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AI for American-produced cement and concrete

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Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#51

Post by Isamu »

sebastianeament wrote: post #23
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #9

> As a result, producers need a way to rapidly explore and validate new formulations without spending months in the lab. How do you bypass the normal process of pouring test articles and testing them months and years after cure? This is fundamentally a research activity that needs to conduct verifiable science. Not something you can guess at with an LLM.

Hi, I developed the model. We are not bypassing the regular testing process, and are not using LLMs, but Gaussian processes with vetted test data. The predictions are used as recommendations for onsite testing, to accelerate finding mixtures with optimal strength-speed-sustainability trade-offs.

That’s helpful. So instead of a much larger test matrix you are using a model to reduce that to the most likely candidates, right?

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#52

Post by m4rkuskk »

sebastianeament wrote: post #35
AngryData wrote: post #10

Jesus I hope they do proper testing for these experimental mixes and don't trust whatever random garbage AI decides you should mix in. This is exactly the kind of thing AI is absolutely terrible at because it has no logical skills or direct experience or ability to test it. If your AI coded stuff goes belly up, you get to try again. If your multi million dollar cement foundation turns out to be sub-par, thats multi m…

We use Gaussian processes trained on vetted test data from academic and industry partners. We use these predictions to recommend mixes for onsite testing to accelerate finding mixtures with optimal strength-speed-sustainability trade-offs. None of the data and predictions go untested. The blog post goes into this in more detail.

What do you mean by "onsite testing"? Wouldn't this be part of the pre-submittal process?

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#53

Post by Waterluvian »

romaniv wrote: post #50
woah wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody needs to coin a new term for the scattershot zero-thought AI griping that is pervasive in online comments these days. Meatslop? Obviously it's going to be more productive for a manufacturer to do a years-long curing test on 100 likely candidates instead of 100 random mixes. They obviously already screen candidates through traditional methods, but if this AI technique improves accuracy, all the better.

The current strategy of the AI hype machine is to exhaust people's reserves of attention by presenting a never-ending stream of hard-to-verify "positive" claims. It's Gish Gallop done on the Internet scale with a never-ending parade of tech influencers, proxy "journalists" and low-value accounts. The whole strategy aims for saturation and demoralized acceptance. It's no surprise that people readjust their immediate r…

It feels related to “it’s easier to argue with a smart person than an idiot.”

It’s really exhausting to feel negative all the time when faced with the cavalcade of terribly weak claims.

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#54

Post by jauntywundrkind »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #45
MisterTea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On-site, before pouring, they use the slump test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_slump_test

Glad to see someone pointed this out. The test consists of a bucket, plywood board & a stopwatch.

Hopefully there's good empirical data powering the model here, which just added slump prediction:

> Alongside the event, Meta is releasing a new AI model for designing concrete mixes, Bayesian Optimization for Concrete (BOxCrete). BOxCrete improves over Meta’s previous models with more robustness to noisy data as well as new features including the ability to predict concrete slump (an important indicator of concrete workability).

Seems hard to imagine not doing a slump test, trusting AI when it comes to your multi/many million dollar build outs for something so important. But perhaps still useful for planning, as a starting place?

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#55

Post by no_shadowban_6 »

Animats wrote: post #28

Hand-held devices for testing concrete properties would be more useful. Most concrete problems come from a bad mix - too much water, not enough cement, etc. Concrete testing usually involves cutting a core out of the poured slab and sending it to a lab. Something where you stick a probe in the mix and can reject it before pouring would help. Here are some on-site concrete testers.[1] They're heavy and a pain to use.…

[flagged]

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#56

Post by sebastianeament »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #54
sidewndr46 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see someone pointed this out. The test consists of a bucket, plywood board & a stopwatch.

Hopefully there's good empirical data powering the model here, which just added slump prediction: > Alongside the event, Meta is releasing a new AI model for designing concrete mixes, Bayesian Optimization for Concrete (BOxCrete). BOxCrete improves over Meta’s previous models with more robustness to noisy data as well as new features including the ability to predict concrete slump (an important indicator of concrete…

The predictions of the model are used as recommendations for onsite testing to accelerate finding mixtures with optimal strength-speed-sustainability trade-offs. We are not replacing canonical testing with the model.

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#57

Post by sebastianeament »

Isamu wrote: post #51
sebastianeament wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I developed the model. We are not bypassing the regular testing process, and are not using LLMs, but Gaussian processes with vetted test data. The predictions are used as recommendations for onsite testing, to accelerate finding mixtures with optimal strength-speed-sustainability trade-offs.

That’s helpful. So instead of a much larger test matrix you are using a model to reduce that to the most likely candidates, right?

That's right.

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#58

Post by michaelmrose »

no_shadowban_6 wrote: post #55
Animats wrote: post #28

Hand-held devices for testing concrete properties would be more useful. Most concrete problems come from a bad mix - too much water, not enough cement, etc. Concrete testing usually involves cutting a core out of the poured slab and sending it to a lab. Something where you stick a probe in the mix and can reject it before pouring would help. Here are some on-site concrete testers.[1] They're heavy and a pain to use.…

[flagged]

Do you actually see construction workers being replaced? We need more stuff built than we have people or time. We have spent a century improving process and tools and if we 10 years from now could build 3 times as much with the same people we would find a use for them all.

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#59

Post by ortusdux »

m4rkuskk wrote: post #46
ortusdux wrote: post #15

Tangentially related, but there is a new generation of trucks that mix the concrete on-site. They can output small batches and change the mix on the fly. They solve a lot of headaches! https://cementech.com/volumetric-technology/

This may work on a small scale, not in most commercial use cases. A typical deck pour (400cy) will pour at 70-80cy/hr. you got 9-10cy/truck. Meaning you have 7 to 8 minutes to back in the truck, empty it into the hopper and leave. You barely have time to add water to the mix. Most high-volume concrete plants are "dry-batch", which means all the ingredients get dumped into the drum and the concrete will get mixed whil…

The target audience of these trucks is sub-10cy jobs. It allows companies to cater to smaller customers at a premium.

Re: AI for American-produced cement and concrete

#60

Post by knicholes »

no_shadowban_6 wrote: post #55
Animats wrote: post #28

Hand-held devices for testing concrete properties would be more useful. Most concrete problems come from a bad mix - too much water, not enough cement, etc. Concrete testing usually involves cutting a core out of the poured slab and sending it to a lab. Something where you stick a probe in the mix and can reject it before pouring would help. Here are some on-site concrete testers.[1] They're heavy and a pain to use.…

[flagged]

Yikes, what a flippant comment. The mix composition (meta's AI is helping with this) is separate from the wet concrete product. The parent is suggesting a way to test that the mix is properly mixed before pouring, not suggesting a way for construction workers to determine that the chemical properties of the mix will be correct on site. Furthermore, they're not even using LLMs, so it's not "AGI".
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