Lugh

joined 2 years ago
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Form Energy in the US is also developing this technology, though they haven't deployed to the grid yet.

As electricity grids get nearer to being 100% renewables, they need to account for <5% of times both solar & wind don't meet peak electricity demand. Lithium-Ion batteries, which only store electricity for a few hours, aren't much use here, but Iron-Air batteries will be.

They can store days worth of electricity, and not only that, they are stable and non-flammable. The only chemical reaction taking place is iron oxidizing (rusting).

Ore Energy connects world’s first grid-connected iron-air battery in Delft

 

"We're not planting our flag and leaving. We’re going to stay, learn, and then go to Mars. There’s critical real estate on the Moon. We want to claim that real estate for ourselves and our partners, which is going to be critical to being successful in that mission."

Sean Duffy interviewed this morning on NASA+.

The Outer Space Treaty, which 117 countries, including the US, are signatories to, prohibits Earth nations from claiming lunar territory. The trouble with saying you can break any international law you want, by say, invading Greenland, or claiming the Moon, is that then anyone else can. By say, invading Taiwan, or claiming the Moon, also.

What do you do then, especially when they (China) get all the good bits of the lunar South pole first? Chinese plans for their International Lunar Research Station are far more advanced than anything NASA has. There's every likelihood they'll be the ones able to claim best the lunar real estate first.

 

Interesting article McKinsey’s thesis is that foundation models (think vision‑language‑action brainpower) let robots recognize objects, follow spoken commands, and behave flexibly. Imitation learning and behavioral cloning let them watch humans and learn movements without explicit programming.

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submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by Lugh@futurology.today to c/futurology@futurology.today
 

Chinese startup Z.ai (formerly Zhipu) just released GLM-4.5, an open-source agentic AI model family that undercuts DeepSeek's pricing while nearing the performance of leading models across reasoning, coding, and autonomous tasks.

Alibaba's Tongyi Lab just launched Wan2.2, a new open-source video model that brings advanced cinematic capabilities and high-quality motion for both text-to-video and image-to-video generations.

This is an interesting commentary on how China & the US are approaching AI development very differently. China and the US are Running a Different AI Race End of the day, business strategies are market-driven

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 5 days ago

I think you can find ethically good, bad and gray uses for AI.

The top commenter here mentions Youtube content creators using it. Most of them are on YT to make money. So its a rational smart choice to let AI do your writing, if it makes you more efficient and means you can earn more.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 2 points 5 days ago

Sounds more like YouTube “content producers” are likely using AI to generate the words they read aloud.

I've noticed this too, and it sounds like a an example of what Marshall McLuhan was talking about when he said "The Medium is the Message”. The form of a medium (e.g., TV, print, digital) has a more profound effect on society than the actual content it carries.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Stupider people with weaker senses of self are more likely to use chatgpt.

No. AI use correlates with being younger and more educated.

Characteristics of ChatGPT users from Germany: implications for the digital divide from web tracking data

 

Unitree's older G1 robot was $16,000 - it will be interesting to see if the R1 has its capabilities. It should be noted that the full spec R1 costs $16,000, but the lowest spec one is $5,900. This has been primarily designed as a research, development, and demonstration platform. The G1 achieved some remarkable success in that. The G1 model has been used in teleoperated medical procedures e.g., ultrasound‑guided injections, emergency ventilation, palpation.

If Chinese manufacturing can build limited test models at this price, then economies of scale suggest that in a few years, it can mass produce them much cheaper. The future will likely be filled with humanoid robots that cost a small fraction of even the cheapest car.

People think of future economies as dominated by UBI & corporate feudalism. But what if it's a world filled with people owning several robot workers each, and bartering and trading the products of their work?

China’s Unitree Offers a Humanoid Robot for Under $6,000

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It would have been more accurate to say well-paying jobs for all of them.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There is only a limited amount of engineers available.

U.S. universities award roughly 150,000 to 200,000 bachelor’s degrees in engineering each year, whereas the EU produces 500,000 engineering graduates per year.

Europe's problem is getting enough jobs for them all.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

there’s very little industry in the EU

The EU's Total Manufacturing Output & Global Share of Manufacturing is bigger than the US's.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Or maybe AGI turns out to be harder than some people thought.

Yes. It seems very unlikely to arise from current LLMs. AGI-Hypers keep expecting signs of independent reasoning to arise, and it keeps not happening.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The US is also heading for a debt crisis. I wonder when the stock market crash comes, will Trump's attempts to 'fix' it be what finally ends the dollar's day as world reserve currency?

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The purpose of the trial was to avoid diseases caused by faulty DNA transmitted via the mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA is only 13 genes out of 20,000, and is transmitted separately, but in some cases can cause disease. The third person here was a woman who donated her healthy mitochondria & its DNA to a nucleus where the existing male/female nucleus was damaged.

Will swapping out some of the 20,000 core nucleus genes be a future development? Perhaps, but maybe it will make more sense to have them gene edited, and not get transplants from extra people.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Although gene editing techniques are patentable in some countries, I wonder if this could be much cheaper than the monthly weight loss shots, which can be very expensive in some countries.

In the future will medical tourism for gene editing be a thing? Maybe the same clinics that offer hair restoration, botox and plastic surgery today will have it as an option.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 3 points 2 weeks ago

Submission Statement

"We wanted to test the entire planning process including approval, construction, and real-world operation of the plant to learn how to draw up concepts for building larger production platforms," said Professor Roland Dittmeyer, Head of KIT's Institute for Micro Process Engineering and coordinator of the "PtX-Wind" H2Mare project during the opening ceremony in Bremerhaven."

Interesting this isn't just a technical proof-of-concept, but they are looking at the practicalities of commercializing it too.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today -1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It seems logical they would test it on extracted gall bladders first. Finding a gall bladder during surgery seems far from an insurmountable task for AI.

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