It is a game changer, just not the way it's being used. The accellerating advances of robotics are almost all from the use of AI trained in specific tasks. ChatGPT couldn't operate a robot, but neither could the AI that runs Boston Robotics' Spot converse with you.

It's akin to the cops' Thin Blue Line, the judge is also a lawyer, he doesn't want to upset his coworkers.

If it fixed the leak? Why not? Especially if it enabled them to fix it faster and/or cheaper.

Just FYI, AI is in use in the construction trades already, most people aren't aware of that. For your example a draftsman can feed the plans of a building into an adequately trained system and map out the most efficient routing for plumbing and cabling. AI is operating excavators, scheduling contractors, driving inspection robots, recognizing bad concrete pours from drone images, and the list keeps growing. In China there are entire mines being worked by only robots driven by AI, and AI powers their "lights out" factories.

I don't see any issue with an AI creating legal citations, **IF** it's adequately trained specifically on legal documents with the guard rails in place to only use cases that actually exist and which actually pertain to the topic in question. Obviously ChatGPT and its kin are not up to that task, but they're trained in everything under the sun, and the old rule of GIGO goes into effect. A legal AI doesn't need to know anything about running an excavator, how to feed a goldfish, or the Kardashian sluts' sex lives, including crap like that into your training is going to produce garbage output.

You keep saying that, but I don't understand why you think so. LLMs have been in use for over a decade in robotics and they work very, very well. AI is why Atlas can do a backflip and Kuka robots can paint 10,000 quarter panels without a single drip, the system rechecks its work for errors before committing to the machine, and then checks again afterward to ensure that output was what was expected.

Kind of makes one wonder about the Libertardians' belief that their social construct would be maintained by incorruptible judges, honest lawyers and juries with the wisdom of Solomon.

Fake references have a long and disgraceful history. Cram 30 or 40 citations into a filing and the judge might look at the first few and assume the rest are more of the same. IIRC this has occurred even in case filed before the Supreme Court, where the last citations were actually cases which pointed in the opposite direction that the lawyer wanted but no one bothered checking for quite a long time.

I'm just glad that cops tend to be too computer illiterate to start using chatbots to file their cases (so far). There's at least some slim chance the Bar may rule against one of its own, but the Thin Blue Line routinely covers up crimes as serious as murder and drug running so there'd be no hope from that direction.

I didn't say that builders didn't use F-150s, just that a monster truck with a 6 liter diesel isn't necessary. It's far more a macho thing than anything else. If you need to haul a horse trailer or an excavator or something, then yes, otherwise it's excessive.

Hee, hee. My dad was a fanatical fisherman on the Great Lakes. I remember looking out on the whitefish grounds on Grand Traverse Bay one winter and seeing one black dot on the ice, which we knew was Dad, and an ice breaker with the oil company ship behind it. The reason that I had looked is because the ships were blasting their horns at him to get out of their way. Stubborn bugger that he was, he didn't and eventually the ships had to go around him. When we asked him about it he said, "The fish were biting, and I'll be damned if I'm going to move when they're biting!"

Really? That's the opposite of what I thought it would be. Thanks.

Amazon has had to pay employees for the time it takes for them to go through the security process at their warehouses, as do gemstone processing facilities. This is no different. It's disappointing that these people have to waste time and money in court, once the precedent has been established enforcement should be automatic.

Actually the Russian Coast Guard also has extensive experience managing nuclear powered ice breakers (they run all of the largest ice breakers in the world.) Russian sailors are probably a lot cheaper than American ones. :-)

The Fitzgerald had to change course because of the waves, they wouldn't have wanted the waves, coming out of the north, on their port side. Taconite pellets (partly processed iron ore) can shift in the holds, and if part of the cargo moves and the other doesn't on a 1000 foot ore boat it could twist the hull (that may have actually contributed to the breakup, it's unknown). They knew they were near Whitefish Bay, but needed to head into the storm for stability.

Depends on crewing and the availability of customers who aren't in a hurry for delivery. One savings over a Panamax right off the top is the 40,000 or more gallons of fuel that it won't be burning every day. Another is that these ships apparently are exceedingly automated (in part because that's the only way to deal with sails that size), if they can reduce the crew size so that they're only paying 10% as many crew per ship as the Panamax it's break-even.

Ah. I grew up on the Great Lakes, where they're 'pilots'.

Yes, or a rowboat, or drifting debris, or . . .