• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    100·
    5 months ago

    Twenty years ago, some savvy engineers created the Rumba. It’s a kind of annoying overpriced vacuum cleaner, but you can at least see the edges of a useful appliance.

    Ten years ago, everyone was smelling their own farts about the advent of autonomous taxis. And, idk, we can at least pretend we’re in the ballpark right now.

    Today, it’s noticeable how AI feels like a surrender on actual autonomous machines. Like, the idea of doing actual robotics is out the window. We’re only going to spend our money on a solved problem - data processing - and see what we can wring out of it.

    I do wonder what this will mean in another ten or twenty years.

    • shadowfax13@lemmy.mlEnglish
      18·
      5 months ago

      there is plenty of work going on autonomous front but its solely focused on means to kill the peasants who try to inconvenience the oligarchs. take a look at palmers anduril industries. there are other such companies based in the confederate states.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        5 months ago

        There’s a lot of salesmanship going on. But whether it really does anything or it just outsources work to a Mechanical Turk or blows smoke up your ass?

        Even Lavender AI seems more like an excuse for conventional manual massacre than a real Skynet for Palestinians.

        What does Anduril do that the NSA or the CIA wasn’t already doing, except maybe putting a thick coat of bullshit on the conclusion?

        • shadowfax13@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          5 months ago

          nsa and cia can’t whack large number of americans without some risk of mutiny from the soldiers. ai based large scale precision strike does give them both the capability and excuse to do so. what’s easier, to ask 100k soldiers to kill 2-3 people each and feel no guilt or a dozen narcissistic psychopaths to kill 10k people each and feel godlike ? its not really rocket science just track their cell and do a missile/drone strike at the location with basic face detection. they don’t care for few false-positives. its not like any of the targets will be living near oligarchs palace or mega-yacht

          you are right the lavender is far from skynet but it lets the israeli scums say that they are not indiscriminately killing innocents but based on petabytes of data analysed by microsoft. and you can’t punish ai for mistakes. bombing kids collecting water or destroying a dialysis center, oopsie sorry the ai hallucinated, we will ask trump for a multi-billion refund to buy more bombs for proper testing.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            5 months ago

            nsa and cia can’t whack large number of americans without some risk of mutiny from the soldiers

            I haven’t seen any evidence of that. If anything, the number of ex-military in the new ICE would suggest the opposite.

            it lets the israeli scums say that they are not indiscriminately killing innocents but based on petabytes of data analysed by microsoft

            Sure. Drop a bomb, kill a dozen people, get a little print out that says “all of these people were terrorists”.

            It works well in Israel largely because the public (and particularly the military) are juiced on hate. They’ve already done 90% of the work of indoctrination up front.

            You don’t even talk about hallucinations. You just say “data indicated terrorists” and move on.

            But it’s trivial to tell a computer to tag a picture of a person as <img person=“terrorist”>. That’s not something Palmer Luckey needs a multi billion dollar payday to accomplish. Just like with Elon, a bunch of this tech is smoke and mirrors. It’s six guys dragging a CyberTaxi on stage, so a few dorks can step out and say “The Future is Magic Cars!”

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      7·
      5 months ago

      Yeah, that robotics stuff is happening still (e.g. little robot mowers using machine vision for easier guidance).

      But you are right that the prospect of advanced robotics gets a fraction of the attention that chatbots get. Trillions of bets on datacenter bound LLMs that can generate images, videos, and text but a relative pittance for advancements that would translate to physical labor…

      I get that there’s value, but the value proposition seems way out of whack.

    • cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      5 months ago

      It’s not hyped in the media, probably because it’s Chinese companies doing it, but there have been massive strides towards creating humanoid robotics in the past couple of years. They aren’t nearly to the point of being autonomous but there’s a simple humanoid robot that’s selling for 5900 today.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
      16·
      5 months ago

      It’s much easier to treat it as an art if you do it because you want to, not because you have to.

      Like most things in life, really.

    • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
      5·
      5 months ago

      Honestly, everything that machines can do, there are some people who love doing it, and there can be an art to it. And for each such thing, other humans hate doing it and prefer automation.

      Some people love cleaning, but we have robot vacuums and mops.

      Some people love cooking and baking, but we have packaged food that requires minimal or no preparation.

      Some people love woodworking or glassblowing, but most of our furniture and household items are mass produced.

      Some people love managing their own computer or phone, but most people prefer to just let the manufacturer and operating system do it for them.

      Some people love growing food with manual tools, but most farming these days is done with automatic machines.

      Some people love driving, others can’t wait for self-driving cars or prefer public transport just so they don’t have to drive.

      The list goes on. Anything can be an art.

      I don’t know what my stance is on this. I think automation is necessary for the sheer quantities we need. I also think passionate professionals can nearly always do a better job than a machine, but it’s obviously more expensive and can’t keep up with demand.

      I guess the difference is that drawing and writing only have value as art. If I don’t like drawing I almost never have to do it, but if I don’t like preparing food I either suck it up and do it anyway hating every moment, or it can be (and, in fact, is) a serious detriment for my health and well-being.

      • CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.world
        6·
        5 months ago

        Right, personally I don’t like cooking and would be fine with automating that (instead of just ordering/heating junk food).

        The most important thing is not to replace stuff completely, but give the choice to each and every individual person themselves. Great if it’s available, also great if you don’t want to use it.

        And if you use it, don’t be a dick and claim it was you who did it.

      • fading_person@lemmy.zip
        1·
        5 months ago

        I guess the main difference in all those activities is when doing something for yourself, as a hobby or relaxing activity, or when doing something as an obligation, or even worse, doing something for others. Even something like drawing can become terrible if you have to stress yourself, follow someone’s orders instead of your own style, and have to do it fast to meet some deadline.

  • papertowels@mander.xyz
    4·
    5 months ago

    Tbh I have a $300 robot vacuum cleaner/mopper that saves me a ton of time. We call it “robama” so we can say “thanks, robama”

    The fact of the matter is it’s easier to do things purely in the digital domain, like making digital images, or text. The menial, physical world stuff will be automated too, it’ll just take longer. Things like a dishwasher, and washing machine/dryer are pretty overlooked pieces of automation we already have.

  • copdeb@crazypeople.online
    2·
    5 months ago

    Nah. We algo have developed a lot of technology to clean and to help with House chores. What is expected for us humans is near the bare minimun