s were essentially write-offs. Things began to move in the mid-1990s and it has been a continual evolution and process over the last 30 years. Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping's teams all did wildly different things for China. The vertical integration you mention was basically non-existent prior to 2020, it came about as part of the New Development Pattern (新发展格局) for the…

I remember when there was a big push to make ball point pen tips, and how a but less than 10 years later they succeeded in making them domestically.

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

#494

Post by ACCount37 »

myko wrote: post #456
ACCount37 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen this sentiment shared before and I just don't get it. What is the logical progression of "AI" to "more dangerous than the atomic bomb"?

Humans are dominating the environment by hopelessly outsmarting everything in it. Applied intelligence is extremely powerful.

Humans, however, are not immune to being hopelessly outsmarted themselves.

And what are we doing with AI now? We're trying to build systems that can do what human intelligence does - but cheaper, faster and more scalable. Multiple frontier labs have "AGI" - a complete system that matches or exceeds human performance in any given domain - as an explicitly stated goal. And the capabilities of the frontier systems keep advancing.

If AGI actually lands, it's already going to be a disruption of everything. Already a "humankind may render itself irrelevant" kind of situation. But at the very limit - if ASI follows?

Don't think "a very smart human". Think "Manhattan Project and CIA and Berkshire Hathaway, combined, raised to a level of competence you didn't think possible, and working 50 times faster than human institutions could". If an ASI wants power, it will get power. Whatever an ASI wants to happen will happen.

And if humanity isn't a part of what it wants? 10 digit death toll.

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

#495

Post by myrmidon »

myko wrote: post #456
ACCount37 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen this sentiment shared before and I just don't get it. What is the logical progression of "AI" to "more dangerous than the atomic bomb"?

The logical progression to me is AI acting in its own interests, and outcompeting humans much like humans outcompeted every other animal on the planet.

This is particularly threatening because AI is much less constrained on size, energy and training bandwidth than a human; should it overtake us in cognitive capabilities within the next century, I don't see a feasible way for us to keep up.

You might argue that AI has no good way to act on the physical world right now, or that the current state of the art is pathetic compared to humans, but a lot of progress can happen in a decade or two, and the writing is on the wall.

Human cognitive capability was basically brute-forced by evolution; I think it is almost naive to assume that our evolved capabilities will be able to keep up with purpose-build hardware over the long run (personally, I'd expect better-than-human AGI before 2050 with pretty high confidence).

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

#496

Post by morshu9001 »

lossolo wrote: post #457
crote wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nukes make conventional war for survival irrelevant. So how come Russia hasn't annexed Ukraine yet? And why spend literally hundreds of billions of dollars a year maintaining a conventional military when you already have nukes? And when are you going to press that button? Do you nuke Eurasia the second they cease diplomatic communications? When a cargo ship heading to LA founders for mysterious reasons? When a smal…

Exactly this. If you do not have the capability to produce as much conventional weaponry as your enemy (especially if that enemy also has a nuclear arsenal) then you've lost. Sitting in the Whitehouse facing the red button, you ask yourself which city are we willing to trade by pushing that button? Millions in New York or Los Angeles? That's why they will never use nukes. To retain world hegemon status and protect yo…

Can they even use nukes if they don't have any control over any nearby land or sea? I feel like they can't rely on just ICBMs.

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

#497

Post by tclancy »

petermcneeley wrote: post #341
tclancy wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I would doubt the guy who let Mike Tyson hit him in the head or anything, but don’t we have decades of research showing the negative effects of those?

I have never had anybody make this reference before!

Way back in the day I used to have the number for his answering machine, which had a ridiculously funny answer message in it.

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

#498

Post by softwaredoug »

Ironically green energy, EVs, etc is probably one of the best blue collar investments the country could make right now

Industries in the US are at an inflection point, with govt / global market giving conflicting signals. For example car manufacturers need to decide whether to invest in EVs, which is a huge capital investment they won't see return on for maybe a decade. If they dont invest, they won't be relevant outside the few markets clinging religiously to ICEs

Do you layout a billion dollars to try to stay relevant outside the US? Or stick to reliable, if soon shrinking, domestic internal combustion engine business model?[1]

Contrast this with AI where signals are unambiguous from government and investors.

1 - As an example, this $1.6B charge GM is taking https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-14/gm-to-tak...

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

#499

Post by micro_cam »

tclancy wrote: post #302
mikewarot wrote: post #133

Having worked in a job shop, a factory that did gears down to quantity one, I became quite aware of the differences between IT, my previous job, and actual physical production. The machine tools were all made 50+ years ago. Changing anything was a dangerous thing to do, because you might cause jobs that have known and reliable setups that are done a few times a year in quantity, to fail, erasing the profits for the j…

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.

People here also don't understand machine shops.

My dad ran a job shop focused on small jobs and the economics are different.

A lot of his work was keeping other local shops / industrial equipment up and running. So there is a lot of variety of work but very low throughput and kind of by deffintion you have the capabilities to fix your own machines.

Programing a CNC machine makes it east to make a lot of the same part but if you only need one it may be quicker to just knock it out manually.

A 50 year old mill or lathe is easy to keep up and running, can be upgraded with a Digital readout or even CNC controls if desired. A tool in a shop like this likely won't see the cycles one on a factory floor constant uses sees but may be worth keeping around since it offers a unique capability...he had a large ww ii surplus lathe for jobs that wouldn't fit on the smaller more modern machines for example.

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

#500

Post by dunham »

mikewarot wrote: post #449
dunham wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the Sun monitors (21" I think) were about 80 lbs. I've read that part of that was a metal frame to hold all of the wires in front of the screen. They were fun monitors - we had a lab full of them, they would degauss on startup, and the degausser would induct into the monitor next to it (and a little bit into the monitor after that).

The weight from a CRT is mostly about the amount of glass required to keep the atmosphere out, as it's essentially a vacuum bottle with better marketing. On that 21" display, you've got about 6000 pounds of force trying to push the face inward, not to mention the sides, neck, etc.

Yeah, these monitors were a bit heavier than most consumer 21" monitors at the time. We also got Viewsonic monitors for PCs, which were lighter. At the time, I had assumed the additional weight was from extra shielding, but I later read that some of the weight difference was a metal frame holding the wires. The trinitron had a bunch of vertical wires instead of a grid of holes on the front - If I remember right, they'd shimmer a little if you smacked the side of the monitor with your hand.

It's possible they also had more glass than typical for a 21" monitor, I don't recall if they were any flatter than the Viewsonics or not.

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