Lugh

Humanoid robots, like all technologies, will be adopted on an s-curve. First, there will be just a few of them, and then rapidly they will be everywhere, as their adoption heads for market saturation.

Are humanoid robots ready for their s-curve take off phase? Seeing Xpeng's IRON humanoid in action might make you think they are. Xpeng say they expect to start mass-producing these next year, and say they are investing $13.8 billion to scale production.

IRON's specs look impressive. Xpeng says it operates at 3,000 TOPS of processing power with their Turing AI chip. For reference, Microsoft's baseline for an AI PC is 40 TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second).

The world is full of economic alliances with acronyms. The EU, ASEAN, and the G7 are just some. The EU functions more as a nation-state, while most are much looser. The BRICS alliance, founded in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China (hence the name) has significant differences from the others.

Its primary goal is to create an alternative to the existing global economic order dominated by the West/US. In particular, it seeks to create alternatives to the dollar-dominated world trade system, SWIFT interbank payment system, and IMF & World Bank.

So far, it hasn't made huge progress with this agenda. The US dollar's role in global trade is firmly embedded. The only other currency that comes close in volume/importance is the Euro. As China doesn't allow its currency to float freely or have open capital markets, the Chinese Renminbi can't currently replace the dollar's international role.

But is this about to change? The current US administration rejects much of the old global economic order. Ironic, considering it originally created it. Since 2009 China and Russia have even more reasons to want a global financial alternative the US doesn't have a role in. Maybe the US is helping them to create it?

Alien life on exoplanets is in the news after possible biosignatures were found on K2-18b, 124 light-years away. The gas dimethyl disulfide hints at life, but it's not proof.

A new coronagraph design could boost the search for alien microbes by improving exoplanet atmosphere analysis. Detecting life through atmospheric chemistry will likely be how we first confirm it.

There are several space telescopes from ESA, NASA and China due for launch in the next ten years that will improve on current abilities. However, it's possible definitive proof may even come before then with current space telescopes.

The James Webb Space Telescope detected the dimethyl disulfide on K2-18b, and it is lined up to look at other alien-life candidate exoplanets in the coming months and years.

Yes, but using AI will greatly amplify what has happened before.

This requires the driver to charge using CATL's own 4C superchargers. Domestic, or most commercial charging won't happen as quickly. Still, this shows the direction of travel - EVs with long ranges that quickly charge. 4C superchargers don't seem to be available outside of China yet, but like everything else hi-tech, I'm sure it won't be long before China will be able to sell it to other countries.

This Astrum video does a good job of explaining things. In short, China's experimental work on its space station is all targeted at practical steps to help it build a Moon base, and have manned missions to the outer solar system.

In particular, they focus on 5 key areas. 1. Orbital Construction Technology, 2. Space Robotics & Automation, 3. Energy and Propulsion Innovation, 4. Life Support & Sustainability, 5. Generic Technology for Spacecraft.

They've already succeeded with key breakthroughs, including a system for producing oxygen that is far superior to the system on the ISS which needs a third of the ISS's energy to function.

America, partnered with Europe, is still pursuing its SLS/Orbital Gateway plans that look ever more doomed as time goes on. A wildcard are commercial space systems that could rapidly take-off. If not, by doggedly pursuing its plans, at some point China may pull into the lead in the space race.

I think it is true AI lacks true creativity, but the point is you don't need creativity for lots of commercial art.

Stock music, stock videos, video game environments, etc - the industries that made them have always employed creative humans, but they can be made by AI that doesn't have true creativity.

This is a lab result on mice, so likely still years away from treatments available to humans.

Still, here's a thought to ponder. If gene editing treatments to make people smarter, kinder, and more sociable were widely available, do you think some people would feel threatened ?

Those traits and others correlate with political persuasions. People might argue that people being smarter, kinder, and more sociable are worse for society, in order to protect their political power base.

Interesting there's no mention of unemployment via AI/robotics in DW's reporting of this issue.

There are dozens of open-source robotics projects around the world, including another humanoid robot called Tiangong. Hugging Face's actions are significant because of the prominent role it plays among AI developers. It functions as a version of GitHub, but just for AI - except now it may do the same for robotics too. It has always been committed to open-source (its own tools are open-source).

That open-source AI has kept pace, and in some cases bettered, investor-funded AI has taken many by surprise. Could the same happen in robotics development?

More on Pollen's acquisition.

Hugging face lets the public use a lot of the AI tools it hosts.

but this still makes me sad:

One piece of good news is that solar seems that it may be being adopted as a technology, on the familiar s-curve of technological adoption. So it may go from 6.9% to 50% much quicker than we expect.