At a previous position I got frustrated at a manager who'd characterize multiple team members, including myself, I suspect, as "creating AI slop" when he was posting multiple times a week about how his Jira tickets, PRDs etc, were all being "supercharged" (ugh) with AI.
Meanwhile, I was absolutely using AI, but not to write documents but to do first pass critical reviews, the "what am I missing here, what haven't I accounted for here?" but the writing was all my own.
> and struggle to complete any of their many projects
Hmm.. I don't struggle, I enjoy it. The goal isn't to start glossy product production. It's to learn how to do it. As soon as it's obvious project is usually shelved. Except for the 'main line' projects which together can result in something significant.
Yeah, I think 4+ legged bots should be more common than 2 leg variants. 2 legs is neat, but takes far more work and processing to control and balanced. It also requires much more powerful legs, a spider bot has more legs which makes it more "complex" in some ways, but individual legs don't need to hold and maneuver its entire body weight alone and it can hold 3 points of ground contact at all times, even when moving around, making it exceptionally stable. A bipedal robot has to be able to hold like twice its own body weight or more in order to balance and maneuver on a single foot in order to walk around and navigate obstacles.
Chinese Unitree already makes humanoids for $5K. Cheap enough for average american family to afford if it's useful. Several batteries and automatic replacement station will make it run 24/7 non-stop.
So, it terms of cheap capable hardware we are close. The problem is software and computing power.
That is interesting, but it looks like the ones used for practical work are $30k. Still, they're targeting 20k units this year, which is a lot more production and a lower price than I imagined they'd be at by now.
At least it's obvious we are close to have cheap mechanically capable robots. As soon as they get smart enough to be useful mass production will begin. We are almost there. (Un)fortunately China is leading here. With all production there it will be hard for US companies to compete. Especially outside of US market.
It's getting complicated here. Likely robots will be connected. This makes them perfect for spying and sabotaging. US cannot let China control them. Likely EU will do the same.
If not connected they can be used for numerous criminal activities. Stealing, selling drugs on the streets, etc. Armed robberies will be impressive.
So, my guess is robots will be connected, and this will be enforced in software and, may be, hardware. To the point that makes them almost unhackable. However it should be possible to take the frame and low level electronics (like motor controllers), and fit it with custom high level compute module and software. It will be just quite a lot of work. Still can be done by community of enthusiasts.
> devs get really reliant and even addicted on coding agents
That's more about managers who hope AI will gradually replace stubborn and lazy devs. That will shift the balance to business ideas and connections out of technical side and investments.
Anyway, before singularity there going to be a huge change.
> The point was being made that a billionaire figurehead drastically changed their views after an "indeterminate time" detained by national authorities.
> IE what if Musk suddenly behaved in such a manner after being detained by a Biden administration. Wouldn't that be profoundly weird?!?
We've seen that. Durov in France after detention began sharing Telegram users' data with authorities. It's unclear how much, but likely full real time access to all of it.
Been there, seen that. That's how Pakistan got nuclear bomb. France was just making friends.