While I am aware and wary of the potential downsides of automation (in particular, job loss), I am very excited about its potential to make expensive services inexpensive; in particular, medical services. I want to see so much more R&D into automating expensive aspects of the medical field, from mundane tasks like the paperwork, to researching and producing new drugs, to automating life-saving medical procedures.

Aside from the obvious value of getting to stay alive, these machines could address doctor shortages across the world, reduce wait times, improve patient outcomes, and make them extremely affordable. This last point is extremely important: In many parts of the world, healthcare is just not affordable or available. This includes remote and developing areas, such as in Africa, as well as in "affluent" places like the US where medical debt is the #1 cause of bankruptcy.

Anyways, I was excited to read this article. The tl;dr is that a robot performed some laproscopic surgery on pigs, performing difficult gastro-intestinal surgery - and it performed well. The machine also planned most of the surgery as well - though there was human doctor oversight.

However, one could imagine a few years from now, a single human surgeon could oversee several of these at once, thereby reducing the need for human surgeons, bringing down costs, etc etc. Cool stuff.

How Scientists Gonna Act when the Climate Finally Messes up the Earth

Fun... though the reality is that the scientists are gonna be screwed too. The super rich may last a bit longer.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/05/30/110-sp-500-companies-talking-ai-2-stocks-buy-now/

By way of context, global gdp is currently around $100 trillion.

If M&C are correct, we’re looking at a 10% increase, which is enormous. If AIM is correct, we’re looking at a 200% increase, which is unfathomable. If the result is somewhere in the middle, around $100T, we’re still looking at a 100% increase in global GDP.

Basically, AI is either going to turbocharge the economy, or it’s going to blast our economy into another universe, or something in between.

We are not ready.

This is pretty cool. Instead of using dangerous chemicals to kill mice. Just trick them instead. Non-violent. Cheaper. And can save a TON of food. Pretty awesome. 

Highlights:

Hi JD,

This is how I see it:

"and spreading out as human populations do"

I'm not sure if populations are "spreading out" much these days. Most population trends are toward urbanization: people leaving the countryside to move into big cities. Additionally, forecasts predict a contraction of the human population in the near future.

"is there any benefit to warming that the earth could adapt to. IE, more land mass for expansion and agriculture, better access to more resources, etc. Short of inconvenience for the poor and the rich who line the shores."

It's not just poor and rich. Most civilizations throughout time have settled near water for obvious reasons. Even today, around a quarter of all people live near ocean coasts.

As for benefits of climate change, if there are any, they will be overwhelmingly buried in the mountain of ill effects climate change will have. e.g. Even if we somehow got more cropland from it, crops might not grow if the temperature and weather isn't amenable to it.

"AND, if the earth warms up, doesn't that increase evaporation of water to move it back into the atmosphere and still collect at the polar caps"

Evidently not, considering they're melting at an increasing pace. Also, I don't know if water vapor automatically travels to the poles. It likely has more to do with overall atmospheric circulation patterns, as well as temperature and other factors.

"Does that offer any help between the two of evaporation and atmospheric cooling that could be assisted by the increased atmospheric water content as a thermal conductor?"

Not sure I understood this part.

"Just curious from a "what if we can't really do anything short of being insanely monstrously radical humans wiping other humans out" perspective."

I don't buy into the "kill everyone to save everyone" perspective. I usually tell people who endorse it to start "at home" if they think that. Personally, I think we absolutely *can* solve climate change without genocide (jfc), but the problem is that it will require some personal sacrifices and evidently most people aren't ready for that. But if we're going to take a hardline approach, I'd infinitely support strong policies that are unpopular to lower emissions rather than to start killing people.

"These are sincere questions. It truly is from the "what if it's too late" perspective. How do we adapt in spite of the changes? Are we smart enough to do so? And are there any benefits at all?"

It might be too late in that we're not making the changes we need fast enough to avoid disaster. As for climate adaptation, there are lots of interesting websites and blogs that look at mitigation and adaptation methods. And of course there's a benefit in trying to fight off mass death, even if we can't save the planet to the extent that we'd like.

One sentence to get EV haters to shut up

I’ve used this a bunch. Just watch their heads start to spin as they realize this entirely fair and basic-economics response butts against the reality of how much their emissions will cost them. In a best case scenario, the average combustion-engine driver would be looking at an extra $500/yr (and this is just for the CO2 cleanup; there are other emissions as well). But with the pick-up lovers and less ideal scenarios, they could easily be looking at an extra $2,000/yr to the gov’t for environmental clean-up. After 20 years, could collectively total as much as $40k, or the price of the car itself.

And frankly, that could potentially bring a LOT of money - and thus R&D - into the CO2 cleanup industries, like direct carbon capture, which still needs a lot of work. So their CO2 tax money would really help advance sustainability causes. And meanwhile, EVs are getting faster, longer range, more sustainable, and cheaper each year. (I usually mention all this too as the gears in their heads are slowly turning.)

Enjoy

P.s. “Oh yea?! Well then do you agree that EVs should be taxed for any emissions they may cause in their construction or lifecycle?!” - Yes. Yes, I do.

brain teasers for AIs... or humans?

Pretty interesting concept though I’m not sure about its feasibility. They basically built robotic jellyfish that can create vertical currents that lift things up the water column. In theory, this can be used to help clean up lots of the plastic and other garbage on the bottom of ocean bodies without really disturbing the environment. Once the debris is near the surface, more traditional water cleaning devices can filter out the garbage.

(Pictured: Two mechanical jellyfish work together to lift a discarded mask.)

Apparently this could be combined with atmospheric water harvesting to make it much more efficient. That’s bc this stuff allows water to flow easily at even sub-zero temperatures.

Now, with atmospheric water harvesting with stuff like a MOF (metallic organic framework), the MOF is excellent at absorbing the water, but it requires help to release it, usually by heating it up. If they could mix these substances and properties, it may requires a lot less heating to get the MOF to shed its water. This is really important bc you can get water from air without any electricity, just relying on the temperature change from night to day - but you’d only collect a bit of water. By adding a solar panel or other electricity source, you can run hot/cold cycles throughout the day, drastically increasing output. Now, if you can lower the time and energy required to do that, you could get even more water output with even less energy input.

This has huge implications as water scarcity becomes an increasingly big problem, and as water-from-air tech continues to be researched and invested in.

Highlights:

Dr. Janiak noticed that the crystals were yellow on some days and red on others. It didn’t take her long to figure out that the crystals would only turn red on days with humidity levels higher than 55%. When humidity levels fell below this level, the crystals would go back to being yellow....

Why do these crystals have such special properties? This question started a nearly ten-year investigation, which initially focused on explaining the mechanism behind the color change....

He wanted to know how the crystals would behave when subjected to different temperatures and humidity levels: “I was intrigued by the color change and wanted to explore what was happening at the atomic scale,” he explains...

One day, he observed something strange happening at temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. “I noticed that the crystal still changed color at sub-zero temperatures. Initially, I thought that there was something wrong with the experimental setup or the temperature controller, as crystal hydrates are not supposed to release water at such low temperatures,” he explains...

The channels in the crystal are only one nanometre wide – one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. It was already known that, at the nanoscale, water can remain mobile within channels at temperatures below 0 °C. However, this study showed for the first time that such channels can also allow the uptake and release of water at temperatures far below its normal freezing point...

Were it not for the color-changing behavior of the crystals in the first place, they would not have become aware of the ultralow temperature water loss capability: “Who knows,” says Prof. Barbour, “there may be many other materials out there with the ability to absorb and release water at very low temperatures, such as metal-organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks.” “We simply do not know about it because we have not been able to visualize it. Now that we do know that such behavior is possible, it opens a whole new field of research and potential applications...”

Interesting model for how AI music could become more mainstream.

Highlights:

The AI system makes a best guess at a recipe for a desired material and then iterates the reaction conditions as robots try to create physical samples. The new setup, known as the A-Lab, is already synthesizing about 100 times more new materials per day than humans in the lab can manage...  

Previous automation efforts randomly mixed compounds in search of new materials, Ceder says, but the new AI-driven approach is more akin to the way traditional chemists do their jobs. The AI starts by coming up with a plausible way to synthesize a material, using its understanding of chemistry. It guides robotic arms to select among nearly 200 different powdery starting materials, containing elements such as lithium, nickel, copper, iron, and manganese. After mixing the precursors, another robot parcels out the mix into a set of crucibles, which are loaded into furnaces where they can be mixed with gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. The AI then determines how long to bake the different mixes, the temperatures, drying times, and so on... 

LBNL researchers have spent the past several months working out the kinks in their system and testing it. In the process, the A-Lab has produced more than 40 target materials—about 70% of the compounds it has set out to produce. “I have made more new compounds in the last 6 weeks than my whole career,” Ceder says.

Really interested in this considering current glass manufacturing is not sustainable and we’re literally running out of sand.