"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?""Oh.
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"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird So, the question there is very simple too: "Given the kinds of budgets nursing homes tend to have (basically none), how are they going to afford the robot?" -
@futurebird
This is what I've been bullying my AI hopeful colleagues for for years.
Robotics hasn't gotten better since the 1990s because it turns out human motion is incredibly precise, adaptable, and REALLY COMPLICATED
We physically can't make an arm shaped thing that works like an arm. We can make an arm shaped thing that can do certain arm like tasks, maybe pick up an ergonomic object, press a few buttons, or I guess flip over packages for 4 hours per that one new "AI" stream. But that same arm can't do surgery, it can't drive operate heavy machinery, hell, it couldn't reach behind a couch to plug in a vacuum with near the ease we have.
I will admit, the compute is probably there. We can probably simulate the motion of a person enough that an AI scale compute system could do the math to plug in a vacuum. But motors aren't getting smaller. Not without becoming uselessly weak. We've hit the physics barrier of electromagnetism.
Hell, look at any video of an incredibly sophisticated hand and just conceptualize how many hand positions it can make. Then try to make one you know it can't. Cross your fingers. Touch your thumb to each finger tip, see how fast you can do it. You are so much more sophisticated than a robot.
And obviously, we could just, redesign the whole world to accommodate bots with just a slew of specialized tools to be a portion of human ability, but that's quite expensive since we've already built the world to our liking.
So unless we want to rebuild the world with the logic of an Amazon Warehouse, the bots aren't going to take over for a while.@nagaram @futurebird I think prosthetics are getting pretty close.
> But motors aren't getting smaller. Not without becoming uselessly weak. We've hit the physics barrier of electromagnetism.
Aren't electroactive polymer actuators a thing now? -
@lienrag @futurebird
AI is indeed part of robotics for complex movements, but not the LLM kind of AI@lienrag @futurebird
Mind you, some of the demos are quite impressive, even as we know that they're probably rigged and certainly carefully choreographed to stay within the envelope of current capabilities -
Thomas Midgley Jr. also invented Freon.
Even though his intentions seemed to have been good he was kind of an anti-Norman Borlaug in his results.
@Landa @clew @futurebird he was perfectly well aware of the effects of the leaded gasoline would have on public health; the dude was an utter gobshite.
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@Landa @clew @futurebird he was perfectly well aware of the effects of the leaded gasoline would have on public health; the dude was an utter gobshite.
@mawhrin
Oh I got that mixed up. the problem with Freon wasn’t realized until a few decades later.
You’re right about the Tetraethyllead.
Thanks for the clarification. -
@dingodog19 @futurebird @mxchara or looked at the cost of even a single stepper motor
I'm mostly a school teacher and hobbyist. I was very excited about home automation and one of my more naive early projects was to make it so I could open and close the windows of my apartment via the internet. Then I could make algorithms and save on AC by switching dynamically to open windows based on the wind outside, time of day, humidity and temperature.
If you know about windows or motors you are seeing the big flaw and the real problem already.
1/
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I'm mostly a school teacher and hobbyist. I was very excited about home automation and one of my more naive early projects was to make it so I could open and close the windows of my apartment via the internet. Then I could make algorithms and save on AC by switching dynamically to open windows based on the wind outside, time of day, humidity and temperature.
If you know about windows or motors you are seeing the big flaw and the real problem already.
1/
But knowing nothing (this was 15 years ago) I thought "I just need to find a motor that can open and close each window and set it up with wifi and hook it into my self-built home automation system.
Do you know how HARD it is to open an window? If you want to open it the way that people do, you need a motor that does not exist. There are systems that can replace the pulleys, but they aren't cheap and installing them is no joke.
2/
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But knowing nothing (this was 15 years ago) I thought "I just need to find a motor that can open and close each window and set it up with wifi and hook it into my self-built home automation system.
Do you know how HARD it is to open an window? If you want to open it the way that people do, you need a motor that does not exist. There are systems that can replace the pulleys, but they aren't cheap and installing them is no joke.
2/
I thought "get a motor to open the window" was a simple matter. It was not. The best solution seemed to involve changing the whole way windows were designed, so that less expensive motors could reliably open and close the system.
A good home aid will notice that a room is stuffy and open the window. Close it when it rains. This isn't their main job function. It's just an extra thing that most "robots" can't do.
3/
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I thought "get a motor to open the window" was a simple matter. It was not. The best solution seemed to involve changing the whole way windows were designed, so that less expensive motors could reliably open and close the system.
A good home aid will notice that a room is stuffy and open the window. Close it when it rains. This isn't their main job function. It's just an extra thing that most "robots" can't do.
3/
When it came to home automation I had much more luck with automatic watering systems for plants. Turning water on and off is something you can do, and it can be very powerful.
Since I'm rebooting my roof garden I'm making a new watering system now.
Automation can be very hit or miss. Some "easy" tasks are hard.
Opening a window? It's a big deal.
4/4
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@Taco_lad @cinebox @dingodog19 @mxchara
It turns out many windows are designed to be hard to open so that ... people don't rob you. And our windows are old.
It might have been easier with newer windows, but I would need to replace all of the windows. OR make ugly 3D printed inserts that I could control. (I considered this, but it was too ... solarpunk in a bad way)
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When it came to home automation I had much more luck with automatic watering systems for plants. Turning water on and off is something you can do, and it can be very powerful.
Since I'm rebooting my roof garden I'm making a new watering system now.
Automation can be very hit or miss. Some "easy" tasks are hard.
Opening a window? It's a big deal.
4/4
@futurebird creating a remote watering system is on the todo list for my "new" house, but a bit below, getting a new roof and fix the cimney
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@lienrag @futurebird
Mind you, some of the demos are quite impressive, even as we know that they're probably rigged and certainly carefully choreographed to stay within the envelope of current capabilities@sabik @lienrag @futurebird Let me know when they can tell whether a container full of piss is at risk of sloshing over?
(the wu shu's all very nice but having done a little myself it's not telling me the right things about a robot to know whether it can do all the other things I learned from chinese martial arts generally)
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@futurebird I like robots too (well the idea of them, with genuinely independent intelligence and personality) but it's very difficult to imagine the current crowd of tech boys to come up with anything better than dubious toys for military and police use (and they'll spend public money on anything)
@mxchara @futurebird
You want R. Daneel, C3P0, or Robbie; they'll give you Terminator -
@sabik @lienrag @futurebird Let me know when they can tell whether a container full of piss is at risk of sloshing over?
(the wu shu's all very nice but having done a little myself it's not telling me the right things about a robot to know whether it can do all the other things I learned from chinese martial arts generally)
@flippac @lienrag @futurebird
I mean, you can see that the ones with the nunchucks just wave them about and never catch themAll it really shows is bipedal balance
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When it came to home automation I had much more luck with automatic watering systems for plants. Turning water on and off is something you can do, and it can be very powerful.
Since I'm rebooting my roof garden I'm making a new watering system now.
Automation can be very hit or miss. Some "easy" tasks are hard.
Opening a window? It's a big deal.
4/4
@futurebird Yeah I watched a video involving an automatic ventilation system recently and they used louver units designed to be remotely open and closed. Typical windows are impossible for inexpensive motors, and you'd have to put some ugly mods on the window to make it doable for expensive ones.
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@flippac @lienrag @futurebird
I mean, you can see that the ones with the nunchucks just wave them about and never catch themAll it really shows is bipedal balance
@sabik @lienrag @futurebird There's subtly more in the the sequence that appears to involve an actual contract drill towards the end, but only in the sense that the human performers get the job of making it look good (and we wouldn't see if any of them got a bruised arm doing it!)
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@flippac @lienrag @futurebird
I mean, you can see that the ones with the nunchucks just wave them about and never catch themAll it really shows is bipedal balance
Bipedal balence is impressive. I'm impressed with the ankle joins. ankle and wrist like joints are hard.
Though the feet do not flex which means these robots cannot really walk the way that humans do. Foot flex is so powerful and subtile.
Most animals have that joint much higher up, what do we get by making it so short? (it's not nothing. )
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"We have a design for a robot, but the parts needed to build it do not exist. We need to use the LLM to design those too now."
Real things people have said.
@futurebird @mxchara At least the space elevator wasn't in the context of a space bubble!
(it's genuine hypothetical engineering, but also the context "unobtanium" was coined in...)
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@sabik @lienrag @futurebird There's subtly more in the the sequence that appears to involve an actual contract drill towards the end, but only in the sense that the human performers get the job of making it look good (and we wouldn't see if any of them got a bruised arm doing it!)
Yeah, remembering how a top Chinese gymnast broke her neck¹ while preparing for an impressive show like that (and was basically left to fend by herself by the government), I wonder how many children were wounded during training...
¹IIRC ? at least her spine, as she ended completely and irremediably paralyzed
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Yeah, remembering how a top Chinese gymnast broke her neck¹ while preparing for an impressive show like that (and was basically left to fend by herself by the government), I wonder how many children were wounded during training...
¹IIRC ? at least her spine, as she ended completely and irremediably paralyzed
@lienrag @sabik @futurebird There's a reason the last time I was asked to demonstrate something I'd done a handful of times in my 20s, I said no!
(butterfly kicks are, at the very least, for people who are still actively training)
