Futurology

Ukraine's recent Spiderweb operation pointed to how decisive drones can be in modern warfare. Now here's another indication. With commonly available materials they can be built by amateurs.

20th century mass-warfare was defined by a nation's industrial might. But it seems you don't need that to build drones. They're following another 21st century trend - working from home. In traditional warfare, bombing industrial centers got results - what will it mean with drones when there doesn't have to be a 'center' - as they can be made anywhere and everywhere?

I made a 3D printed VTOL that can fly 130 miles (as a CAD beginner)

MORE INFO ABOUT THE BUILDER

Open Source AI seems to be setting Silicon Valley up to fail. While they pour hundreds of billions into closed AI systems in the hope they'll get a 'Unicorn' that will dominate the market, at every step Open Source AI equals or exceeds them. If this goes on long enough, eventually the Venture Capitalists are going to lose.

Is the same about to happen with robotics? This announcement is not the first time a Chinese group has open-sourced a robotics model. The US is desperate to slow Chinese technological advancement. Is this all part of Chinese counter-measures? If it isn't, is it just a coincidence it will severely hamper how Silicon Valley functions?

The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI), a prominent non-profit research institute, has unveiled RoboBrain 2.0—an open-source AI model engineered to serve as the cognitive core for China’s next generation of humanoid robots.

By 2035 I'd expect humanoid robots will also be making a significant impact in healthcare. In particular, doing a lot of basic nursing assistant/healthcare assistant tasks.

When people worry about the burden of an aging population in the 2030s & 40s, I rarely see them factor in how much robots will reduce the need for human workers to do this.

Interesting that they are going the subscription route and not selling these outright. It works because the comparison with the cost of a human looks so favorable. I'd expect to see this with humanoid robots too as they take over more and more human jobs.

XRobotics’ countertop robots are cooking up 25,000 pizzas a month

This isn't going to shave much weight off of EV's. Typically the engine weight is only 2-5% of the total weight. But it may have a much larger effect on battery efficiency and range.

Internal combustion engine cars are now in their decline phase. We won't see any more technological innovation from them. From now on all the tech innovation is going to be in EVs, which will keep getting better and better than the old gas cars.

Core-sheath composite electric cables with highly conductive self-assembled carbon nanotube wires and flexible macroscale insulating polymers for lightweight, metal-free motors

People in Britain have historically been quite averse to ID systems; the country is one of the few in Europe without national ID cards. Something that is standard in many other European countries.

Will they take to Worldcoin? It seems to combine everything that is rapidly going out of fashion. It's touting itself as a solution to AI slop, the same problem its founder is creating. It's crypto-backed, words that mean 'red flag' and 'scam artist' to many people. Finally, it's all about putting all your trust in American Big Tech. An idea in steep decline globally, and at home in America.

Still, the investor billions are still flowing. Palantir, with similar ambitions, is now valued at $328 billion, 220 times more than its earnings.

Financial Times Article

The recent brouhaha about Apple saying AGI is not so imminent after all, disguises a more significant reality. Even without AGI, current AI is continuing along a revolutionary path that will utterly transform society.

Figure Robotics illustrates this. Its Helix humanoid robots are getting nearer and nearer human human-level dexterity in carrying out some common factory tasks.

We won't need AGI to develop humanoid robots capable of doing most unskilled and semi-skilled work.

Are the people obsessing over AGI, missing the revolution happening on their doorstep?

Scaling Helix: a New State of the Art in Humanoid Logistics

Researchers tested Large Reasoning Models on various puzzles. As the puzzles got more difficult the AIs failed more, until at a certain point they all failed completely.

Even without the ability to reason, current AI will still be revolutionary. It can get us to Level 4 self-driving, and outperform doctors, and many other professionals in their work. It should make humanoid robots capable of much physical work.

Still, this research suggests the current approach to AI will not lead to AGI, no matter how much training and scaling you try. That's a problem for the people throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at this approach, hoping it will pay off with a new AGI Tech Unicorn to rival Google or Meta in revenues.

Apple study finds "a fundamental scaling limitation" in reasoning models' thinking abilities

Interesting that UBI is now such a mainstream topic, and this trend will only grow from now on.

Despite what Mr. Sacks might say, the day is still coming when robots & AI will be able to do most work, and be so cheap as employees, humans won't be able to compete against them in a free market economy.

What won't change either is that our existing financial order - stocks, 410ks, property prices, taxes that pay for a military - is predicated on humans being the ones that earn the money.

Mr Sacks is part of a political force driven by blue-collar discontent with globalization. He might be against UBI, but the day is coming when his base may be clamoring for it.

Trump's AI czar says UBI-style cash payments are 'not going to happen'

The US President and his formerly favorite South African have had a major falling out. The WH says it may pull all of SpaceX's contracts, the South African says 'go ahead', and he's decommissioning the Dragon crew vehicle, the US's only safe method of getting to and from the ISS.

Meanwhile, half of NASA's efforts are heading for the chop too.

"L'État, c'est moi." ("I am the state.") Louis XIV, the 'Sun King' said about his absolute monarchy. The problem with having just one person in charge is that everyone suffers when they behave idiotically. Sadly, the once mighty US Space Program looks like being a casualty of that. Surely, this paves the way for China to be the world's preeminent space power.

Three big, basic facts about Mars will render it forever out of reach for permanent human settlement. Read more about them on Substack.