This doesn't seem to be a popular idea but I think it makes a lot of sense. The issue with the idea is that you're now halfway there to an all-in-one, and I think manufacturers will just keep adding components until they get there because theres way more consumer demand for that.
There is a missing product in the market right now. These high-end GPUs are all designed to fit into decade old computer cases. The pcb and chips are tiny and thin, you should be able to throw the actual guts of a GPU like a frisbee. GPU manufacturers should be designing external GPUs, instead of consumers having to purchase enclosures and power supplies for GPUs still designed to go into pc cases.
The current modularity is important, because the market thrives on it. TB3 enclosures are expensive; to duplicate that cost across every graphics card sold would be expensive.
Yes, it'd be smaller. But the increase in cost would not be worth it for the current niche market. Until TB3 penetration across regular consumers (as compared to the techie niche) goes up, there's no point in making slick consumer-market pre-builts.
Modularity is a fast horse. The current state of external GPUs is like phone blocks, and I'm waiting for the iPhone. A gpu enclosure with power costs about $300 USD. An Nvidia 1060 6gb gpu also costs about $300 USD. From my perspective I don't understand why I wouldn't just cough up a bit more money and build an entire pc. An Ncase M1 pc case is practically just as portable as any of these gpu enclosures.
It's a product people don't know they want. Currently, the fast horses are fast enough. When enough people are using "fast horses" where cars would be more appropriate and where volume pricing would favor cars, we'll see cars on the market.
The market just isn't ready for the car. And you mention wanting an iPhone. The problem is that you'll more than likely get a Newton MessagePad.
edit: also, I've come to the same conclusion wrt PC cases. I'm considering building a "portable desktop" that I can take with me, that mirrors video over a network connection. Then I can use a laptop to interface with it.
No it doesn't. 50 years from now we'll be struggling with the consequences of climate change, and its fair to say the us gov has dropped the ball on that issue. The us gov is comprised of people who deny climate change is a real problem. Wait, this is sounding really familiar...
Seems like superior service if you ask me. If you bought a defective product and had a painless return/exchange experience, you probably are going to leave more happy than sour, wouldn't you think?
It's difficult to get a good sense of 'longevity' with life expectancy stats, especially when in this case they only take an average. I can imagine that this group of people does not have modern tools and techniques for child delivery. Obviously that is concerning and worth keeping in the picture, but any higher than usual child mortality rates will really skew the life expectancy stat, making it appear as though people just drop dead in their 40s and 50s.
Edit: I probably don't need to point that out to the typical HN reader, but its something I personally wouldn't have picked up on a few years ago
The second link I posted has survival curves. Child mortality is high but not the whole story - lots of people dying at all ages due to infectious diseases.
Yes, the intestine parasites don't exactly enthuse one to adopt the lifestyle. A simple clinic with antibiotics could sort a lot of the mortality though.
Playing checkers seems like a well-defined task to accomplish. A computer that has "the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility." is not defined at all. Mobility? Perceiving what?
Im reminded of the multimillion dollar AI-based image recognition system the military developed, in the 80s or 90s to analyze images looking for tanks. When the system was tested on photos, that were not from their pool of stock test photos used to train the systems, it got almost 100% wrong. Why? Because they stock photos had well-composed shots on a sunny day with some clouds (usually the spots tanks are hidden in are overcast or very cloudy). The "real" shots were all cloudy (as expected) and the system had actually been trained to recognize discrete clouds rather than Tanks.
Perception is about distinguishing, imagining physical properties (this can be disassembled or just casually appears composite due to perspective), judging and guessing at unseen properties. I figure an pool ball has a curved 3d spherical shape, because I've seen one before and felt it. At the same time I imagine that there is no "top" or differing feature anywhere on the ball, based on the appearance of what portion I can see (it looks clear and flat white? i expect the rest to be so).
To clarify, Moravec was speaking of robots, e.g. embodied computation.
Moravec's paradox, though it now seems obvious, was the opposite of the prevailing view.
It implies that if 'being in the world' (mobility, perception & grasping) are the hard tasks then this is where AI will emerge not in simulation, planning or board games.
