Two Months of Driverless Cars, With Progress and Cogent Observations

This area has been heating up lately.  It’s been a good but limited year for autonomous vehicles, with those offering them mainly building on their robotaxi success.  What’s been happening?

On that, “Way more” (The Economist, October 4^th) discussed “the peculiar economics of self-driving taxis,” claiming that “the rise of autonomy has played out in two different ways.  First it has raised overall taxi demand in San Francisco.  Second, it has catered to a lucrative corner of the market.”  The number of rides in cabs with drivers stayed the same, and from 2023 to 2024 the count of people working in “taxi and limousine service” increased, 7%, leading Lyft’s CEO to say that autonomous taxis will “actually expand the market.” 

Moving along, “Could a driverless car deliver your next DoorDash?  New collab announced” (Michelle Del Rey, USA Today, October 16^th).  That company is combining with Waymo, to “launch the testing phase of an autonomous delivery service in the Phoenix metro area, with plans to expand it more broadly this year.”  Customers, if they are “in an eligible area,” can use the Waymo app’s “Autonomous Delivery Platform.”  As well as human “dashers,” DoorDash is already also making at least some deliveries with robots and drones.

On the other size end, an “AI truck system matches top human drivers in massive safety showdown with perfect scores” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, October 29^th).  Autonomous system Kodiak Driver’s rating, described as 98 on a 1-100 scale on the industry assessment VERA, “placed it beside the safest human fleets.”  The self-driving trucks have “advanced monitoring and hazard detection systems,” and have eliminated many human problems, such as “distraction, fatigue and delayed reaction.”  Nothing was provided, though, on how many of these trucks are running now, and whether they are being used for true production – but see three paragraphs below for one modest data point.

Now we can expect “Waymo to launch robotaxi service in Las Vegas, San Diego and Detroit in 2026” (Akash Sriram, USA Today, November 4^th).  The first two cities aren’t surprising, but can such vehicles deal with snow?  “In Detroit, the company said its winter-weather testing in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has strengthened its ability to operate year-round.”  We will see if that place can really join “Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin,” where it “has completed more than 10 million trips.”

Miami is not in that group, but there, a “Sheriff’s office tests America’s first self-driving police SUV” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, November 6^th).  This “bold experiment” is a “year-long pilot program” of “the Police Unmanned Ground Vehicle Patrol Partner, or PUG,” which “is packed with high-tech features” including interfaces “with police databases, license plate readers and crime analytics software in real time,” and “can drive itself, detect suspicious activity through artificial intelligence-powered cameras and even deploy drones for aerial surveillance.”  A massive, if scary, potential help for law enforcement forces.

Are “Self-driving cars still out of reach despite years of industry promises” (Jackie Charniga, USA Today, November 25^th)?  Although “driverless semitrucks have traveled more than 1,000 miles hauling cargo between Dallas and Houston,” and robotaxis are established as above, “the unmanned vehicles circulating on American highways and side streets are a fraction of what executives promised in the giddy early days.”  We know that, though, and progress, on a more specialized and certainly slower track, is still real.  Don’t bet anything you don’t want to lose against improvement continuing indefinitely.

On the other hand, autonomous vehicles are still embarrassing themselves.  We now have “US investigating Waymo after footage captures self-driving cars illegally moving past school buses in Texas” (Bonny Cho, Fox Business, December 4^th).  Driverless technology has struggled mightily with understanding on a detailed level how human drivers think, and have not been able to quantify some great pieces of that, but why weren’t school buses, with telltale flashing lights and capability of being tagged in some way, long since identified and understood?  Were there none of them in the mile-square testing grounds where base autonomous software was developed?  This is the kind of thing which causes people to be overly fearful, and, if there are many more problems remaining at this stage, that’s justified.  I hope there are no more humiliations as low-level as this yet to emerge.

Ever since I first wrote about driverless technology, close to ten years ago, I have been making points about how beneficial it would be.  Avoiding the tens of thousands of annual deaths caused by human driver error was the main benefit, followed by higher general prosperity and allowing easier transportation of older children, those impaired, and others unable to drive.  As with when our current cars became the norm, we would not know all of self-driving’s effects, but many, such as reduced smoking as people would eventually not need to stop at gas stations where many now buy cigarettes, would be both probable and valuable.  I have been disappointed by overreactions to autonomous vehicles’ tiny amounts of fatalities, governmental unwillingness to allow the technology to progress, and general lacks of will and ability to see how many lives could be saved, but there has lately been, in two places, at least a small advance.

The first opinion piece was “Auto injuries are my job.  I want Waymo to put me out of work” (Marc Lamber, USA Today, November 21^st).  The author, with “a 34-year career as a plaintiff personal injury lawyer,” said his “calls have been heartbreakingly familiar:  a parent and spouse is paralyzed because someone was texting; a pedestrian on a sidewalk is killed because a driver had “just two drinks”; a family is shattered by speeding, fatigue or road rage.”  He pointed out that “autonomous driving technology doesn’t get drunk, distracted, tired or tempted to speed,” and that “a rare autonomous vehicle mistake dominates headlines while the daily toll of human driving error goes underreported.”  He mentioned that Waymo, “across 96 million miles without a human driver,” had “91% fewer serious injury crashes, 79% less airbag deployment crashes,” and “92% fewer injury-resulting pedestrian collisions,” along with “89% less injury-causing motorcycle collisions and 78% fewer injury-related cyclist crashes.”  Overall, “that is not perfection.  That is progress worth protecting.”

The second piece, published in the New York Times website on December 2^nd and in the Sunday print edition December 7^th, by Jonathan Slotkin, a neurosurgeon, was, in the latter, “The Human Driver Is a Failed Experiment.”  He made many of the same points Lamber did, adding that “more than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes last year,” of which “the combined economic and quality-of-life toll exceeds $1 trillion annually, more than the entire U.S. military or Medicare budget.”  He said that “if 30 percent of cars were fully automated, it might prevent 40 percent of crashes,” and that “insurance markets will accelerate this transition, as premiums start to favor autonomous vehicles,” but “many cities are erecting roadblocks,” and “in a future where manual driving becomes uncommon, perhaps even quaint, like riding horses is today… we no longer accept thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of broken spines as the price of mobility.”  Ending, “it’s time to stop treating this like a tech moonshot and start treating it like a public health intervention.” 

Do we want this outcome?  If not, why not?

Artificial Intelligence Going Right Means No Total Crash is Possible

There’s been ever-increasing talk about an “AI bubble,” perhaps meaning a business shakeout but to some ways of thinking, concern that it will all prove illusory.  It may well fall short of being a massive, overarching technological change, but over 2025, and especially over the past three months, it has produced a steady flow of valuable applications.  Here are some worthy of your attention.

To stanch a problem that had been causing deaths and threatened huge lawsuit settlements, we saw as “OpenAI announces measures to protect teens using ChatGPT” (Stephen Sorace, Fox Business, September 16^th).  These “strengthened protections for teens will allow parents to link their ChatGPT account with their teen’s account, control how ChatGPT responds to their teen with age-appropriate model behavior rules and manage which features to disable, including memory and chat history.”  It is now in place, and is at least a commendable start.

On another gigantic corporate side, “Elon Musk Gambles on Sexy A.I. Companions” (Kate Conger, The New York Times, October 6^th).  And they are certainly trying to be.  Musk’s firm xAI offered “cartoonish personas” which “resemble anime characters and offer a gamelike function:  As users progress through “levels” of conversation, they unlock more raunchy content, like the ability to strip (them) down to lacy lingerie.” They would also talk about sex, and have kindled romantic, as opposed to pornographic, user interest.  As for the latter, “ChatGPT to allow ‘erotica for verified adults,’ Altman says” (Anders Hagstrom, Fox Business, October 15^th).  Their CEO Sam claimed he implemented this capability partly as a response to successfully limiting teens as above, and expected that “In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more.”

In a rather unrelated achievement, “Researchers create revolutionary AI fabric that predicts road damage before it happens” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, October 15^th).  “Researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute have developed a fabric embedded with sensors and AI algorithms that can monitor road conditions from beneath the surface,” which would “make costly, disruptive road repairs far more efficient and sustainable” by assessing “cracks and wear in the layers below the asphalt.”  The fabric “continuously collects data,” and “a connected unit on the roadside stores and transmits this data to an AI system that analyzes it for early warning signs.”  Seems conceptually solid, and is now being tested.

If you want more than just hot other-sex representations, now “People are talking with ‘AI Jesus.’  But do they have a prayer?” (Scott Gunn, Fox News, October 26^th).  The author named concerns with that app, some from his Christian perspective, such as “your conversation might take a strange turn when “Jesus” says something that’s just not true or makes up a Bible verse or reference that doesn’t exist,” and that using it constitutes “replacing the living and true God with a false God.” He also noted that “people in church… will answer your questions and support you through uncertain times.”  This program could be used as an attempt to learn Christian teachings, and end up helping people “grow in faith and love,” but, per Gunn, it’s no substitute for the old-fashioned means.

Medical-related AI uses have been growing exponentially, and, in the October 30^th New York Times, Simar Bajaj gave us “5 Tips When Consulting ‘Dr.’ ChatGPT.”  Although “ChatGPT can pass medical licensing exams and solve clinical cases more accurately than humans can,” and “are great at creating a list of questions to ask your doctor, simplifying jargon in medical records and walking you through your diagnosis or treatment plan,” they “are also notorious for making things up, and their faulty medical advice seems to have also caused real harm.”  The pieces of advice are “practice when the stakes are low,” “share context – within reason,” “check in during long chats” by asking it to summarize what it “knows,” “invite more questions,” and “pit your chatbot against itself” by requesting and verifying sources. 

Back to romantic uses with “How A.I. Is Transforming Dating Apps” (Eli Tan, The New York Times, November 3^rd).  The area of online dating, per a mountain of articles and anecdotal reports, is now a disaster zone of dissatisfaction, so the appearance of “artificial intelligence matchmakers” must at least have potential.  People are entering information about what kind of partner they want, the tool distills them down to one candidate, and the user pays individually for that.  I don’t think this is really anything new, just an adjustment from providing a smaller number of recommendations to just one, but perceptions are powerful, and sending $25 for a crack at meeting “the one” may turn out to have great emotional, and even logistical, appeal.

Another personal thing AI has been doing is counseling.  But “Are A.I. Therapy Chatbots Safe to Use?” (Cade Metz, The New York Times, November 6^th).  The question here is not whether the products are useful, but if they “should be regulated as medical devices.”  The day this article was published, as “how well therapy chatbots work is unclear,” “the Food and Drug Administration held its first public hearing to explore that issue.”  At the least, such programs will be usable only unofficially for psychiatric counseling; at best, certain ones will be formally, and perhaps legally, approved.

The other side of one of the technology’s most-established setting came out in “I’m a Professor.  A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse” (Carlo Rotella, also in the Times, November 25^th).  The author, a Boston College English instructor, related how his students “want to be capable humans” and “independent thinkers,” and “the A.I. apocalypse that was expected to arrive in full force in higher education has not come to pass just yet.”  He had told his learners that “reading is thinking and writing is thinking,” “using A.I. to do your thinking for you is like joining the track team and doing your laps on an electric scooter,” and “you’re paying $5 a minute for college classes; don’t spend your time here practicing to be replaceable by A.I.”  Those things, and the “three main elements” of “an A.I.- resistant English course,” “pen-and-paper and oral testing, teaching the process of writing rather than just assigning papers, and greater emphasis on what happens in the classroom” have seen this contributor through well.

In the same publication on the same day, Gabe Castro-Root asked us “What Is Agentic A.I., and Would You Trust It to Book a Flight?”  Although not ready now, its developers claim it “will be able to find and pay for reservations with limited human involvement,” once the customer provides his or her credit card data and “parameters like dates and a price range for their travel plans.”  For now, agentic A.I. can “offer users a much finer level of detail than searches using generative tools.”  One study found that earlier this year, “just 2 percent of travelers were ready to give A.I. autonomy to book or modify plans after receiving human guidance.”  If hallucinated flights, hotels, and availability prove to be a problem, that may not get much higher.

Another not here now but perhaps on the way is “Another Use for A.I. – Talking to Whales” (David Gruber, again in the Times, November 30^th).  Although the hard part of understanding whale sounds is only in the future, AI has proved handy in anticipating “word patterns” as it does with human language, and can also “accurately predict” the clicks they make “while socializing,” “the whale’s vocal clan, and the individual whale with over 90 percent accuracy.”  We don’t know how long it will take for humans to decode this information, but AI is helping to clear conceptual problems in advance.

Once more in the November 25^th New York Times was the revelation that “A.I. Can Do More of Your Shopping This Holiday Season” (Natalie Rocha and Kailyn Rhone).  Firms providing “chatbots that act as conversational stylists and shopping assistants” include Ralph Lauren, Target, and Walmart.  Customers with ChatGPT can use an “instant checkout feature” so they “can buy items from stores such as Etsy without leaving the chat.”  Google’s product “can call local stores to check if an item is in stock,” and “Amazon rolled out an A.I. feature that tracks price drops and automatically buys an item if it falls within someone’s budget.”  While “many of the A.I. tools are still experimental and unproven,” per a Harris poll “roughly 42 percent of shoppers are already using A.I. tools for their holiday shopping.” 

And so it is going.  Most of these innovations don’t require more expensively expanded large language models.  Why would people stop using them?  Why would companies stop improving them in other ways?  They are here to stay, and so, it must be, is artificial intelligence.

September’s Jobs Report – Months Ago Now, with Mild Changes – AJSN Now 16.9 Million

Between the government shutdown and my own outage, we’re about eight weeks later for this one than we usually are, but it still has something meaningful to say.  What?

The number of net new nonfarm payroll positions in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary came in at 119,000, not huge but strongly positive and exceeding a few estimates.  Seasonally adjusted unemployment was 4.4%, up 0.1%, and the unadjusted variety, reflecting work increases in September, fell from 4.5% to 4.3%, with the unadjusted count of those with jobs up 606,000, just more than last time’s loss, similarly moving to 163,894,000.  The two measures showing how many Americans are working or only one step away, the employment-population ratio and the labor force participation rate, each gained 0.1% to 59.7% and 62.4%.  The count of those working part-time for economic reasons, or looking thus far unsuccessfully for full-time labor while keeping at least one part-time proposition, was down 100,000 to 4.8 million, as was the number of people officially unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, reaching 1.8 million.  Average private hourly nonfarm payroll earnings rose 14 cents, a bit more than inflation, to $36.67.

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the Royal Flush Press statistic showing how many additional positions could be quickly filled if all knew they would be easy to get, lost 844,000, mostly seasonally, to get to the following:

 

Less than half of the drop was from lower unemployment – more was from a large cut in those reporting they wanted to work but had not looked for it during the previous year.  The other factors changed little.  Year-over-year, the AJSN increased 316,000, with unemployment up since September 2024 and those not wanting work adding 115,000.  The share of the AJSN from official joblessness shrank 0.3% to 38.9%.

What happened this time?  Not a great deal, and barely better than neutral.  Those not interested in work rose 750,000, which with August’s 860,000 meant over 1.6 million over two months, which is a lot.  Otherwise, everything reasonably hung on.  There will be no October AJSN or Employment Situation Summary, but you can expect November’s writeup to appear here on the next jobs report’s December 16^th release date.  For now, the turtle managed only a tiny step forward.

Artificial Intelligence Going Wrong: Eleven Weeks of Real or Questionable Problems

Somewhere between AI’s accomplishments and its postulated threats to humanity are things with it that have gone wrong, and concerns that something might.  Here are nine – almost one per week since the end of August.

A cuddly danger?  In “Experts warn AI stuffed animals could ‘fundamentally change’ human brain wiring in kids” (Fox News, August 31^st), Kurt Knutsson reported that “pediatric experts warn these toys could trade human connection for machine conversation.”  Although television has been doing that for generations, some think that with AI playthings, “kids may learn to trust machines more than people,” which could damage “how kids build empathy, learn to question, and develop critical thinking.”  All of this is possible, but speculative, and nothing in this piece convinced me AI toys’ effect would be much more profound than TV’s.

A good if preliminary company reaction was the subject of “OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT parental controls with help of mental health experts” (Rachel Wolf, Fox Business, September 2^nd).  In response to a ChatGPT-facilitated suicide earlier this year, “over the next 120 days… parents will be able to link their accounts with their teens’ accounts, control how ChatGPT responds to their teen, manage memory and chat history features and receive notifications if their child is using the technology in a moment of acute distress.”  That will be valuable from the beginning, and will improve from there.

On another problem front, “Teen sues AI tool maker over fake nude images” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, October 25^th).  The defendant, AI/Robotics Venture Strategy 3 Ltd., makes a product named ClothOff, which can turn a photo into a simulated nude, keeping the original face.  A plaintiff’s classmate did that to one of hers, shared it, and “the fake image quickly spread through group chats and social media.”  As of the article’s press time, “more than 45 states have passed or proposed laws to make deepfakes without consent a crime,” and “in New Jersey,” where this teenager was living, “creating or sharing deceptive AI media can lead to prison time and fines.”  Still, “legal experts say this case could set a national precedent, as “judges must decide whether AI developers are responsible when people misuse their tools” and “need to consider whether the software itself can be an instrument of harm.”  The legal focus here may need to be on sharing such things, not just creating or possessing them, which will prove to be impossible to stop.

In a Maryland high school, “Police swarm student after AI security system mistakes bag of chips for gun” (Bonny Chu, Fox News, October 26^th).  Oops!  This was perpetrated by “an artificial intelligence gun detection system,” which ended up “leaving officials and students shaken,” as, per the student, “police showed up, like eight cop cars, and they all came out with guns pointed.”  I advise IT tool companies to do their beta testing in their labs, not in live high school parking lots.

Was the action taken by the firm in the third paragraph above sufficient?  No, Steven Adler said, in “I Worked at OpenAI.  It’s Not Doing Enough to Protect People” (The New York Times, October 28^th).  Although the company “ultimately prohibited (its) models from being used for erotic purposes,” and its CEO claimed about the parental-control feature above that it “had been able to “mitigate” these issues,” per Adler it “has a history of paying too little attention to established risks,” and that it needs to use “sycophancy tests” and “commit to a consistent schedule of publicly reporting its metrics for tracking mental health issues.”  I expect that the AI-producing firms will increasingly do such things.  And more are in progress, such as “Leading AI company to ban kids from chatbots after lawsuit blames app for child’s death” (Bonny Chu, Fox Business, October 30^th).  The firm here, Character.ai, which is “widely used for role-playing and creative storytelling with virtual characters,” said that “users under 18 will no longer be able to engage in open-ended conversations with its virtual companions starting Nov. 24.”  They will also restrict minors from having more than 2 daily hours of “chat time.”

In the October 29^th New York Times, Anastasia Berg tried to show us “Why Even Basic A.I. Use Is So Bad for Students.”  Beyond academic cheating, “seemingly benign functions” such as AI-generated summaries, “are the most pernicious for developing minds,” as that stunts the meta-skill of being able to summarize things themselves.  Yet the piece contains its own refutation, as “Plato warned against writing,” since “literate human beings… would not use their memories.”  Technology, from 500 BC to 2025 AD, has always brought tradeoffs.  As calculators have made some arithmetic unnecessary but have hardly extinguished the need to know and use it, while people may indeed be weaker at summarizing formal material, they will continue to have no choice but to do that while living the rest of their lives.

We’re getting more legal action than that mentioned above, as “Lawsuits Blame ChatGPT for Suicides and Harmful Delusions” (Kashmir Hill, The New York Times, November 6^th).  Seven cases were filed that day alone, three on behalf of users who killed themselves after extensive ChatGPT involvement, another with suicide plans, two with mental breakdowns, and one saying the software had encouraged him to be delusional.  As before, this company will need to ongoingly refine its safeguards, or it may not survive at all.                  

I end with another loud allegation, this one from Brian X. Chen, who told us, also in the November 6^th New York Times, “How A.I. and Social Media Contribute to ‘Brain Rot.’”   He started noting that “using A.I.-generated summaries” got less specific information than through “traditional Google” searches, and continued to say that those who used “chatbots and A.I. search tools for tasks like writing essays and research” were “generally performing worse than people who don’t use them.”  All of that, though, when it means using AI as a substitute for personal work, is obvious, and not “brain rot.”  This article leaves open the question of whether the technology hurts when it is being used to help, not to write.

Three conclusions on the above jump out.  First, as AI progresses it will also bring along problems.  Second, legally and socially acceptable AI considerations are continuing to be defined and to evolve, and we’re nowhere near done yet.  Third, fears of adverse mental and cognitive effects from general use are, thus far, unsubstantiated.  Artificial intelligence will bring us a lot, both good and bad, and we will, most likely, excel at profiting from the former and stopping the latter.

Artificial Intelligence’s Power, Water, and Land Uses, What’s Coming Next, and What Might Remain After a Business Bloodbath

How big has the AI buildup been?  What major problem with that is on the way?  If AI proves to be a bubble, what of value would stay? 

The oldest piece here, “AI energy demand in US will surge but also provide opportunity to manage energy” (Aislinn Murphy, Fox Business, April 18^th) told us that “the world, particularly the United States, is projected to see a massive jump in data center and artificial intelligence demand for electricity by 2030, per a recently released International Energy Agency (IEA) report.”  That happened not only in five years but within six months, though we can’t yet vouch for the prediction that “renewable energy sources will meet nearly half of the additional demand, followed by natural gas and coal, with nuclear starting to play an increasing important role.”

With that, let’s look at “What AI’s insatiable appetite for power means for our future” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, June 20^th).  Even less than five months ago, “the modern AI boom” was “pushing our power grid to its limits,” as “the energy needed to support artificial intelligence is rising so quickly that it has already delayed the retirement of several coal plants in the U.S., with more delays expected,” and “energy is becoming the next major bottleneck.”  As the previous author also wrote, power is going for “running” it “at scale,” for current use of the technology, not for creating models for future releases.  Perhaps unexpectedly, 30% to 55% “of a data center’s total power use” goes to “keeping AI servers from overheating,” and, overall, “the demand for AI is growing faster than the energy grid can adapt.”  Despite pledges to use renewable energy, much of that may be nuclear instead of wind, solar, or hydro, and even if not, “because the grid is shared, fossil fuels often fill the gap when renewables aren’t available.”

In “At Amazon’s Biggest Data Center, Everything Is Supersized for A.I.” (June 24^th, The New York Times), Karen Weise and Cade Metz reported that “a year ago, a 1,200-acre stretch of farmland outside New Carlisle, Ind., was an empty cornfield.  Now, seven Amazon data centers rise up from the rich soil, each larger than a football stadium.”  The company plans to build about 23 more there “over the next several years,” which “will consume 2.2 gigawatts of electricity – enough to power a million homes,” along with “millions of gallons of water to keep the chips from overheating.”  When fully constructed, this facility “will be the largest power user in the state of Indiana by a country mile.”

People connected with rural areas may not mind the jobs and money such projects bring, but per Ivan Penn and Karen Weise in the August 14^th New York Times, “Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone.”  Even though “Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies” are moving “into the energy business,” “the average electricity rate for residents has risen more than 30 percent since 2020,” and as “recent reports expect data centers will require expensive upgrades to the electric grid,” “A.I. could turbocharge those increases,” “unless state regulators and lawmakers force tech companies to cover those expenses.” 

Similarly, “AI Isn’t Free.  The First Costs Are on Your Bill, and More Are Coming” (Kay Rubacek, The Epoch Times, September 24^th).  With rising electric costs common nationwide, “despite the technological advancements, computing power is not getting more efficient in terms of power usage.  It is becoming ever more energy-hungry.”  As such, “the Department of Energy now warns of a hundred-fold increase in blackout risk by 2030 if data center growth continues and plants keep closing on schedule,” yet “experts cannot accurately predict (AI’s) future costs because the technology is changing too fast.”

General-public reactions to AI power and water use are coming in.  They are often not positive, as “AI Data Centers Create Fury from Mexico to Ireland” (Paul Mozur et al., The New York Times, October 20^th).  “In country after country, activists, residents and environmental organizations have banded together to oppose data centers,” but “there are few signs of a slowdown,” as, per bank UBS, “companies are expected to spend $375 billion on data centers globally this year and $500 billion in 2026.”  In Ireland in particular, where “a third of the country’s electricity is expected to go to data centers in the next few years, up from 5 percent in 2015,” the “welcoming mood has soured,” and it has now “become one of the clearest examples of the transnational backlash against data centers,” as “a protest movement has grown.”  “Impoverished small towns” in Mexico near where data centers have appeared have “began experiencing longer water shortages and more blackouts.”

It is clear from all this that the rubber of increased AI infrastructure is meeting the road of damage to residents.  There will be vastly more conflict next year, much of it, even in the United States as protests multiply, preventing data centers from being built.  That will become yet another problem for the technology to overcome, and will push costs even higher.

I have been reading about the possibility of a severe artificial intelligence downturn, and comparisons and contrasts with what happened almost 200 years ago with railroads.  Then, the failed companies left behind track, bridges, and stations that were later used when the industry reconstructed itself.  What would AI abandon?  Failed companies’ data center buildings would remain, but the chips would, as now, be worthless well under a decade later.  While the news that it is not upgrades driving current resource usage is heartening, and the chance of what is now a vast number of profitable and worthwhile applications disappearing is almost nonexistent, companies going bust could mean the end of tens of trillions in market capitalization.  It’s easy to imagine effects such as a 50% NASDAQ-index fall.  Yet those gigantic physical structures will still be useful.  How, we don’t know, but they will be, one way or another.

Still No AJSN

 Until data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics becomes available, there will be no further editions of the American Job Shortage Number.  If the November data is available by December 4th, the November version will be posted December 5th as previously expected.  I will put together and release the September and October editions, on dates to be determined, if the BLS publishes back data supporting them.

Scary Monsters, aka Physical Artificial Intelligence: Five Months’ Progress with Robots

This AI subarea is not only one of the oldest, but the most graphically visible.  And, in honor of our publication date, the closest to monsters.  But how good are they really?

We start with “Delivery robot autonomously lifts, transports heavy cargo” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, May 26^th).  So you don’t want to pay those mid-six-figure incomes to union dock workers, or even way over $100k to UPS package handlers?  This technology, LEVA, can “load and unload cargo boxes without any human help” by “securing the box,” then lifting “itself back up and” carrying “the load to its destination,” handling up to 187 pounds and dealing with stairs and “rough terrain” on the way.  Alas, nothing here about availability.

Dealing with a current problem, “John Deere addresses farm labor shortages with autonomous tractors” (Sophia Compton, Fox Business, also May 26^th).  Although they have been made in at least prototype form for almost four years, we can’t tell from this article if, or when, you can buy one.

More clearly in the present tense is “Humanoid robots handle quality checks and assembly at auto plant” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, June 24^th).  “Kepler Robotics has officially introduced its Forerunner K2 “Bumblebee” humanoid robot at the SAIC-GM automotive plant in Shanghai… in a recently released video, the K2 is seen moving confidently through the plant, performing detailed quality checks, and handling assembly operations that demand both strength and precision.”  It “can load stamped parts, manipulate mechanical fixtures, and adapt to new tasks using a combination of imitation and reinforcement learning.”  In addition to “tactile manipulators with an impressive 11 degrees of freedom per hand, and flexible fingertip sensors that boost its dexterity,” it “leverages a cloud-based cognitive system that enables it to learn new tasks quickly and coordinate its movements with full-body awareness.”  Fundamentally, largely because of AI, better than the industrial robots of decades ago.

Continuing along more general but similar lines, from the same author and source, “Job-killing robot learns at work, and it’s coming to the factory floor” (July 5^th).  Although the previous example would match the title, this time it’s Hexagon’s AEON, also “humanoid” and designed for “handling repetitive and error-prone tasks,” which allows “raising the bar for productivity and workplace safety.”  It uses Microsoft Azure and “Maxon’s advanced actuators” to get “remarkable agility and dexterity,” along with “spatial awareness,” and its “intelligence grows over time thanks to a self-learning loop.”  But no availability information, and described by Knutsson as “new.”

Did you know that “There Are More Robots Working in China Than the Rest of the World Combined” (Meaghan Tobin and Keith Bradsher, The New York Times, September 25^th)?  That was “more than two million… in Chinese factories last year,” per the International Federation of Robotics, with 300,000 “new” ones.  Charts of “annual installations of industrial robots,” one for China and one for “rest of world,” show the second one way ahead from 2015 to 2019, somewhat higher in 2020, and behind from 2021 to 2024.  Because of a “national push,” “over the past decade, China has embarked on a broad campaign to use more robots in its factories, become a major maker of robots and combine the industry with advances in artificial intelligence,” and now has “five times as many robots working in its factories as the United States.”

This time’s stunning speed achievement is from a product that “is a collaboration between Crest Robotics and Earthbuilt Technology, “Australian construction robot Charlotte can 3D print 2,150-sq-ft home in one day using sustainable materials” (Kurt Knutsson, Fox News, October 12^th).  The author described that as “the speed of more than 100 bricklayers working simultaneously.”  The material it uses “comes from sand, crushed brick and recycled glass,” forming “a structure that’s fireproof, floodproof and created with a far smaller carbon footprint than traditional building methods.”  Its “future versions” could even build “moon bases for research and exploration.”  Until then, though, it needs to become available, as it, representations to the contrary, “may be years away from building its first full-scale home.”

Apparently in progress now, though, are “The Robots Fueling Amazon’s Automation” (Karen Weise, The New York Times, October 21^st).  In that company’s “most advanced warehouse in Shreveport, La., employees touch products at just a few stages, such as taking them out of shipping boxes and placing them in bins,” whereupon “the Sparrow robotic arm looks into a bin of items, picks the one it wants and puts it in another bin,” sometime after which “the robotic arm called Robin places packed packages on a small robot called Pegasus, which shuttles packages to drop down specific chutes depending on where they will be shipped.”  After that, robots sort them and “autonomously” take “them to shipping docks.”  No doubt there will be further improvements, and perhaps more steps automated.

How can it be that “Robots power breakthrough in pregnancy research, boosting IVF success rates” (Angelica Stabile, Fox News, October 23^rd)?  The automata “assist in the (in-vitro fertilization) lab,” which incorporates a great deal of other AI, by “preparing specialized plates to sustain embryos,” at which they are “10 times more precise in preparing (them) than humans.”

These are wonderful developments.  My only gripe is that, as so often happens in the information technology field, the difference between current and projected future obtainability is often blurred.  Is it fair to credit a product with being able to do something, if it has not been publicly rolled out?  What steps remain for the manufacturers of, in the cases above, LEVA, robotic tractors, AEON, and Charlotte to sell their products commercially?  How much low-error time after that would it take for the makers, and us, to declare their product productively deployed?  We don’t have much for answers to any of these.  Until we do, or see successful robotic sales and deployment, we should limit credit to the Amazons, Bumblebees, and IVF robots.  The other companies can see why – if they can get there, we’ll do the same for them.