https://xcancel.com/ai_for_success/status/1856710106081100223
Which, from what I understand, a lot of advanced farm machinery already is semi-automated, with vehicles driving themselves using gps and satnav.
Combine harvesters follow a yield-centric, oil-hungry model of agriculture, using wheat bred specifically to be harvested with a combine. If we want to fix food systems we need to embrace food and soil biodiversity, and so far, most wheat varieties that do that require less intensive forms of harvest, not necessarily manual, but not a large combine either.
The problem is that through like 98% of human history, the solution has been to throw human labor at the problem, with most innovations improving labor efficiency or making farm work less harsh. With the advent of the industrial revolution the peasantry was proletarianized and forced to move to the cities, leaving whoever was left to do agriculture to apply the same profit motive to agriculture, instead of imagining a more human-sized agriculture.
It's very funny that it's a humanoid robot and not some kind of god awful techno-centipede with fifteen pairs of arms harvesting whole sections of rows at once or something.
Anthropomorphic robots are such a failure of imagination. I understand the real world advantages but if you're going to dream dream weird.
I read that anthroporphism in servant robots is something rich technocrats push because its a another way to own and command people.
if it's not human-shaped how will I feel like a feudal lord watching subordinate wretches work for me?
some kind of god awful techno-centipede with fifteen pairs of arms harvesting whole sections of rows at once or something
this is the kind of thinking we want under future socialism, we will take brutalism to whole new lengths chuds could never imagine on their own
You don't even need to imagine some kind of god awful techno-centipede, combine harvesters exist and can already be programmed to follow gps routes.
Combine harvesters are also designed to harvest wheat varieties that have been bred to be harvested with a combine and dependant on synthetic fertilizers and that require all biodiversity in the area to disappear. More nutritious and environmentally friendly wheat varieties have existed for most of human history, along with the knowledge to cultivate them and not deplete the soil or destroy the soil microflora, but they can't be harvested mechanically, so they're disappearing. Developing robots that enhance the action of humans (not replace them) is better in my opinion than forcing the loss of food biodiversity to fit one method of harvesting.
what's the real world advantages of antropomorphic design? Genuinely asking, best I can come up with is niche SAR Robot
Infrastructure already made for humanoids so you don't need to change it.
You could have like an autonomous mini-combine-harvester and that would still beat the fuck out of the human robot here. And like every other example I can think of.
Anthropomorphic robots can go anywhere humans can go, operate human tools, and vice versa. At least in theory you can dump a bunch of human shaped robots in to a warehouse or whatever and program them and they'll be able to navigate, interact with the tools, etc.
Just put the entire field on a 50 mile long looping conveyor belt that slowly inches toward a huge stationary harvester machine that perpetually harvests, tills, and replants.
I'm all for robots doing all the dangerous, dirty, boring and otherwise undesirable work that humans do. I think the big problem here is that in a neoliberal society this just means that the people who would be doing shit work for shit wages are now welcome to curl up and die while the owners of the robotic laborers reap all the benefits. Capitalism simply isn't equipped to deal with the consequences of full automation in a way that's even remotely beneficial to the working class.
FALGSC now!
Despite AI being recent, this problem is very well documented in Marxist literature for over a century. Based on the organic composition of capital, the two forms of capital is constant (nature, machines, etc.) and variable capital (workers). When you automate work, that means more variable capital becomes constant capital. But that also means that you can't exploit it like you exploit humans through surplus value. So while it makes sense in the short term for capitalists, this is also a factor that leads to an economic crisis and everything that follows it.
AI being recent
So, slight nitpick: the thing youre calling AI was invented in pretty much its current form by Turing and Minsky in like 1951. This shit is damn near 75 years old, closer to the first use of a nuclear weapon in war than we are to Hilary Clinton getting her ass beat by trump. The first LLM ran on vacuum tubes. These things predate the integrated circuits we use today by several years. As does their abandonment by actual smart people. I think the first ones literally ran on vacuum tubes (yes MOSFETs existed, but I think tubes were still in use?)
Also, it's not AI, it will never be AI, it will never lead to AI, and it is possibly the largest extant obstacle to the development of AI.
Agreed though. Capitalists love them some slaves. it's not even just functional; the power, the exploitation, it gets them off, validates their existence. It really is pederasty and cocaine all the way down.
Eternal reminder that ELIZA, the first chatbot, ran on an array of potatoes and people still believed it was sentient.
And it was all a joke because some guy was annoyed with Freudian psychotherapy grifters and, correctly, thought that a simple machine could do their job.
Mathematically yes, but the ability to store and transmit such a large amount of information for learning models to work practically is fairly recent.
AI in the deterministic algorithm sense is truly very old though.
They did the math determining that it was a dead end. They were right. Yes it requires a certain bigness of data set to function, but after that the returns diminish logarithmically. It basically peaks at the software I'm using to type this on my phone. These massive data centers may as well be using that energy and water to breed monkeys and make typewriters.
There are other niche uses, but this is mostly it.
These massive data centers may as well be using that energy and water to breed monkeys and make typewriters
What if we breed monkeys to be our telepathic typewriters
I should clarify; the utility of large language models isn't in the utility of the technology, but the utility of the propaganda. It's selling a dream, so we stay asleep, it's selling the liberal holy Grail of the endless perfect excuse and abdication, and the fascist one of a perfect inhuman system, simultaneously an impossible future and a bullshit homogenized soup of half remembered past and a composite of us all in which we are a consciousness wothout a body (but without all thar pesky interiority)that will grind us all into the mud
Its not about being good at stuff. If you see an "AI" engineer, offer them a cocktail made with your favorite whiskey and drain cleaner.
It will most likely never be full automation, but if it for some reason happened, then that wouldn't be capitalism anymore, by definition since there wouldn't be any unpaid labour to steal. Funnily enough Marx noted this as the possible moment when capitalism logically come to an end, abolishing itself.
And yeah, in capitalism any moment before full automation will be exploited to make the most profits and most misery possible.
It doesn't have to come to the point of full automation. Just hollowing out enough labor that there isn't enough surplus value to overcome the rents that finance capital created over the last half century of large scale rentseeking a.k.a. neoliberalism.
Yeah, i guess Marx went to the furthest possible conclusion because he usually avoided making prophecies without knowing conditions, but it's pretty obvious that even if we ignore everything else, capitalist system will collapse way before reaching that point.
'Abolishing itself' into a 'cloud of sexless hydrogen' tho.
Or cruelty squad.
Yeah. The neo-liberal goal for automation is the Terminator dark future where robots can produce wealth for a tiny ruling class while the now surplus working class is exterminated.
Automation is for disciplining labor and reducing the size of the classes that threaten capital.
Not for increasing efficiency quality or quantity of production! What even is this commie bullshit?
Being someone who actually works in manufacturing automation, I completely disagree that it doesn't increase efficiency or quantity of production. It absolutely does both of those things. It has to be part of a larger ergonomic line process improvements though, automation on it's own is just a tool on the line. In many cases where management wants to use automation, more efficiency can be found in things like better, more obvious tool layouts, or better peripheral order scheduling.
As for quality? Kinda, process understanding and replication is by far the largest determinate of quality, which automation can improve, but only with regular maintenance which most companies are loathe to do properly.
What automation mostly does is 'reduce' the level of skill required by floor operators to create a product) even though operators generally have to learn to work with and around the ghosts in the machine), allowing for management to justify not giving out pay raises to them. Same as it ever was for any Tayloristic endeavor.
No no no! Youre doing it wrong! It should only be used to discipline labor, you delusional fucking commie! Youre abusing the sacred legacy of henry ford! Anything else is heresy!
Oh of course! I forgot the pact we all sign in engineering school.
When did people stop dreaming of cool robot arms?
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Remember being obsessed with them when I was a kid. All this humanoid robot stuff is so lame.
I blame sci fi authors being hacks.
gonna have to agree to disagree, humanoid robots are cool AF, even when they aren't huge and piloted by an angsty fleshbag. robot arms like that only really work in controlled, clean environments like factories, and are about as exciting as a pencil imo. just try farming with a treaded arm platform or wheeled autonomous vehicle or whatever here:
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bonus controversial take: The Human Body is the best multipurpose (omnipurpose?) machine possible, at least for now. despite all of our flaws, there are very few computers for example that have lifespans nearly as long as us, nothing has the combination of intelligence and self-healing that humans do, not yet anyway. maybe a simplistic machine like an oil pump or a car from the 80's might outlive a person with a lot of care and maintenance, but anything as multifunction and complex and with as many moving parts as us would break down so fast if we tried to make it artificially, even if it might be 'more efficient' in several senses in the short-term.
I mean this is the classic predict-the-future folly where you look at current infrastructural problem and think up future solutions that would improve it rather than future solutions that change the infrastructure and net you much better gains.
So in other words will it really make sense to have huge quantities of humanoid robots working on rice terraces in 2050, or will we just be producing most of our starch in bioreactors?
This is a very flattening argument that ignores the cultural and biological importance of a healthy, complex food system for nutrition. Replacing agroecological, Place-conscious agriculture with sterile technology not only impoverishes the diversity and importance of food as a social locus, but it demonstrably leads to worse nutrition outcomes.
The question isn't "how do we get rid of agriculture or of people who work the land" but "how do we make their work dignified, comfortable and non-alienating".
Why do you need a multipurpose machine for a specified purpose? Washing machines weren't made out of a wooden bucket with a washboard and two arms that manually wash the laundry. There is a severe lack of imagination to having any mechanization of labour simply be making humanoid multipurpose robots when you could make something that is a lot more efficient.
I guess the basic difference between how I and a lot of robot enthusiasts see robots is that robots are a tool not a replacement for a person.
but anything as multifunction and complex and with as many moving parts as us would break down so fast if we tried to make it artificially
Seems like an argument against humanoid robots to me.
in certain scenarios you need multipurpose robots, if you have severe weight restrictions or something for example. i don't think humanoid robots can or should replace specialized robots or vehicles or humans, i just think they do have a place in certain tasks. i was basically shitposting with the same dismissive energy as OP tbh. i did mostly focus on the biologicial aspect of humans over robots in general in my previoius post, but in terms of mechanical design humanoid robots are especially well suited for navigating complex environments without the energy requirements of flight or specialized infrastructure, and they can use and operate pre-existing equipment (tools, flashlights, computers, vehicles, etc.) and infrastructure (scaffolding, stairs, ladders, etc.) designed for humans. they can put a mechanical manipulator (that may or may not be holding any kind of tool without a bunch of setup) wherever you might need one, regardless of most infrastructure availability or terrain scenarios. they would be especially ideal for search and rescue and other emergency scenarios, or construction or other tasks in extreme or remote terrain, especially in conjunction with humans and other kinds of robots and vehicles.
I'm all for the physical and mental labor distinction fading away over time, but I have the feeling that a humanoid robot is a really inefficient way of solving this with robotics. Like isn't this exactly part of what a modern tractor does?
If anything, you could find a way to get these giant mfs to drive on their own with some remote instructions maybe, but I guess that doesn't scratch some people's itch of owning humans and having them harvest wheat one by one
Word. How much does a cutting edge combine cost now? Like a million us dollars or somethjing?
While I'm a pretty heavy autonomous cars skeptic, autonomous farm machinery is much more reasonable and much closer.
There's a few companies already producing test combine harvesters for example and there's been at least one farm here in the UK which is staffed by researchers working to make it 100% autonomous, with quite a bit of success. There's also been pretty big jumps in harvesting robots and complete indoor argriculture systems. But all of it is either automated versions of contemporary farm vehicles or production-line like arm robots for growing indoors.
Advanced farm machinery is semi-autonomous right now. It's really really cool and also a critical point of tension in capitalism as the needs of farmers, ag megacorps, heavy industry firms, and people who eat food are all pulling in different directions.
eh, a tractor requires a shitton of roads, huge open fields and monoculture. robots like this could use the same walking infrastructure that people use. with these, we could plant three sisters type stuff instead of modern monocolture agriculture.
so yeah, it's goofy but also not quite the same as a combine harvester
I thought I was alone in thinking this. A better model for agriculture and a food system is often not compatible with large machinery like combine harvesters. Doing polyculture and other agroecological models would mean we have to rethink what agricultural automation looks like, with a more human scale.
i dont think modern mechanized farming is compatible with having any kind of biosphere. so unless we stop farming on earth and do it on some magical FREE REAL ESTATE, sustainable farming is more labor intensive, because you simply cant send an omni-sprayer and an omni-chewer across the artificially flattened landscape. or, it will require robots that can walk around muddy tracks and hillsides and fields, pick tomatoes from the vine, carefully prune plants that need pruning, etc. y'know, the really hard stuff to automate.
One factor in soil erosion is actually the problem that the weight and vibration of tractors, packing the earth and messing up the balance of worms, bacteria, etc in the soil.
Interesting point but I feel like what you gain in weight and vibration loss with humanoid robots you'd lose on every 20th of them just spraying hydraulic fluid and/or oil for the inevitable failure
I'm aware the image is only to convey the concept of automation but legged robots in contexts where legs would be bad irrationally annoy me
That robot would be wildly over complex and prone to failure compared to just giving it tracksThat robot would be wildly over complex and prone to failure compared to just giving it tracks
Copying some of the worst design failures in humans because it lets me feel like a feudal lord
Imagine looking at the millions of years of evolution it took to get a bipedal design that works good enough and going "yeah, that's what we should emulate."
When God's perfect quadripedal design already exists.
The robot will be living in a little metal hut, sit on a chair during any downtime and sleep in a bed to re-charge.
What you need for that is a next-generation combined harvester, not some star wars shit.
although i think a traditional robot (arm or autonomous vehicle style) would still be better for almost all agricultural and industrial purposes, humanoid robots do have some advantages. they can cross almost any kind of difficult terrain, they can use tools, infrastructure, and other equipment that are designed for human use without any modification, and they can essentially perform any task that a human could perform. additionally the human size and form factor can result in a relatively lightweight 'machine' that might be necessary for tasks in places with a weight limit (such as bridges, scaffolding, unstable terrain, etc.) If you can only have 1 kind of robot (either due to weight concerns like on a space or sea craft, or to simplify logistics by only building 1 kind of robot) you basically need it to be humanoid for it to be of any use outside of a single specialized industrial task. instead of needing a different robot arm or a different vehicle or a refit in a workshop for every task, you can have the 1 humanoid robot perform any task you need (albeit perhaps slower and less efficiently than a specialized design) by having it simply pick up the appropriate tools. the only real criticism i have of most sci fi humanoid robots is that the arms and legs are never a quick-replace interchangeable design. we design tires to be easy to repair and replace, we should design robot limbs that are multifunction (able to be used as an arm or a leg interchangeably) and quick to replace as well. also robots with limbs expected to work outside of clean factories should have 'clothes' or fabric covers to protect their joints and other sensitive parts from dust, water, etc.
Hey, at least they’re thinking robots should do undesirable work instead of them doing the art and us all becoming self-employed farmers or some shit.
We already have robots to do this, they just use wheels instead of legs.
Its not like these things can pick tomatoes yet.
This shit cracks me up. If/when automation is fully used for ag, it's definitely not gonna look like humanoid slave robots. What sort of chud fantasy is this?
Given that it derrives from a polish term for laborer it's historically appropriate!
Soo, just a generic "pesant robot" from Futurama. All that's missing is the headscarf, superstition and broken English.
Remember how Overwatch had a whole thing on sentient robots rebelling against serfdom and apartheid?
Anyway, it always made the Training Room really fucked up to me.
This is why they fetishize the bipedal robots; the more humanoid form that is literally an object that exists only to serve them sparks their imaginations.
We already have robots for a lot of this; they just dont look remotely human, because they're specialized and optimized to specific tasks and the human body is less narrowly Optimized (except for endurance hunting and being gross)
Sure.
Yet somehow people will still go hungry.We are very special like that.
what will we need prisons and immigration policies for in this future? will prisoners and 'illegals' become redundant? won't somebody think of the prisoners and 'illegals'?
