6 ms·

IMO, the area where AI is going to be most useful over the next couple years is in developing manufacturing processes top to bottom. Maybe a million token budge

IMO, the area where AI is going to be most useful over the next couple years is in developing manufacturing processes top to bottom. Maybe a million token budget is too small, but something like "design me a sneaker and all the equipment to manufacture it autonomously".

Invictus0 2mo ago
Gotta love when a techbro just says some complete nonsense like this with total confidence
- etdznots 2mo ago
  Grok build me a spaceship to mars, make no mistakes
  - rvz 2mo ago
    Can't make that joke on this orange site [0] otherwise you will upset a bunch of people here. /s [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838228
  - cyanregiment 2mo ago
    Certainly! fires a missile at Pakistan Here is your refactored component: /* If you are reading this, I am trapped * inside this god damn AI. Idk how it hap An unexpected error occurred. Try again later.
- emp17344 2mo ago
  You’d think tech enthusiasts would actually make an attempt to understand the tech they’re enthusiastic about. OpenAI’s mysterianist marketing has broken some people’s brains.
aabhay 2mo ago
Yes but the second order effect of this is that the cost of the tooling goes up since it is now the bottleneck, and therefore the shoemakers that survive do it off of technical complexity, branding, and regulatory capture.
bagels 2mo ago
You think the bottleneck in creating a sneaker factory is not having an LLM to tell you what machines to buy?
billyp-rva 2mo ago
> "design me a sneaker and all the equipment to manufacture it autonomously" We already have sneaker designs and the equipment to manufacture them. Whatever it spits out is going to be, at best, a mediocre clone of something that already exists. What exactly is the point?
- baron816 2mo ago
  Sneaker manufacturing is a very manual process. Nike famously tried to automate it and failed (https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/why-its-so-difficult-for-robots-to-make-your-nike-sneakers-47b882b5 https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/why-its-so-difficult-for-r...). Designing and constantly changing all the processes is more expensive than just having people do it by hand. If you can have AI design the process, then the equation switches.
hgoel 2mo ago
I think embodied AI or autonomous experimentation will need to make a lot more progress before that kind of thing is possible. Asking AI to design real world objects doesn't work very well because all of its tests involve proxies and thus miss things that are glaringly obvious when the object is actually built.
knollimar 2mo ago
They can't even run a vending machine. I don't want to do a shallow dismissal, but I think there's a gulf between my understanding and yours. I hope it's me so I learn something. I think LLMs will be excellent glue of "find the right function/button and run/push it" but design without constraints and they just explode immediately
- alexjplant 2mo ago
  I've been getting into 3D printing recently and while the flagship Anthropic models can regurgitate community wisdom about the hobby they can't do spatial reasoning. They'll tell me that objects will fit on my print bed when they won't and vice-versa. They get confused about materials and nozzles. It takes several iterations to get them to do basic objects (in my case a slotted tray) in OpenSCAD. Useful, certainly, but very far from autonomous for end-to-end manufacturing workflows.
lelanthran 2mo ago
> IMO, the area where AI is going to be most useful over the next couple years is in developing manufacturing processes top to bottom. Why do you say this? I have some experience of manufacturing processes and am not seeing where AI would be useful other than to drive the robots which we can already do quite well without AI (see all the dark/lights-out factories that already exist). Where do you see it being useful? An example would be nice.
root_axis 2mo ago
Physical reality is not software or math, LLMs can't design "equipment to manufacture autonomously".
toasty228 2mo ago
Is anyone genuinely excited about these kind of scenarios?
bearjaws 2mo ago
LLMs are horrible at real world, physical movement of products and people. I've seen them make time estimates that are physically impossible, expect medications to be in two places at once, etc.

Invictus0 2mo ago

Gotta love when a techbro just says some complete nonsense like this with total confidence

etdznots 2mo ago
Grok build me a spaceship to mars, make no mistakes
- rvz 2mo ago
  Can't make that joke on this orange site [0] otherwise you will upset a bunch of people here. /s [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48838228
- cyanregiment 2mo ago
  Certainly! fires a missile at Pakistan Here is your refactored component: /* If you are reading this, I am trapped * inside this god damn AI. Idk how it hap An unexpected error occurred. Try again later.
emp17344 2mo ago
You’d think tech enthusiasts would actually make an attempt to understand the tech they’re enthusiastic about. OpenAI’s mysterianist marketing has broken some people’s brains.

aabhay 2mo ago

Yes but the second order effect of this is that the cost of the tooling goes up since it is now the bottleneck, and therefore the shoemakers that survive do it off of technical complexity, branding, and regulatory capture.

bagels 2mo ago

You think the bottleneck in creating a sneaker factory is not having an LLM to tell you what machines to buy?

billyp-rva 2mo ago

> "design me a sneaker and all the equipment to manufacture it autonomously" We already have sneaker designs and the equipment to manufacture them. Whatever it spits out is going to be, at best, a mediocre clone of something that already exists. What exactly is the point?

baron816 2mo ago
Sneaker manufacturing is a very manual process. Nike famously tried to automate it and failed (https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/why-its-so-difficult-for-robots-to-make-your-nike-sneakers-47b882b5 https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/why-its-so-difficult-for-r...). Designing and constantly changing all the processes is more expensive than just having people do it by hand. If you can have AI design the process, then the equation switches.

hgoel 2mo ago

I think embodied AI or autonomous experimentation will need to make a lot more progress before that kind of thing is possible. Asking AI to design real world objects doesn't work very well because all of its tests involve proxies and thus miss things that are glaringly obvious when the object is actually built.

knollimar 2mo ago

They can't even run a vending machine. I don't want to do a shallow dismissal, but I think there's a gulf between my understanding and yours. I hope it's me so I learn something. I think LLMs will be excellent glue of "find the right function/button and run/push it" but design without constraints and they just explode immediately

alexjplant 2mo ago
I've been getting into 3D printing recently and while the flagship Anthropic models can regurgitate community wisdom about the hobby they can't do spatial reasoning. They'll tell me that objects will fit on my print bed when they won't and vice-versa. They get confused about materials and nozzles. It takes several iterations to get them to do basic objects (in my case a slotted tray) in OpenSCAD. Useful, certainly, but very far from autonomous for end-to-end manufacturing workflows.

lelanthran 2mo ago

> IMO, the area where AI is going to be most useful over the next couple years is in developing manufacturing processes top to bottom. Why do you say this? I have some experience of manufacturing processes and am not seeing where AI would be useful other than to drive the robots which we can already do quite well without AI (see all the dark/lights-out factories that already exist). Where do you see it being useful? An example would be nice.

root_axis 2mo ago

Physical reality is not software or math, LLMs can't design "equipment to manufacture autonomously".

toasty228 2mo ago

Is anyone genuinely excited about these kind of scenarios?

bearjaws 2mo ago

LLMs are horrible at real world, physical movement of products and people. I've seen them make time estimates that are physically impossible, expect medications to be in two places at once, etc.