• M500@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Just wait until someone connect chatgpt to one of those gigantic 3d printers that print buildings.

    Are we really that far from having “AI” do this?

    • Acters@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Still need someone to build it for the computer. What would really help the “AI” is to have something that can handle the creation of different interfaces and modules. Then, it would need to solve or mitigate the maintenance conundrum of repairing itself when it breaks.

    • Khotetsu@lib.lgbt
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      1 year ago

      Unfortunately, those building 3D printers are mostly just a publicity stunt currently. Too impractical to use at any sort of scale.

      Now, if we were to combine AI with the old Sears kit homes, we might be onto something. Given a standardized list of stuff like room dimensions and the materials required for their construction, AI could probably generate an endless number of variations of both houses and additions for them with an exact list of required construction materials and equipment. Entire series of standardized houses with all the materials prepped ahead of time, ready to just be delivered to a plot of land and constructed on site by a local construction companies, with only minor adjustments required to account for the specific peculiarities of the area. The IKEA of house construction.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can’t 3D print laying all the pipe and the electric cabling and adding fixtures and insulation and all sorts of other things homes need.

      You can 3D print the basic structure. That’s it. You’re saving on bricklaying or carpentry.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yes, moving things in a warehouse is exactly the same as laying plumbing and AC ductwork. There’s literally no difference in terms of complications.

          • IndefiniteBen@leminal.space
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            1 year ago

            You’re right that robots aren’t going to be able to replace plumbers or electricians in traditional building projects.

            But why can’t we change how new buildings are built so the method better suits robots. I’m sure with current technology we could design a building that could be built entirely by robots.

            I don’t think it’ll happen because it will take a lot of time and money to develop such a holistic system, with no return on profit until it’s a complete system.

          • GreenM@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Well at one point i lead bunch of those “workers” on real project and oh boy, in some cases, i would much rather have robots do it.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              How soon do you think it will be before technology reaches the point that we can build completely functional houses with just robots? Give me a timeframe.

              • UrPartnerInCrime@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Do you want tonights winning lotto numbers also? How about which team will win the super bowl this year?

                Nobody can tell exact time frames. But the future is happenening old man

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  So robots will totally take over house building and humans will have nothing to do with it at some indefinite point in the future and that’s why people right now should be worried about their jobs. I see.

      • ImpossibilityBox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And the second that it is economically viable the companies will be dumping their bricklayers/carpenters down the drain and replacing them with computer controlled construction methods.

        • sleepy555@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, like how blacksmiths can’t find any work these days anymore. It’s heartbreaking.

          • mycatiskai@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            There are artisan blacksmiths that probably make bank doing custom jobs like blades and ironwork gates and other such artistry.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          When will it be economically viable to dump all the people who have to set up the equipment and all of the people who have to do everything but make the basic structure? Is this ‘house set up and entirely built by robots down to the light fixtures with no human intervention’ a near future proposition?

          • jasondj@ttrpg.network
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            1 year ago

            When was it economically viable to replace hand-sewn lumber with lumber mills?

            Then they went and made portable electric saws. What a world!

            And then electric drills! And laser levels!

            Remember paper ledgers and abacuses? Ever hear of Microsoft Excel?

            We keep making tools that always increase productivity and reduce time and cost. It’s Constant incremental progress, and on a large scale it’s great because it frees up (human) resources to focus on new industry and technology, which furthers the CIP. On the micro scale, there may be a small number of temporarily displaced workers as jobs shuffle around and workers re-skill.

            But at this particular intersection of technology, we are at a pretty bad spot. We are on the verge of massive progress in multiple industries, and wealth has concentrated in the elite classes. “Temporarily displaced workers” won’t have the capital to re-skill or invest their own resources into new industry. This is bad.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              When was it economically viable to replace hand-sewn lumber with lumber mills?

              When they did it. Because they could process a huge amount more lumber. I’m not sure I understand.

              • Marin_Rider@aussie.zone
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                1 year ago

                what they are saying is that in the past, technological leaps meant increases in productivity and generally freed the displaced workers into new careers, but this time the sheer scale of change that is imminent doesn’t leave time for that. it’s going to be bad

    • SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Not so much of the physical building, but I bet the designing isn’t too big of a stretch. Think something like procedural generation to make 2/3 of a floor plan and have humans make sure it makes sense and add details.

  • Blapoo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I take it you haven’t seen the recent advancements in both robotics and LLM powered agents

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      Sort of… we can 3D print walls out of specific concrete blends that run nicely through an extended hose system that runs from the mud pump to the print nozzle. But, concrete has a limited time as mud before it starts to harden, so you can only print for so many hours before you have to stop and flush out the pump and hoses before it turns into rock, and the concrete mix can’t be too chunky (like including gravel) to flow through the system.

      Also, if you get all that right, then you can print walls… but not structural frames that would support a multistory building, or plumbing or electrical wiring or insulation or windows or roofs…

      We’re a long way from 3D printing a building wholesale.

  • hackris@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Ahhh yes. In capitalism, if you create a machine that can replace say, 10 people, you don’t give them 1/10 of the work. You fire them and maybe hire someone to operate it.

    Machines and human workers can coexist. They don’t have to replace them.

    Edit: Of course they should replace them, but only after we get good living conditions for unemployed people, which are currently non-existent.

      • hackris@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Of course, the end goal (mind the word “end”) is to replace them. However, in this current situation, where many people are struggling to find a job, it’s not good.

      • interolivary@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        They should replace workers and people should deserve to live without being workers, but it should also be painfully obvious that our current economic system won’t support this idea, and won’t until we do some pretty drastic things.

        It’s not that we couldn’t build a post-scarcity society probably even right now given some pretty radical adjustment of resource allocations, we just don’t want to build one – “we” being the 0.01% that have such insane amounts of wealth that they’ve essentially taken over the whole economic system, largely thanks to eg. dumb fucks like Reagan and sociopathic fucks like Thatcher and the people who idolize them buying into the idea that they too can be that rich because the wealth will somehow magically trickle down.

        • AngrilyEatingMuffins@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          That would be the mentality I’m talking about us needing to kill. Regardless, AI will help with this problem, in both it being inevitable that it will provide people with more free time (due to efficiencies or unemployment) - which is needed to be able to effectively revolt - and it will help address the issues of transforming our economic model, as the machines will have a much better way of distributing goods and services. Also capitalism needs workers to have money so that they can buy the products they produce, which should at some point necessitate a universal basic income, which will further help erode the work = money paradigm.

          • interolivary@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            If you think this current brand of capitalism requires plebs to have money, I’m not sure how you explain the fact that when taking inflation into account wages have been either stagnant or actually going down ever since the 70’s / 80’s, the amount of wealth owned by the same plebs compared to the “financial ruling class” (mainly executives and such, and especially the banking sector thanks to deregulation) has shrunk dramatically, and cost of living keeps getting higher, while at the same time the compensation for the “financial ruling class” has grown at a frankly exponential rate.

            Sufficiently advanced AI will, if anything, make it even more likely that that “ruling class” will realize they don’t need quite as many of us around because all we do us suck up their resources and complain how we haven’t eaten anything but cup noodles in a week and our teeth hurt.

      • herzberd@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        I wish the bar was at living comfortably. As it stands it feels like the average person doesn’t think non-workers deserve to live :/

    • Kedly@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, we arent going to get our Jetsons future if we refuse to restructure our society towards not having to work instead of just fighting the tech because its taking our jobs away

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I was gonna say Netherlands as that’s the kind of shit I expect from Dutch architects, but upon further inspection, Germany?

      • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Austria, Museum of Modern Art in Vienna. I have no information about the substances or medications the architect has taken.

        Well, meanwhile in Canada…

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Like so many dystopian stories, the real life version that eventually comes about is more cringe and shitty.

      Compare a decades ago EvilMegaCorp as presented in fiction to the Steve Jobs-emulating ukulele-strumming hellworld corporations burning the planet down around us while trying to seem insincerely quirky about it.

      Ultor in Red Faction was evil and all that, but imagine if Ultor was Le Epic X and all of its maneuvers were narrated by an aging very divorced apartheid dad. my-hero

  • Obinice@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Within my lifetime we will see a significant chunk of building site labour be replaced by robots.

    Let’s not forget this isn’t unprecedented - plenty of jobs went away with we introduced the last big technological innovation, heavy machinery, to the building site. Suddenly one guy in a JCB can do the work of 20 guys with spades, etc.

    I’m not talking about replacing everyone, not within my lifetime, that’s likely silly unless there’s a technological leap we can’t yet predict.

    But the simpler the labour, the more likely it’ll go, and not every site job is specialised enough that it can’t be replaced by a well trained, well developed AI system in the year 2050 built into a similarly well developed body -which exist today, are already dropping in price due to refinements and ramping up production, and by then will be as competitively priced as the cost of a human.

    This is a good thing though, capitalist politics aside. The more jobs we can replace, especially hard on the body, unhealthy, often very dangerous jobs like construction, the better. Assuming we can evolve society away from our capitalist overlords and into a society that works for the people.

    Anyhoo, I wouldn’t rush to retrain in another sector just yet if you’re a brickie, but if you’re just getting in to the biz, keep your options open for sure.

    If you’re a lorry driver and you’re young? Spend some of your spare time retraining for a new career now, because while lorry drivers will still be needed in 30 years time before you’re set to retire, the vast majority of the work will be automated, and driver jobs will be extremely scarce compared to the large number of workers trying to get them.

    Like the coal miners of yesteryear, you don’t want to wait until it’s far too late to retrain and then complain that your career is ruined. Prepare now.

    Best case scenario? Your main job never goes away, but now your skill set is diversified and you’ve always got options. Worst case? Your main job does, and you luckily can fall back on your alternative options.

    • Chef_Boyardee@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      As a construction worker, I disagree. Construction sites are so cluttered, so tough to navigate, and there are so many unknown variables. I really think cars driving themselves will happen before construction workers are replaced. And personally I feel we are a long ways away before cars are driving themselves to begin with.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Wow, what a stupid construction company (if they are the ones behind this.) AI will come for manual labor in a way that makes what’s happening right now look unimpactful. And what’s going on right now is very fucked up.