Do these open source models have access to the same volume of training data that the commercial models have?

A private mission to the moon will launch next month to pave the way for humanity’s return to the lunar surface.

Ghost Riders in the Sky - the mission name chosen by US start-up Firefly Aerospace - will target a landing in the Sea of Crisis, a dark patch the size of Britain on the near-side of the moon.

The Blue Ghost lunar lander will carry 10 scientific instruments and technology demonstrations to the surface as part of NASA’s partnership with commercial operators.

Jason Kim, chief executive officer of Firefly Aerospace, said the space agency had paid a fixed price of $101m (£80m) for the mission, a low cost only achievable with technology innovation.

“We believe in a future of a very robust lunar economy,” he said.

“It is the gateway to other planets, like Mars. And so enabling the frequency of very affordable and high science-value missions is what private industry is doing with this first Blue Ghost mission.”

The spacecraft, which is the size of a large shed, will launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in mid-January, or soon after, and take 45 days to reach the moon.

It’ll land autonomously on shock-absorbing feet and short legs to reduce the risk of it toppling over, a fate suffered by Intuitive Machine’s Nova-C spacecraft in the south pole region of the moon last February.

Mission will study lunar dust

Several of its technology demonstrations are for dealing with regolith, or lunar dust.

A ‘PlanetVac’ will vacuum up and analyse lunar samples and an electromagnetic dust shield will be tested to see if it can protect delicate instruments.

Ryan Watkins, a NASA programme scientist, said: "The moon is quite a dusty area. As we design technologies for the lunar surface, regolith needs to be better understood.

“Lunar dust can affect mechanical components and human health, so we need to know how to account for its effects.”

Recording a lunar sunset in high-definition

Blue Ghost will remain operational on the surface for 14 days.

One of its final tasks will be to record high-definition video of a lunar sunset.

It should provide the first quality imagery of the lunar glow, a phenomenon caused by dust particles floating several centimetres above the surface.

Mr Kim said the video would be a fitting tribute to the last man to walk on the moon, who sketched what he saw in the fading light.

“We expect to capture a phenomenon seen and documented by Eugene Cernan during his final steps of Apollo 17, where he observed a glow as the lunar dust levitated on the lunar surface,” he said.

Accelerando

For those that don’t want to click the X link:

General purpose technologies are the closest thing we have to magic.

Each has given us more with less - and propelled civilization forward. Check out this list of 24 over the last 10,000 years

• Domestication of plants
• Domestication of animals
• Smelting of ore
• Money
• Wheel
• Writing
• Bronze
• Iron
• Water wheel
• Three-masted sailing ship
• Printing
• Factory system
• Steam Engine
• Railways
• Steamship
• Internal combustion engine
• Electricity
• Automobile
• Airplane
• Mass production
• Computer
• Lean production
• Internet
• Biotechnology

AND we have AI, the ultimate meta-technology…

the real question is how many further general-purpose technologies it can unlock in turn.

Climate

• 2024 hottest year on record (so far)
• COP30 a failure
• Large storms / floods destroy portion of a US city
• Oil and Gas continues to expand

AI / Tech

• AI roll out continues and more and more businesses shed staff for AI
• No sign of AGI
• No significant roll out of AI powered robots other than in isolated cases

Economy

• Bitcoin hits $200k at some point in 2025
• Global Inflation Down
• Global Interest rates Down
• Inequality continues to rise globally

War

• More conflict in middle east, potentially China joins fray somewhere
• Stalemate in Ukraine, no formal end to war

Medicine

• Neuralink/BCI makes progress but nothing groundbreaking

Energy

• Solar / Wind continues to expand, prices drop further
• Fusion 30 years away

function DetermineClaim(input) {
    return "denied";
}

The problem with panspermia is that it doesn’t solve the problem of how life started, it just moves the problem to a different planet/asteroid. We still don’t understand what the initial impetus was

One argument for gun ownership is that good people with guns can stop bad people with guns, or at least make them pause and think. This type of arms race argument is fairly prevalent in the US. I can imagine the same argument being made for AI: let’s just make more AGI’s, but friendly ones to fight off the bad ones!

This type of argument ends very badly in practice though, as witnessed by gun crime in the US!

“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes”

Cosmetics industry is massive, people are willing to pay for their vanity.

They would if they could.

It still amazes me that Hurricane Helene hit Florida, Georgia and Carolina and those states still voted for a Climate Change Denier

Wow, I hadn’t seen that.

Here’s the study: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.03735

There is a tsunami coming in the workplace, you can already buy a humanoid robot for $16k (1), which is less than the cost of an employee. When these robots can become actually useful (instead of marketing material) businesses who use labour will not think twice about swapping over. What do we do when unemployment goes up to 25%, 50% etc

(1) https://www.unitree.com/mobile/g1

I’ve seen more and more concern about the AMOC slowdown. Wouldn’t be good if that goes away. Talking a change of -10c in Europe

We should aim for 1.6 next, every fraction of a degree makes a difference

Although the report also says they expect us to hit 3.1 based on current trends

Looks like its been removed!

640k should be enough for anyone too

coming in the next 2 years

Are those Musk years? They are longer than normal years…