Futurology

“There is a perception that the economy is changing, and workers have to make a drastic decision: to undergo training or to go into retirement because the investment in their own human capital is not worth it,” Giuntella says.

As the world's leading manufacturing nation, it is no surprise that Chinese people are feeling the headwinds of robotic automation first. Mainstream neoliberal economics says AI & robotics will provide more jobs than they take away. Yet, here we see evidence of the contrary.

As goes China today, the rest of the world will soon follow. If robot and AI employees are so cheap to employ, who will buy the expensive goods and services from human-employee businesses?

The recent US election seems more evidence that the neoliberal model of capitalism is crumbling and in decay everywhere. Maybe whatever replaces it will have to honestly face up to the economic realities of AI & robots.

Research Paper

Financial Times article

Trump's plan seem to be to purge the US military of any generals that don't agree with him, and his Secretary of Defence pick, has spoken of the need for using the military against US citizens he sees as leftist.

If this is how things play out, how likely is it some states like California may talk of secession, or armed resistance organizes against the military?

The argument for current LLM AIs leading to AGI has always been that they would spontaneously develop independent reasoning, through an unknown emergent property that would appear as they scale. It hasn't happened, and there's no sign that it will.

That's a dilemma for the big AI companies. They are burning through billions of dollars every month, and will need further hundreds of billions to scale further - but for what in return?

Current LLMs can still do a lot. They've provided Level 4 self-driving, and seem to be leading to general-purpose robots capable of much useful work. But the headwinds look ominous for the global economy, - tit-for-tat protectionist trade wars, inflation, and a global oil shock due to war with Iran all loom on the horizon for 2025.

If current AI players are about to get wrecked, I doubt it's the end for AI development. Perhaps it will switch to the areas that can actually make money - like Level 4 vehicles and robotics.

So this isn't AI, at all, but is kinda interesting. I'm looking forward to this tech coming to the medical industry for teaching people how to do CPR effectively.

Blade Runner is now.