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Originally Posted by freebeard
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I do. Read the whole I, Robot series of short stories from the #5 top bunk of D-wing. Same place I read Prelude to Foundation in 2001, and A Brief History of Time, and a few Michael Crichton books, among others. Really only had time to read on the weekend, but with activities limited to walking the track, lifting weights, watching Nascar, doing laundry, or playing cards, it left a lot of time to read.
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Originally Posted by Blacktree
I like to call that process "McDonaldizing." And it happens in many fields. The general trend in industry is to reduce reliance on highly skilled (and highly paid) professionals. The goal is to reduce the skill requirement to entry level... like a McDonald's worker. Hence the term.
And I think AI will eventually McDonaldize just about everything. IIRC that was actually the goal, right from the outset. And it's going to have HUGE implications.
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...except as Scott Adams suggests, the human gatekeepers aren't going to just allow AI to displace them. Will the AMA and state medical boards just let AI erode the value of highly paid, trained and experienced physicians? The moment a bad outcome occurs due to AI, they will draw all attention to that anecdote as an excuse to shut it down or severely restrict it, or put someone who is highly paid in charge of oversight.
AI has the potential to cut healthcare costs in half, or better, but we'll figure out how to continue the trend of healthcare costs increasing faster than the inflation rate. That golden goose won't be killed without a major fight.
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Originally Posted by aerohead
...to make 69.1% of grid power non-fossil-fueled.
Advances in [technology] make substitution of fossil-fuel-powered peaking plants a no-brainer.
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I thought I recently read that 40% of US electricity is still coal or fossil fuels? Coal is still the single largest electricity source.
The prospect of future technology displacing fossil fuels now doesn't make it a no-brainer. It's going to take a lot of brains between now and when we significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption on a global scale.
EDIT: looks like I got mixed up, with gas being nearly 40%, and coal about 20%
... ah, and my attention to details like "In the year 2040" finally kicked in. Zero people know what things will be like 2 decades away.