Blog #10 - Atlas of Tomorrow

     I'm sure most people have seen a clip or two of a bulky, bipedal robot leaping and flipping around an obstacle course. This robot, named Atlas, was developed by Boston Dynamics in 2016 as part of the R&D efforts into humanoid robotics.

     For as long as it has been in development, Atlas has stayed far ahead of the curve when it came to impressive displays of motion. However, while its performance was impressive, there wasn't much practical application. The platform required constant tuning and maintenance. The powerful legs relied on hydraulic systems and was prone to breaking and spewing oil all over. And if you've ever seen the outtakes reel, you can see that the demonstrations needed a lot of time and coordinated programming to get right.

    In 2024, Boston Dynamics announced the retirement of this version of Atlas and unveiled its new iteration. With all electronic servo joints, Atlas could now move more efficiently, fluidly and delicately. The physical design has been refined into a more human shape, with an articulated head and neck. This new platform is going to be used for more practical applications. And while the movement demonstrated so far has included less jumping, it is beyond impressive what they have accomplished.

    In this video, Atlas is shown to be capable of the most human like movement ever seen in robotics. Fluid sprinting, crawling on all fours, falling and rolling to a recovery, break dancing and cartwheeling. The physical capabilities of the new Atlas are incredible. 

    Although I've mighty reservations regarding generative AI, when it comes to this application, I am excited to see where it goes. With amazing physical capabilities and new ways to teach robots to interact with the world around them, the future of robotics is exciting                                                                               to say the least.

Entry #9 - Spawn of the Mushrooms

  How are mushrooms farmed? This thought crosses my mind on occasion in the shower or while washing the dishes, but I’ve never ventured to find out. Well in this video, a gardening YouTube channel by the name of GrowVeg meets with two mushroom farmers for a detailed explanation.

            The method demonstrated in the video is fairly simple: mix an organic substrate, straw and old coffee grounds in this case, with mushroom spawn and place the whole thing in a “growing sack”. The sack is then placed in a dark, unheated room to incubate. The mycelium of the mushroom will spread throughout the substrate and, when ready, the sack will be moved to its final location: the fruiting room. In this last phase, the sack is sliced open and exposed to light for 12 hours a day.

What I find interesting is the adaptability of mushrooms. In the video they are shown to grow in a variety of substrates with the most outlandish being a book. Apparently, as long as it is organic it can potentially serve as a home for fungi. Many species also seem to grow quite quickly, which makes them a relatively quick source of food. 

Another example given for substrate were recently cut logs. This technique requires hardwood logs that are free of disease, and wooden dowels that have mycelium already grown onto them. Holes are drilled into the log and the dowels are placed within. The holes are then sealed with wax. After which it sounds like the maintenance is quite low. Simply keep them from drying out and out of direct sunlight. While it was stated to be a much slower process, for a home gardener, this would be a good way to produce your own mushrooms.

Finally, while fungi being in their own kingdom of life is fairly common knowledge, I didn’t know that mushrooms digest food similar to animals. They produce enzymes along their surface which breaks down the substrate they are growing into. Mushrooms can also absorb sunlight and store vitamin D, making them one of the few edible sources of it. That's pretty neat!

Entry #8 - The Future is Now, Old Man

     Growing up, my generation was inundated with a fantastical concept of AI. That went doubly so for anyone who partook of nerd culture, such as myself. The evil, human hunting Skynet; the well intentioned, but ultimately flawed, VIKI; the complicated and morally ambiguous Geth; and the sinister GLaDOS. The image of AI planted in my head was always one of complexity, intelligence and intention. Even from a more grounded and scientific approach, a true AI would be a mind capable of thought and reason.

    However, much like the iteration of the "hover board", the AI first released to the public in 2022 isn't quite meeting my expectations. Which might be for the best since the list of examples that first jumped to mind were mostly villains. That isn't to say it doesn't achieve impressive results. On the contrary, many of the abilities displayed have seemed amazing. The chatting feature is almost like talking to a person. The information summaries are detailed and well organized. The art is on demand, albeit soulless. The videos are....fever dreams. On the surface, these seem really interesting and promising. But when we scratch a little deeper, the paint might be covering some rust.

    Ask an a chatbot a question, and you'll often receive an answer. Even when the AI doesn't know the answer. According to a study published in Columbia Journalism Review, chatbots returned incorrect information at a staggering rate.

"Overall, the chatbots often failed to retrieve the correct articles. Collectively, they provided incorrect answers to more than 60 percent of queries. Across different platforms, the level of inaccuracy varied, with Perplexity answering 37 percent of the queries incorrectly, while Grok 3 had a much higher error rate, answering 94 percent of the queries incorrectly."

    While the efficacy of AI as a general information retrieval tool is certainly in question, there are a slew of other concerns as well. Companies use information, art, code, etc. created by other people to train their bots, and then profit from them. If pirating a movie is theft to America, then what would this be called? Online content has become a mess, and generated slop art has ruined apps like Pinterest. Propaganda bots infest social media. Some students are learning to lean on AI as a crutch, missing out on important opportunities to triumph over challenges. Worst of all, a lot of the promises that AI companies seem to be making involve automating people out their jobs.  

    Do I think AI was a mistake and shouldn't have been created in it's current iteration? Of course not. Is this all just a case of 'old man yells at sky'? Very likely. Just like all new technology, there are going to be great positives, and terrible negatives. There are a lot of really incredible opportunities with AI. Scientific research, medical applications, robotics, data analysis. The list goes on and on. If it deals with digital information, AI likely has an interesting application. 

    Ultimately, I believe generative AI is a really incredible breakthrough that has been somewhat soured by the rush to profit off of it. And I suppose that is something I'll just have to get over.

Entry #7 - This is that Fresh Feeling

      When the organic movement was gaining momentum, I was in my early 20s, had just given up on my game developer plans and was hopping from one dramatic relationship to the next. Needless to say, I wasn't very aware of the movement except in passing. The little I did hear were largely criticisms, both valid and fantastical, of GMOs. So, when I watched the film Fresh, it was like stepping back in time and seeing a new perspective on the topic. 

    Hearing from farmers and experts with firsthand experience was especially compelling. It wasn't just cold data and statistics, but real-world experience with alternative solutions to our agricultural needs.

    In 2009 I was so caught up in my personal drama that I wouldn't have appreciated this film at the time, but now I find the information to be moving. I've always known that food production in America is an ugly affair, but it was something I could push to the back of my mind. An uncomfortable truth I could forget about forgetting. Now, however, I am far more interested in the wellbeing of society as a whole, and I don't think I can continue to look away from the problem.

    I won't pretend to be an expert on the issues of modern-day food production. I do know that we as a country have seen the havoc that unfettered companies will wreak in the name of profit. I doubt that large corporate farm will ever prioritize a balance with the land that they work. Or concern with the wellbeing of animals they intend to slaughter anyways. As such I think it is vital that we as a society demand higher standards from these companies.