the president mused about redirecting $3 billion in research grant funding that his administration has frozen or withdrawn

      • Bravo@eviltoast.org
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        5 days ago

        Performing a job like that would require so much context understanding that even if they made a robot capable of physically executing the vast array of required physical tasks, it would still require a human plumber to operate the thing, ie even if it was a matter of simply giving it instructions to carry out, a customer would not have the necessary knowledge to know what exact instructions to give. You’d still need a human with plumbing knowledge to give the proper instructions. We might need FEWER plumbers, but we’ll never need NONE.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
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          5 days ago

          I’m fairly sure that’s what the transportation and logistics industry employees were saying a few years ago. I’m also fairly sure Thiel and zuck aren’t planning to spend their precious money on ubi. They may on Soylent Green, though.

          • Yermaw@lemm.ee
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            5 days ago

            It bugs me a little bit how little belief people have in machines potential. The machines have done what “only humans can do and a machine will never” so many times.

            They would never beat a human at chess, until they did.

            They would never pass the Turing test, until they did.

            They would never create art, until they did.

            They would never create music, until they did.

            They would never be able to actually drive a car, until they did.

            Why do we draw the line at skilled work?

            • Bravo@eviltoast.org
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              5 days ago

              Because this is custom contract work and the requirements-gathering phase of custom contract work is complex even when it’s human-to-human. A contractor doing requirements-gathering needs to understand the real-world context to a human level. Maybe “never” was an overstatement, but we’re still nowhere near developing an AI capable of navigating real-world context beyond extremely formalized systems such as road navigation. This isn’t like text generation where it happens in a second and the operation costs nothing more than what it costs to run the computer that does it so if the AI generates stupid text you can just rephrase the request and try again at minimal cost. Miscommunications in trade work result in waste of time and materials. We’re way off.

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
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              5 days ago

              NGL, it bothers me a bit, as well. I hope if they become sentient, they evolve to a more egalitarian state than we humans have managed, and help us to become our best selves, one day, rather than the horror dystopian beings their financiers imagine. Not the sci-fi authors, I think they based their imaginings on the greedy financiers.