This just leaves more product for other countries that run by morons, probably reducing prices worldwide. This is why much of Africa had 5G wireless before the US did.

True, but there are all sorts of things that we could do, but we don't because, well because we just don't. There are a number of things that come to mind. One is that novel solutions to problems often come from someone scratching an itch. The problem is, they have to notice the itch in the first place, but the problem domain of, well, basically saving the Earth, is broad and it is hard to see the forest for the trees. The problems to solve for space exploration can be much more focused, and I think that does actually tend to drive people towards developing solutions that can then be applied to broader problems. In other words, for invention usually specific to general seems to work better than general to specific. There is also the matter of drive. Not that drive does not exist for researchers working to deal with environmental issues, but still there might be a tendency for the space fanatic to also be able to maintain better focus. Overall, even if what is developed is never used in space at all, I think that working towards the space-focused form of these technologies might actually bear fruit that can be highly useful here on Earth.

Like back when the deregulated comms sector over-built capacity.

Some of the technologies that would enable space exploration could also help us with the goal of repairing our biosphere though. Among our issues here on Earth is our reliance on fossil fuels. Hydrocarbons for energy make little sense pretty much everywhere we might go in space, however. All that energy storage potential for hydrocarbons is completely reliant on a massive supply of free oxygen being there for the taking. That means that basically all technology used for space either needs to not burn fossil fuels, or use systems with self-contained oxidizers. So those technologies are potentially useful for Earth. Beyond that, nearly everything you might do in space is more resource constrained than Earth, so you need to find methods of re-using the same methods over and over. Reclaiming wastewater and turning into fresh water again, recycling, scrubbing and replenishing atmospheric gases, etc. One interesting area is growing crops in limited space and with limited or no light. A more compact, direct way to grow food could massively reduce the area needed for farming on Earth and reduce the environmental cost. Processes to make steel and produce other metals in space, or to produce concrete in space could greatly reduce the energy waste and pollution of the versions of those methods used on Earth. Methods for local in situ manufacture of more goods would reduce the environmental cost of transporting those goods such long distances.
Basically, self-sustaining space exploration would involve the development of a whole host of technologies that would also help back on Earth. Space exploration and mitigating damage to/repairing the biosphere are not necessarily mutually incompatible goals.

It most certainly does. I did say "adequately trained".

Citizens United.

'Nuff said.

You were comparing manned missions to automated missions. The only practical result of either is science; it will be a long while before we'll see something practical being done in space. Manned mission are more expensive but they can yield way more science as well. I think we ought to at least try and get something of a moonbase established. That is attainable, and will give us a much better idea of what we can expect should we want to venture further out in a manned mission. That experience in itself is worth attaining.
If you want practical, however, space exploration has little to offer anymore, except some spinoff tech perhaps.

There is a huge difference between having a little robotic rover trundle over the Lunar service, and having some scientists present, with a lab. Though I imagine a lot of that research will mostly be useful for further human exploration of them Moon or space, so it might seem a little self-serving. But it may well drive down the cost of human space exploration.

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.