The biggest items in the Nextbigfuture weekly video are the clear evidence of the growth of an even larger wave of AI and the expansion of AI impact with humanoid robots over the next few years.
There will soon be the selection of the company to build the 6th generation US NGAD stealth fighter and the company to build the engine for the fighter.
Here is a 75 minute video where I, Brian Wang, talk with Randy Kirk about the top news items for a prior week.
A Lawrence Berkeley National Lab theoretical scientist who has been using supercomputers to model the LK99 room temperature superconductor has stated she believes the room temperature and room pressure superconductors will prove to be superconductors. She discussed the recent experimental evidence from several chinese universities with her colleagues at the national lab who are experimental experts. The experimentalists believe the China work advancing the LK99-type superconductors is high quality experiments.
There is progress to new inflatable space stations by Sierra Space.
Mark Zuckerberg talked about spending about $10 billion for 350,000 advanced AI computer chips to create over a zettaflop of AI compute. This is a growing race for more advanced AI and it is using more AI compute capability.
Caresoft, a company with hundreds of engineers who disassemble cars and analyze who to make car factories more efficient, has performed 100,000 man-hours of analysis of the Tesla planned unboxed manufacturing process. Caresoft determined that the building of large modules in parallel will reduce costs by 30%.
Tesla Optimus Teslabots will work great with the new Starlink mini dish so that Teslabots will outclass laptops and smartphones. Teslabots will also be used in Tesla factories to increase production and lower costs.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Robots and religion, now that’s my cup of tea. Get a couple of fundamentalists that think robots and AI are the D-evil, get 3 robots and put all of them in a big jar with lid and air holes. Big air holes. Give ‘Em a good shake and let the party begin.
Robotic Religion. That has a nice ring to it. The gospel of AGI.
Jesus was a robot! Yes he was!
Put a 101 million manly looking robots in the Middle East. All of them speaking fluent gibberish with local dialect. Program the robots to cat-call the women on the street while reciting Mohamed, Jesus and George Carlin at the same time.
Yep, it’s going to be fun.
Alarmist Nonsense.
Do AI / butlerBots/ bluCollarJoBots have (or will be allowed to have) initiative, vision (philosophical kind), internally-conceived goals, sense of the bigger picture, ability to manage others…?
Nary a One.
What percentage of workers have toil that is so mindlessly repetitve or scripted or without serious consequence or easy replacability that a $20k bot could be mobilized to replace them in days or weeks – single-digit% – maybe upto 15% if we put in some agriculture and/or nursing home care?
Gig work. Sales. bluCollarJoBot foreman. Small companies that could not afford/ manage bots. etc., etc. could take on that few million almost immediately. Everyone else adapts. Everyone else wants things and experiences -and- nicer things and experiences than the neighbour – capitalism – especially the consumer-commercial kind is self-perpetuating and infinitely adaptable in its supply-and-demand sides.
(PLUS it might make immigration a lot more unsavory, undesirable, problematic — if that was a concern, y’know)
Will it disrupt Capitalism? I doubt it
Actually it will. It is not Obama, Bernie or Biden that will bring down capitalism, it is capitalism that will bring down capitalism. AI and automation will keep on removing more and more workers from their jobs. Soon a point will be reached where large portions of the population will not be able to find any jobs and not just because they’re a bunch of lazy gen z kids. So, how does capitalism work when you no longer have consumers with money to purchase goods and services?
Corporate taxes, import Tariffs and UBI – probably plus universal healthcare because almost no one will be getting their ‘health insurance’ through a company. Everything else about capitalism can remain the same, including whatever employment remains – with all the same issues and benefits.
So this implies that we will see two economies – one controlled by the Ultra Rich and their competing AIs. Probably much larger than the second – human? – economy. Where 99.9% of humanity divides subsists on UBI. Hopefully UBI will give us enough to provide food, housing and clothing. AI assisted education will inevitably be free. Perhaps people will fall back on providing goods (hand woven art textiles, unique craft items), and services (Stone Masonry, Carpentry) for barter because eveyone will still want to improve their living envronment. The big question is will humanity become a parasite in a larger cybernetic entity that tolerates us or will we have a more benign symbiotic relationship where humanity can continue to grow, evolve and florish?
I have no skills or abilities but between the time it will take to get bots competent and the time it will take businesses to overcome inertia and spending limitations I’ll be dead well before the bots start working in vast numbers. And by that time the population will have crashed anyway.
Dude … go to any of the tens of thousands of Retirement Craft Fairs … to become so depressed as to be almost suicidal. Seriously. If all this AI/Bot-ness turns almost all humanity into a faceless army of fat-bodies milling around our ‘work rooms’ making chotchkis and bland-o-matic wine bottle stoppers, we’re FVCKED. Spiritually bereft. Take the black pill, and end it all. There really are 3 pills, not just rëd and blue.
My wifey is into making craft shît. To display at the craft fairs, to generate some cash to validate why she spends so much time buying, stocking, discarding and making shît for the fairs. She gives the shît to friends in lieu of other birthday, Christmas, holiday gifts. They’re all dutifully put up for a year and mysteriously lost to the rubbish bin.
So this is it? Black pill. Please.
Moreover, if we (you and I) just “connect the dots”, with the majority of the population being as creative as a bunch of lonely Irish Setter dogs, we’ll get way WORSE at creativity, collectively. Sorry, but there was only ONE “Grandma Moses” … (look her up) … for 100,000,000 oldsters out there. If everyone is “being creative” in a hopelessly fad-of-the-minute sort of way, our world will fill up with crâhp, rubbish, garbage and shît.
We are already overburdened with oversupply. If — as is my wish — if tomorrow we have a mysterious disease that only infects businesses, and we lose 50% of all the businesses, guess what happens? Nothing really bad. That’s because we have 2× more shît than we need. Maybe 5× more.
So… UBI? Sure. Predictably, we turn into vapid populations of couch potatoes, whose crisis is the failure of the check to electronically turn up in their debit card account every week. Might as well make ’em tax-free too, to keep it simple and ire-less. Get a Benjamin, spend a Benjamin.
I despair at this kind of thinking. The only thing that builds a vibrant society is determination-against-hardship and measurable prosperity from conquering it, be the hardship ridiculously cold winters, occasional stock market crashes, crop failures, foreseeable famines, oil embargoes, rail-and-truck shutdowns, strikes, … and unaccountable poverty. Not bland got-enough-ness. Inspiration zero.
UBI stuffs it in the shîtter. Remember the population of Fat Fvcks in the movie “Wall-E”? In their electro-seats, slavishly following color-of-the-day fads, being as inert as stumps. Remember them? They’re the end game of UBI.
⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
There was a happy ending to Wall-E. When the fat slugs were shown a whole world to go out to rebuild – a challenge to them, humans were still up to it. Even with everything provided to them for free their spirit was re-invigorated by a challenge.
I write software. I approach it as a creative endevour – I am a craftsman. So far AI can’t seem to generate much useful code for me – when I’ve asked it to write me various routines it has taken just as much work debugging and modification to integrate it into my code base as it would have if I had done it all myself.
HOWEVER – Brian’s post seems to imply that AI and Humanoid robots will have the capability to displace most of the jobs that people do today. If that happens – and there are no new jobs that allow most people to continue working for money, as the title says, it will disrupt EVERYTHING.
Most likely, to avoid violence and chaos as people who are thrown out of work become Luddites and try to tear down what the robots build, the rich will provide a small part of the increased productivity to placate the plebes. Bread and Circuses – or UBI. Its been done before and will happen again.
UBI can be good if it frees up the individual to pursue important things unrelated to survival. At the height of the British Empire, the wealthy became ‘Gentlemen’. These Elite were not expected to work. Their peers even looked at those who did manual labor or even engaged in mercantile activities as the underclass. There were ‘Gentlemanly’ pursuits allowed however that gained respect. Governance was one. Science another. Art not so much but it was almost required that one must appreciate the arts. They were expected to maintain their estates. Even sports, like fox hunting, were appropriate for Gentlemen. Again, they were NOT expected to ‘work’. This was a vibrant society that lasted for centuries. And, as unfair as it was to the people who maintained their wealth but had none of the privledges, it did advance the human condition in many ways.
So why, if all of a sudden, people no longer had to ‘work’ for a living, couldn’t we produce a society much like that of the British Elite in the days of their empire? Not all of them became fat slugs although of course there were some who did.
The advent of AI and human capable robots gives us an oppurtunity to make just such a society, or perhaps a much better society, and gives us something strive towards. In many cases, ‘work’ will grind down a man and make him a lesser person than he could have been.
I hope being relieved of the necessity of work, human society can achieve heights of achievement undreamt of in all of history. And if the lead paragraphs of this post is correct, we are only a few years off from being forced into making the decisions that will decide how we live for the centuries to come.
Interesting perspectives. I’m torn between your vision and goat guys. I think it could go either way. Or more likely both ways. One segment of the population becomes “gentlemen” pursuing noble pursuits. And the rest of the slobs descend into mindless decadence.