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#7 | Posted by donnerboy at 2026-07-11 02:23 PM
If you think AI is just about automated office tasks then you haven't been paying attention.
Today's "AI" is, mostly automation.
AI's reach extends far beyond basic "office tasks" because it handles complex workflows, accelerates physical and digital problem-solving, and increases the overall speed of tasks with less human error.
Instead of just drafting emails or sorting data, advanced systems will coordinate projects, analyze deep patterns, and drive major operational shifts. There is even an AI running its own business in SF now.
"Luna / Andon Market: An autonomous AI agent given a budget and lease to run a real storefront in San Francisco."
That sounds like a really lovely marketing material template of almost any "AI" prospectus.
www.businessinsider.com - Claude Code's creator says his setup involves thousands of AI sub-agents doing 'deeper work' overnight - 2026-05-13
|------ Anthropic engineer Boris Cherny says his coding setup now involves "a few thousand" AI agents working for him overnight.
Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, described his AI workflow during an interview with Sequoia Capital on May 4.
His answers - including how he mostly runs the agents via his phone - highlighted how some Silicon Valley engineers are beginning to use AI systems less like chatbots and more like always-on autonomous assistants.
Cherny said he relies heavily on two Claude Code features built for persistent automation: /loops and Routines.
He said users can schedule /loops locally via cron, while Routines run recurring tasks on a server, allowing engineers to keep agents working after their laptops are closed. ...
-------|
Stories like this are popping up nearly every day now.
Yes, of course. There are also "stories" nearly every day that don't make it into popular, mainstream press.
"A pair of humanoid robots crossed a major medical milestone this week after successfully performing gallbladder removals in pigs for the first time ... "
Intuitive Surgical's DaVinci robots (and their copycats) are old news and have been on the market since early 2000s; if you have seen phrase "minimally invasive surgery" it most likely refers to all kinds of robot-assisted medical procedures, from head to toes.
"In 2012, it was used in an estimated 200,000 surgeries, most commonly for hysterectomies and prostate removals."
And robotics may or may not include AI, but often confused with AI because most are usually consumer-facing, even if it's as simple as Roomba.
The Singularity is Nearer.
Yes, every day, by definition... but none of what you posted before is even remotely close to Singularity, or much beyond automation of previously "manual" tasks.
In fact, most of what was described in that 'prospectus' I could run much cheaper on a network years ago with a logic module, few scripts and not very sophisticated task scheduler, with or without ERP or "supervising" the process.
I didn't call it AI.
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#13 | Posted by SpeakSoftly at 2026-08-21 05:01 PM
If our government could order our industries to do their bidding like china does we'd be a lot more competitive.
LOL. No, we wouldn't - it's called "industrial policy" and it usually ends poorly for the industries involved and the economy in general due to mistaken notion that "government knows best" and results in misallocation of capital (and labor) and uncompetitively mispriced goods.
For example, right now, the buildout of datacenters resulted in lack of labor to build housing... Trump's immigration policy doesn't help.
"Industrial policy" of Japan in the 1980s and 1990s lead to several "lost decades" and loss of competitiveness in many other sectors. Same is actually happening with China and Germany.
We've had several experiments with the "industrial policy" and protectionism - in steel, cars, yachts, "renewable energy" etc. - most recently with Trump and Biden administrations trying to "re-shore / on-shore" manufacturing in places and sectors where there was either no real organic demand or it was not price-competitive and was cheaper to buy elsewhere... IOW, money down the drain once the government "program" was over.
We're plenty competitive in the global market, including "manufacturing", in the services companies choose to provide and the goods companies choose to make, based on the input costs, TCO, potential market size and available expertise - cost or quality is what makes companies competitive, not government edicts.
Most of the problems are that the governments (federal, state and local) increase input cost via several mechanisms - "minimum wage", taxation, regulations, mandates, resources misallocation (e.g., energy / electricity) etc.
Also, Maybe you have enough time to grow your own food because you're a loser, but most of us have other jobs.
You've just described what David Ricardo called "comparative advantage" - it's cheaper and less burdensome to buy the goods with a fraction of what you can earn elsewhere - that's why "industrial policies" don't work in the long run.
But that would be exactly the kind of "industrial policy" that government could demand - e.g., supplying a certain percent of "local", "farm to table" or "organic" food or non-caged chicken eggs, etc. - that would raise costs and made products less competitive vs other states or countries.
Competitiveness is about price - and governments' "industrial policies" inevitably raise costs and "price goods and services out of the market" - especially when the "market" is increasingly global and technology can make it cheaper somewhere else.
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