[jrockway]

I'm kind of interested in how AI is going to interface with the world. Humans have a lot of autonomy to change the physical world they're in; from rearranging furniture, to building structures, to visiting other worlds. Why isn't AI doing any of that stuff?

As programmers, we keep talking about programming jobs and how AI will eliminate them all. But nobody is talking about eliminating other jobs. When will a robot vacuum be able to clean my apartment as quickly as I? Why isn't there a robot that takes my garbage out on Tuesday night? When will AI plan and build a new tunnel under the Hudson River for trains? When will airliners be pilotless? If AI can't do this stuff, what makes software so different? Why will AI be good at that but not other things? It seems like the only goal is to eliminate jobs doing things people actually like (art, music, literature, etc.), and not eliminate any tedium or things that is a waste of humanity's time whatsoever.

(On the software front, when will AI decide what software to build? Will someone have to tell it? Will it do it on its own? Why isn't it doing this right now?)

My takeaway is that this all raises a lot of questions for me on how far along we actually are. Language models are about stringing together words to sound like you have understanding, but the understanding still isn't there. But, I suppose we won't know understanding until we see it. Do we think that true understanding is just a year or two away? 10? 50? 100? 1000?

[mLuby]

Household tasks can involve a robot moving with enough kinetic energy to maim or kill a human (or pet) in unlucky circumstances. And we'll quickly become habituated to their presence and so careless around them. Even a Roomba could knock granny down the stairs if it isn't careful about its environment.

You could make the same argument as with self-driving cars, that people already get hurt this way and maybe the robot is in fact safer. But it's still a hard sell that Sunny-01 has only accidentally killed 1/10 as many children as parents have—the number has to be more like zero.

Let's solve automating trains first then we can do airliners.