AI

Automation and Ice Cream

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A guy named Ken Fox, who posts frequently at X, designs automation systems–electrical components, pneumatics, and software–especially for the food processing industry.  Here’s his ice cream cone filler at work: video.

There are a lot more videos at his X feed.

When people talk about manufacturing, they usually seem to think about metalworking in one form or another–but there are other important types of manufacturing, including the process industries…refining, fertilizer manufacturing, plastics processing…pharmaceuticals manufacturing…and food processing.

Also, I notice that a lot of people judge the level of automation in a particular company or across an entire national economy by counting robots.  I don’t think this is a very good metric.  How many humanoid robots would it take to equal the performance of Ken’s ice cream cone filler, or any of the other automation systems in his video collection?  You could in principle make a CNC machine tool by having a humanoid robot turn the wheels on a manual machine tool, but it makes a lot more sense to just mount the servos directly on the machine.  Similarly, elevators could in principle have been automated by having a humanoid robot handle the controls, but it was simpler to just build the logic into the system.

There will be a big role for humanoid robots, certainly, but I suspect that in many cases they will be a temporary bridge to a more comprehensive system.

Anyhow, enjoy the videos!

Technology, Work, and Society — The Age of Transition (rerun)

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In 2017, I read an intriguing book concerned with the exponential advances in technology and the impact thereof on human society.  The author believes that the displacement of human labor by technology is in its very early stages, and sees little limit to the process.  He is concerned with how this will affect–indeed, has already affected–the relationship between the sexes and of parents and children, as well as the ability of ordinary people to earn a decent living.  It’s a thoughtful analysis by someone who clearly cares a great deal about the well-being of his fellow citizens.

The book is Peter Gaskell’s Artisans and Machinery, and it was published in 1836. The technology with which he is concerned is steam power, which he sees in its then-present incarnation as merely “Hercules in the cradle…opening into view a long vista of rapid transitions, terminating in the subjection of human power, as an agent of labour, to the gigantic and untiring energies of automatic machinery.”

What Gaskell sees this infant Hercules as already having caused is this:

The declension of the most numerous class of artisans in Great Britain, from comfort, morality, independence, and loyalty, to misery, demoralization, dependence, and discontent, is the painful picture now presented by the domestic manufacturers.  (he is referring particularly to the hand-loom weavers)  ‘The domestic labourers were at one period a most loyal and devoted body of men,’ says an intelligent witness before the Select Committee of Hand-Loom Weavers in 1834. ‘Lancashire was a particularly loyal county.’ (These men had been prominent among those who had volunteered to defend Britain from Napoleon.) ‘Durst any government call upon the services of such a people, living upon three shillings a week?’

Gaskell notes that prior to the introduction of automatic machinery, the majority of artisans had worked at home.  “It may be termed the period of Domestic Manufacture; and the various mechanical contrivances were expressly framed for that purpose…These were undoubtedly the golden times of manufactures, considered in reference to the character of the labourers.”  The man retained his individual respectability and was often able to rent a few acres for farming, thus diversifying his employment and (with the addition of a garden) his family’s diet.

The new automated mills had relatively little requirement for adult male labor; most jobs could be done more cheaply by women and children, who indeed were often preferred because of their more nimble fingers.  Those who continued as handweavers saw their incomes drop precipitously due to the competition from steam-or-water-powered machinery; it was John Henry versus the steam drill (although the birth of that legend was still in the future).

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Subsidization, Regulation, and AI

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A bipartisan working group led by Charles Schumer has introduced what this article calls a “long-awaited AI roadmap.”  The document calls for at least $32 billion to be allocated for nondefense AI innovation.

Bill Gurley,  a venture capitalist of long standing, says:  In the entire history of the VC industry has there ever been a category LESS in need of incremental $$$$$.

Indeed. Corporations and individuals with money to invest are falling all over themselves to invest in things AI-related.  Meanwhile, there are all kinds of serious issues–the hardening of the electrical grid against both enemy-caused EMP and natural magnetic storms, for example–that are not being adequately funded by the private sector and could benefit from some of that $32 billion.  But they’re not as trendy at the moment.

Today’s WSJ includes an op-ed by Martin Casado and Katherine Boyle, both of Andreessen-Horowitz.  They write about the Department of Homeland Security’s formation of an AI Safety and Security Board, whose purpose is to advise the department, the private sector and the public on “safe and secure development and deployment of AI in our nation’s critical infrastructure,”  and they note that:

Of the 22 members on the board, none represent startups, or what we call “little tech.” Only two are private companies, and the smallest organization on the board hovers around $1 billion in value. The AI companies selected for the board either are among the world’s largest companies or have received significant funding from those companies, and all are public advocates for stronger regulations on AI models.

Much of the discussion of AI risks reminds me of the parable of Baptists and Bootleggers.  And when regulation becomes a dominant competitive factor in an industry, it becomes very difficult for new players to survive and thrive unless they are exceptionally well politically-connected.

Your thoughts?

Worthwhile Reading

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Academia Versus Civilization, at Quillette

A talk by Jensen Huang, founder & CEO of NVDIA, at Stanford.  Very, very good.  Related post and discussion.

Ruxandra Teslo notes that student protestors in the 1960s wanted less bureaucracy and more freedom…today, most of them seem to want less freedom and more bureaucracy.

It’s not the phones, says Marc Andreessen, referring to the psychological dysfunction that seems to afflict so many of today’s young people.  He’s responding to a post by Jash Dholani, who says “the young aren’t driving, f******, and drinking because high energy activity is fundamentally incompatible with modern ethics. If you’re always told to be harmless (but also guilty!) then your innate will to power withers. You vegetate. Man, the greatest animal, turned to plant.”

Elon Musk says:

Many movies exist about a lone inventor in a garage having a eureka moment, but almost none about manufacturing, so it’s underappreciated by the public. Compared to the insane pain of reaching high-volume, positive-margin production, prototypes are a piece of cake.

(Not many such movies,  but one that comes to mind is Valley of Decision, a 1945 film centered around family-owned steel mill in Pittsburgh.  I reviewed the movie, and the book on which it is based, here.  Also, there’s Executive Suite, a film from 1954 which involves executive succession at a furniture manufacturer…mentioned in a batch of reviews that I posted here)

In a comment at an earlier version of this post at Ricochet, Gary McVey noted that

“the eastern Europeans (in other words, the Communists, if not always the Soviets) were pretty good about trying to publicize the drama of start-up, the challenges of production. When we mock those days for films “about a couple falling in love at the tractor factory”, we are mocking something that, if you actually see the films, is in fact objectively a good thing. Some of them, by the Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs, were good. The best of them had little or nothing to do with Marxist theories, just the everyday achievements of construction, engineering, and metalwork that sated Western audiences found dull as dishwater.

A tractor factory’s a good thing to have, if you care to eat. There was nothing contemptible about making movies about it.”

Ashwin Varma argues that the usual narrative about WWII industrial production is defective, in that it does not give sufficient credit to the role of government.

The Department of Education embarked on a project to modernize and simplify the process for applying for student aid.  It is not going well.

The Biden administration is supporting the reopening of a nuclear plant in Michigan.  As Stephen Green says, it’s the right thing to do, but the Democrats doing it reeks of desperation.

gCaptain is a good source on the Baltimore bridge disaster and on all matters nautical.

In my post Visit to a Noteworthy Robot, I described a trip to a store equipped with Amazon’s no-check-out system.  Now, Amazon has decided to drop this system in most of the stores in which it is being used…problem is that too much human intervention (1000 people in India reviewing images that the AI can’t reliably interpret) to be cost-effective.

Cultural Theory of Mind and the consequences of not having it, especially the foreign-policy consequences.

Interesting chart: the ratio of commodity prices to the S&P 500.

An argument that the theft of national sovereignty at the Euro level was orchestrated entirely by legal elites – not political, much less economic, ones.

What kind of people tend to block (what they think are) sources of misinformation?

GE’s energy business has now been spun off as a separate corporation, GE Vernova.  They seem to be pretty well-positioned in nuclear; it will be interesting to see how much emphasis they put on this sector vis-a-vis their gas and wind businesses.

Speaking of nuclear, here’s a chart on the temperature ranges required for various industrial processes versus the temperature ranges available from various types of reactors.

Book Review: Theft of Fire, by Devon Eriksen

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Marcus Warnoc operates a spacegoing freighter, assembled by his father and himself out of whatever parts they can afford. He is surviving financially only by the skin of his teeth, and has out of desperation engaged in some operations of questionable (or worse) legality.  He finds that his ship has been taken over by a young woman named Miranda Foxglove…who knows what he did, and her price for not telling will be: to take her where she wants to go.

And where she wants to go is a planet called Sedna, in the outer reaches of our solar system. No one ever goes there–for very good reason.

Miranda has also brought along an artificial intelligence–its name is ‘Lily’, rather, that was the name of the 12-year-old girl whose brain Miranda imaged into the AI system.  Given that the real Lily is back home with her family, the AI entity is dubbed ‘Leela’.   But it, or she–this AI appears to be conscious–still has all the memories and emotions of the 12-year-old from whose mind her mind was copied.  Leela is not happy about her current disembodied state, despite her silicon-enabled ability for every fast thought and her ability to shift her vision to cameras anywhere throughout the ship, and while she is basically a happy and positive-thinking entity (person?), she does feel a certain resentment toward her creator.

A well-written and thought-provoking book, which is surprisingly emotionally affecting.  The author is a frequent poster at X/Twitter, and is especially good at the art of the denunciation.