[-] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 1 day ago

Why would people be eager to have a place like them joining the fedi?

If BlueSky were federated it would mean you could move to another server and keep the followers you built there. All the Big Tech offerings keep you locked in, and at risk of losing the work you put in at their whim.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Apart from getting funded by crypto-bros, BlueSky promised to allow federation, and hasn't. Seems any time VCs or talk of IPOs happens, the only way is down.

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On Bluesky and enshittification (fediversereport.com)
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Boston Dynamics latest demo of its humanoid robot Atlas shows the day when robots can do most unskilled and semi-skilled work is getting closer. At the current rate of development that may be as soon as 2030.

Many people's ideas of the future are shaped by dystopian narratives from sci-fi. For storytelling purposes they always dramatize things to be the worst possible. But they are a poor way of predicting the future.

UBTECH, a Chinese manufacturer's $16,000 humanoid robot is a better indicator of where things are going. The sci-fi dystopian view of the future is that mega-corps will own and control the robots and 99% of humanity will be reduced to serfdom.

All the indications are that things are going in the opposite direction. The more likely scenario is that people will be able to purchase several humanoid robots for the price of an average car. It's not inconceivable that average people will be able to afford robots to grow their own food (if they have some land), maintain their houses, and do additional work for them.

Meta's Open Source Robotics AI

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 8 points 3 days ago

Most people seem to hate the idea of AI versions of dead celebrities, but I can't help but be a bit intrigued. I'm a fan of golden-age Hollywood movies from the 1930s to 1950s. Most of that era's stars are dead now, but I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before we see some of their likeness in 'new' versions of old movies. Some people may not like it, but where there are dollars to be made, things tend to happen.

What would 'Casablanca' be like with Spencer Tracy instead of Humphrey Bogart? 'Gone with the Wind' with Vivien Leigh swapped out for Bette Davis. Orson Welles always said his masterpiece would have been 'The Magnificent Ambersons', not 'Citizen Kane', if the former hadn't been destroyed by the studio in editing. Maybe his vision of it can be resurrected by AI versions of the actors recreating scenes from the original script.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 14 points 3 days ago

"Of the world’s four largest greenhouse gas emitters the EU has made by far the most progress in slashing emissions. A report released last week by the UN Environment Programme calculated that EU emissions fell 7.5 percent last year -- compared to a 1.4-percent drop in the United States, and a jump of 5.2 and 6.1 percent respectively in China and India."

This is largely driven by swapping out coal for renewables, which means the EU is on track for its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. China and India have growing electricity demand, that even China with its vast renewables manufacturing capability, can't meet from renewables alone. There is talk in the EU about speeding up efforts to try to reach carbon neutrality sooner. Crucially, this can now be tied to a pro-economic growth agenda which will get more right-wing parties in the European Parliament on board.

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 2 points 3 days ago

Researchers have been trying to get robots to autonomously wipe tables and fold towels for years with only very limited success

Yes, this has been true up until now, but I think we are in a phase of rapid advancement. Look here at how DeepMind is using current LLM AI so that robots can train themselves - https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/shaping-the-future-of-advanced-robotics/

I would guess robots capable (perhaps messily at first) of general purpose skills like cleaning aren't far off.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 3 days ago

The UBTECH one is definitely not as advanced as the Atlas one. But I would expect, like everything electronic, China will eventually have commoditized versions of robots that are functionally almost as good as more expensive ones, but much cheaper.

https://www.techeblog.com/unitree-g1-humanoid-robot-mass-production/

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Here's a video of the latest version of the humanoid robot Atlas.

Boston Dynamics has always been a leader in robotics, but there are many others not far behind it. Not only will robots like Atlas continue to improve, thanks to Chinese manufacturing they will get cheaper. UBTECH's version of Atlas retails for $16,000. Some will quibble it's not as good, but it soon will be. Not only that but in a few years' time, many manufacturer's robots will be more powerful than Atlas is today. Some Chinese versions will be even cheaper than UBTECH's.

At some point, robots like these will be selling in their thousands, and then millions to do unskilled and semi-skilled work that now employs humans, the only question is how soon. At $16,000, and considering they can work 24/7, they will cost a small fraction to employ, versus even minimum wage jobs.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 1 points 5 days ago

Customer relationship management software puts its details into structured fields, like many other types of software, a database of sorts. This user is saying that extra step is no longer needed. The AI is capable of extracting, summarizing, and structuring the data from emails, Slack, etc - thus no more need for the software anymore.

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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Lugh@futurology.today to c/futurology@futurology.today
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This article references Britain, but I think many of its points make sense with reference to other western economies.

The author is Chris Dillow

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chris-dillow

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[-] Lugh@futurology.today 84 points 1 month ago

Microsoft has cash reserves of $75 billion.

Microsoft - If you really want to convince us that nuclear power is part of the future, why can't you use some of your own money? Why does every single nuclear suggestion always rely on bailouts from taxpayers? Here's a thought, if you can't pay for it yourself - just pick the cheaper option that taxpayers don't have to pay for - you know renewables and grid storage? The stuff that everybody else, all over the world, is building near 99% of new electricity generation with.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 183 points 1 month ago

As sad as this topic is, this is a much better way to go than a prolonged miserable painful death where you suffer the last months of a terminal disease.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 83 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Any time I hear claims that involve hitherto unknown laws of Physics I'm 99.99% sure I'm dealing with BS - but then again, some day someone will probably genuinely pull off such a discovery.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 189 points 7 months ago

Good news for pigs. I'll be delighted to see factory farming disappear and be replaced by tech like this.

[-] Lugh@futurology.today 196 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think fediverse people are wildly overestimating how much 99% of Reddit users care about this. The mod team on r/futurology (I'm one of them) set up a fediverse site just over a month ago (here you go - https://futurology.today/ ) It's been modestly successful so far, but the vast majority of subscribers seem to be coming from elsewhere in the fediverse, not migrants from Reddit.

This is despite the fact we've permanently stickied a post to the top of the sub. r/futurology has over 19 million subscribers, and yet the fediverse is only attracting a tiny trickle of them. I doubt most people on Reddit even know what the word fediverse means.

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Lugh

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