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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

#631

Post by basisword »

toephu2 wrote: post #599

What many Americans don't realize is that China has already surpassed the United States in terms of development (developing country vs developed country sense of the word). Obviously both are 'developed' countries at this point but compare Chinese tier 1 cities vs American tier 1 cities. I would argue Chinese tier 1 cities are 10-20 years ahead of their American counterparts. source: visit any Chinese tier 1 city (Be…

>> extensive subway systems with protective barriers at every single station (so you can't suicide or push someone on the tracks)

I find this one most interesting. In London for example this is brought up all the time. There is always an excuse (cost, platform length, trains can't stop at the same spot etc etc) and we accept ~100 suicide attempts per year not to mention various accidents. There's the immediate human cost, the PTSD for first emergency workers + the disruption to public transport.

If we can't invest in simple things that would make a meaningful difference how do we expect to match those big infrastructure projects? Crossrail is fantastic but was delayed many years. HS2 is beyond a joke.

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

#632

Post by itchyouch »

toephu2 wrote: post #599

What many Americans don't realize is that China has already surpassed the United States in terms of development (developing country vs developed country sense of the word). Obviously both are 'developed' countries at this point but compare Chinese tier 1 cities vs American tier 1 cities. I would argue Chinese tier 1 cities are 10-20 years ahead of their American counterparts. source: visit any Chinese tier 1 city (Be…

As an East Asian, not really trying to argue that China hasn’t accomplished great things.

While I can’t speak directly to this, but from watching The China Show on YouTube, the tradeoff to the amazing amenities is that the personal-injury risk from failing infrastructure has been fatal, but covered up by their propaganda. Anyone on the receiving end of it, will deal with devastating consequences, if not fatal.

Infrastructure and manufacturing corners are cut in ways that look great, but literally kill their population and tourists.

Building foundations are not thick enough, buildings aren’t built to proper fire safety standards, underground pipes leak, leading to roads constantly failing, high rises burn down, sewage pipes literally blow up due to methane build up like someone detonated a bomb.

Drainage grates are fake and flooding cities, drowning people in vehicles, while the QA of car battery manufacturing is causing electric fleets of cars in parking lots to burn.

And the aforementioned occurrences are happening in tier1 cities.

I sound hyperbolic, but China is great at quickly cleaning up and quickly rebuilding, so it doesn’t seem nearly as bad as it does.

Once I learned about the infrastructure, I realized my cousin’s business trip accident in China was not a randomly rare accident.

He broke his back in China when his rental car’s front wheel popped off the car.

Chances are most folks are fine if they go. But I would be very weary, because the probability of a disaster is not nearly as high as it ought to be.

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

#633

Post by basisword »

tracker1 wrote: post #615
augstein wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transportation is on a different level and all mayor cities are connected via a high speed rail network. The latter probably will never happen in the US.

Considering the US has far fewer people far more spread out, with two major sets of mountain ranges just in the continental US probably not. It might be possible to have high speed rail on either coast with a single rail line following along a route near I-10 east=west. Even then it's a lot of nature to overcome.

I feel like these are the kinds of excuses that would be ignored with Chinese infrastructure projects. Tunnel through the mountains.

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

#634

Post by loire280 »

tracker1 wrote: post #615
augstein wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transportation is on a different level and all mayor cities are connected via a high speed rail network. The latter probably will never happen in the US.

Considering the US has far fewer people far more spread out, with two major sets of mountain ranges just in the continental US probably not. It might be possible to have high speed rail on either coast with a single rail line following along a route near I-10 east=west. Even then it's a lot of nature to overcome.

There's a lot of population centers in the US that could be better connected without crossing the Rockies.

Beijing to Shanghai is roughly the same distance as Chicago to New York City. Travel time via train is 4.5 hours vs 22 hours.

Boston to New York is almost 4 hours on the Acela!

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

#635

Post by deadbabe »

gmadsen wrote: post #556
deadbabe wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you can run a GPT5 level LLM locally on a device, it’s over. All this mighty infrastructure is no longer any more impressive than a top of the line 2013 Mac Pro in 2025. I think we’re 10 years away from that.

10 years from now, the capabilities of gpt5 will be as relevant to AI as Atari is to modern gaming

I doubt it. Newer state of the art models might be a little better, but not enough to justify paying $1000/month for the average person or employee.

If you can get a GPT5 level AI, locally and privately, for just the cost of electricity, why would you bother with anything else? If it can’t do something, you’d just outsource that one prompt to a cloud based AI.

The vast majority of your prompts will be passing through a local LLM first in 2035, and you might rarely need to touch an agent API. So what does that mean for the AI industry?

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

#636

Post by baq »

cpursley wrote: post #593
baq wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are made up in sense of it being some kind huge pending disaster for China. Also, trends can reverse with the right policies.

The disaster is a classic train wreck in super slow motion best proxied by 30-year government bond yield, currently the highest on the curve at 2.27.

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

#637

Post by NegativeK »

nvader wrote: post #216
DannyBee wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If the machine shop is so tightly constrained and error-phobic, that sounds like there's very little space of tinkering, exploration or innovation." This is the opposite of brittle. You say this as if those things are desired here. Those things would be a net negative to a well known production process for complex parts. After years, that process has been refined to basically the limits of the machines and the physi…

This is fascinating. I really don't know much about the world you're describing, so thank you for sharing your perspective. Don't customer needs change over time? How would one adapt to shifting demand, or new materials becoming available, or old materials going out of supply.

> How would one adapt to shifting demand, or new materials becoming available, or old materials going out of supply.

That's very unlikely. New materials would require the company requesting the part to reengineer it, recertify it, or at least retest it. But even still we're not coming up with materials that are a significant improvement in most fields. Aerospace, sure. It can be worth it to iterate and improve. Most things, a part that's worked for 50 years will keep working and will be happily profitable in maintenance mode. Those customers want reliability, not to test some improvement on a part that has negligible impact in the overall system.

And the common metals (gears are typically steel, maybe a yellow metal) are made in such large amounts that new materials are going to cost a heck of a lot more. So the customer is going to wreck their profit while the machine shop probably isn't going to have to change their process that much.

There definitely is innovation in machining. New processes are making tighter tolerances more achievable or material removal faster. But to the top commentor's point (who showed me how to use a benchtop lathe over a decade ago), the capital investment for a new machine plus the labor of duplicating all of your work plus the unknown maintenance costs, etc etc etc just don't make sense when Moore's law doesn't apply.

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

#638

Post by rgblambda »

EasyMark wrote: post #304
rgblambda wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my limited experience working in a factory environment, listening to music can be a real workplace safety issue if it reduces your ability to hear forklifts or coworkers shouting warnings.

that's not a problem if the people who will be interacting with fork lifts stay in designated areas as do the forklift operators. Nothing is ever going to b 0% chance of an accident but simply adhering to basic rules should keep people on an assembly line listening to spotify from taking a forklift to the knee. Have you ever worked on a factory floor at all? Sure some positions would be impossible but not for 80-90%…

In the factory floor I previously worked in, you needed to cross the forklift's domain to go to the bathroom and break room. This involved using exits also used by the forklift. You needed to hear it coming.

Even setting aside the forklift, having music playing reduces your ability to hear a coworker shout "Help, my clothes are caught on the line. Push the emergency stop".

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

#639

Post by nradov »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #510
red-iron-pine wrote: post #378

Earlier 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...

Another thing not mentioned by this poor article (everything forbes does these days is hot garbage), is that vehicles which are heavier do damage quartically proportional to their weight - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law So the ever increasing weight of cars, trucks, SUVs, and especially semi-trucks is also responsible for our roads being shit, full of potholes, and expensive to fix.

Exactly because of the fourth power low, almost all of the road damage comes from the heaviest vehicles: class 7 and 8 trucks as well as buses etc. Even the heaviest passenger vehicles are negligible by comparison. And the weight of semi-trucks hasn't been "ever increasing": normal maximum weight has been fixed at 80,000 pounds for decades.

In some areas the roads are shit due to weather conditions, mainly frost heaves. This has little to do with vehicle damage.

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

#640

Post by tracker1 »

basisword wrote: post #633
tracker1 wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the US has far fewer people far more spread out, with two major sets of mountain ranges just in the continental US probably not. It might be possible to have high speed rail on either coast with a single rail line following along a route near I-10 east=west. Even then it's a lot of nature to overcome.

I feel like these are the kinds of excuses that would be ignored with Chinese infrastructure projects. Tunnel through the mountains.

Yeah, nobody in the US is working on that at all...

https://www.boringcompany.com/

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