How does one peacefully get from todays hyper capitalism to a just democratic socialist state? I have suggested that one step might be to make all businesses nonprofit. This might be practical since something like half of businesses today are not currently profitable.
In the mass of hype* that surrounds the world of A.I. research today the definition of "agent" has been lost. An agent is reactive, autonomous, goal oriented, and continuous running. Agents are frequently also communicative, mobile, flexible, and learn and have "personalities." A.s.a. H. A.I. agents have existed for many years now.
* i.e., lies
A rebuild of one of my first Lego A.s.a. H. A.I. robots. The original was made using Lego that belonged to Emporia State University and that was left behind when I retired.
I'd be happy to see a project to send a small crew to Mars and back but not at the expense of any science projects. And humans should only fly when they are really needed/useful.
I retired from ESU in spring of 2022. The next semester ESU broke the law in firing a number of tenured faculty. Now they are trying to get out of this by asking the state to change the law RETROACTIVELY. This is what capitalism is like. Capitalism cheats. (See my work on value, e.g. chapter 2 of my book Twelve Papers, at www.robert-w-jones.com)
I don't enjoy driving. I would love to have a truly self driving car. But I am not interested in being a beta tester. And it would be ridiculous to pay to be a beta tester.
Industrial robots are extremely expensive. As an alternative I hack robots like ArcBotics' Sparki:
In a dark room you can see a spot of light emitted when you pull a Kleenex from its box. The tissue is rubbing along and away from the plastic at the opening. Static electricity I assume.
Almost all of my Java software was run on the cloud* but I have not used Java for a long time now. I've run BASIC in the cloud a tiny bit but I'm not using cloud computing at all for Python, C/C++, Prolog, or Lisp programs.
* from a Windows PC.
* See, for example, my blogs of 8 January 2018, 1 October 2015, and 4 September 2024.
** On multiple robots.
I don't believe that there is only one way to build an intelligent system* and that it will be ideal for all applications/specialties. So I don't think that there is a race that will have a single "winner." In discussing "space races" I have noted issues that I have with "crash programs".**
Also, the first way that is discovered that is capable of doing something is frequently not the way that will prove best in the long run. An example would be DC electric power distribution being replaced by AC.
Is all this hype*** needed to fund AI research? It's diverting resources away from other equally important AI work.
* or one architecture or one set of hardware
** See my blog of 21 October 2024.
*** lies
The purpose of life is to survive and spread so it makes sense to colonize Mars. But this can involve mechanical life, it need not involve human life.
LLMs currently are a system for learning* large complex functions from example data**. Currently those functions do not represent very long temporal sequences.*** They are also extremely energy inefficient.****
* approximating
** The data should really be cleaned, curated, and presented in the right order.
*** i.e., there is limited short term memory. This somewhat limits the tasks these LLMs are good for. But, again, different architectures are good for different tasks/specialties.
**** this is a rather brute force approach
If A.s.a. generates an output signal that is too weak it will be unable to drive its effector (motor, servo, etc.). But if the output signal is above some preset threshold it can, instead, trigger a question, e.g., "should the xxxxxxx effector be triggered?" Bystanders may then respond or ignore the question as they see fit.
It is my impression* that LLM generated code requires more debugging as compared to my hand written code. I think most of us hate debugging. Especially debugging other people's code.
* I admit that I don't have enough experience to quantify this impression.
First and foremost I am my mind. Our best current model says that my thoughts are electrochemical signals in a biological brain*. The simulation hypothesis would have me be signals (electrical?) in a vast computer. This doesn't seem any less "real". We've already been adding lots of layers to our models of reality*.
* Or, at a deeper level, quantum fields and the like?
For every pound you must invest in the heat shield for the recoverable rocket's orbital* stage you will lose one pound of payload. Does it make sense then to recover simple tankage? Perhaps one should only recover the engines, pumps, and avionics. I.e., something like** ULA's "SMART" but applied to the upper stage***.
* typically second stage
** may or may not use inflatable heat shield
*** or think drop tanks
