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There has been a lot of hype news in robotics + AI lately, as the AI updates just continue to come at a blinding pace. From Tesla/XAI we have the Optimus robot, which I can't tell if this is a major breakthrough or just another marketing splash driven by Elon.
On the other side of the fence, you have Nvidia releasing an open foundational model for robotics and partnering with Disney of all companies to make a droid robot.
You also have Google's I/O, which I haven't had the energy to look into.
With the speed of AI updates and the wars of hype, it's always hard to tell who is actually advancing the frontier. But it does seem that in particular robotics are advancing quite rapidly compared to even a couple of years ago. Personally I think that while automating white collar work is useful and such, AI entering into robotics will be the real game changer. If we can begin to massively automate building things like housing, roads, and mass manufactured goods, all of the sudden we get into an explosive growth curve.
Of course, this is where AGI doomer fears do become more salient, so that's something to watch out for.
Either way, another day, another AI discourse. What do you think of this current crop of news?
It is crazy to me that most people alive today will be around to see how this - this journey of civilization, this grand process of technological development - ends, or at least moves far, far beyond us. There is a millenarian tension in the air. Paradise or extinction (at least for most people), it seems increasingly clear it will be one or the other.
I've been feeling this vibe lately. Humanoid Robots, Starship, and LLMs are the three things that make this feel more like the future than it ever has.
We are SO CLOSE. To being multiplanetary, interacting with computers that pass the turing test for 95% of the population, and finally being able to own a golden retriever without having to sweep every single day.
But it all seems to be hanging on the edge of a knife. Our governments are so obscenely powerful, people are so scared and stupid, weapons continue to become so much more lethal.
At the end of the day I'm just in wait and see mode. Whatever happens happens. I didn't grow powerful enough to meaningfully affect the outcome in time I don't think, so might as well worry about what I can control.
It feels like a triage problem, doesn't it?
When your emergency center has too many victims to work on them all right away, you quickly assess them all and mark each person with one of 3 (in the original "tri"-age) tags: one group is going to live without your help, one is going to die regardless of your help, and one is borderline enough that they'll die without your help but live with it. You don't help the victims who need the most help, you help the victims where your help does the most good.
There's a bunch of wild possible futures where humanity dies out regardless of what I do, and there's a bunch of wild possible futures where humanity becomes so rich that we all end up fine no matter what I do. I might as well continue to focus on the more mundane possible futures that fall in between those extremes, even as the in-between category (which once felt nearly certain) becomes less and less likely, because the in-between futures are the only ones where my actions would have made a difference.
Yep.
But it starts to drive you (well, ME) a tiny bit insane to have to act 'normal' while you have an acute awareness of the impending moment.
I literally cannot believe that I'm sitting at my desk, at work, while some other dude, in a lab or office somewhere else, is engineering an AI that is going to replace my job or possibly kill me in a few years.
Its like if humanity discovered the massive Egg that Godzilla was about to hatch from. And scientists on analysis estimate that "This thing is going to hatch within 2-10 years, and there's not much we can do about it."
But I have to go back to work and ignore the Godzilla egg and do spreadsheets and contracts and all the stuff that keeps society moving, knowing that unless the hatching fails entirely, none of this will make a damn spit of difference.
I like my job, but I think it’s all about not living through it. I take solace in the things that I hope will still matter to me no matter what.
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