I do industrial automation for a living, and I just want to point out that automating things that exist purely in the digital domain is far easier than automating things like ship breaking.
Cant imagine how it even could be automated without advanced robotics. Those ships are freakin HUGE! Maybe a collection of robotic snakes with cutting lazers attached to their heads and some little scuttle bots to pick up the pieces the snakes knock off? Just cut the whole thing into 1’ disks or maybe hexagons is better
Maybe a collection of robotic snakes with cutting lazers attached to their heads
Just make a huge version of those supermarket bread slicer machines and feed the ships through it.
Or better yet, build a bigger ship and use it to smash the smaller ship to pieces
I just read The Three Body Problem, and I have some ideas on how it could be done.
It can be automated it would just never be worth the cost. Every ship is different and has its own requirements.
If they were all 100% exactly the same, using the same hardware in all the same places then it would be cost effective to automate their disassembly. Otherwise every single ship is a one-off edge case.
Even if they’re mostly the same many will have had upgrades, repairs, and changes over time that could literally throw a wrench (that someone accidentally left inside an interior area) into the whole (automated) operation.
I think the best case scenario is to enforce shipbuilding standards and deny ships entry if they don’t follow them (for loading/unloading, anyway). Then you setup standardized dry docks with robotic arms that are already preprogrammed to disassemble these standard vessels. They may need human guidance for some areas that are allowed to be non-conforming but as long as the majority of the ship adheres to the standard it’d make the whole process much smoother and more environmentally friendly.
From an environmental standpoint the real issues from these vessels isn’t even the difficulty of (environmentally friendly) disassembly. It’s their emissions over their working lifetime and super toxic things like anti-fouling coatings that where we have no good way to remove or dispose of them. Like, even if you rip off the outside of a ship what do you do with that toxic waste? It’s nasty stuff.
[…] I just want to point out that automating things that exist purely in the digital domain is far easier than automating things like ship breaking.
Not that you’re saying otherwise, however isn’t that even more of a reason more developers and resources should be allocated toward automating complex and risky physical processes?
Honestly, I don’t see how you would do it without general AI, which is something that will be solved in the digital domain first anyway.
Eh, it could be done with non-general AI. There are a finite number of different types of things to handle, so as long as it’s not thrown off by some bent steel or some missing consoles, I’d be amazed if they couldn’t automate at least specific ship designs.
Not that you’re saying otherwise, however isn’t that even more of a reason more developers and resources should be allocated toward automating complex and risky physical processes?
You’re solving for the wrong problem from the perspective of people with money investing money to solve these problems.
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Shipbreaking, while dangerous for the workers, isn’t expensive because it is done in far flung countries with workers that have low wages, few protections for safety, and long term health consequences.
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Art and writing (for western consumption) requires educated and talented people which are expensive to employ.
People with money, looking for a return, want that return their spending, not reduce human suffering.
Processing the digital world is just the first step. You can’t just build a safe autonomous ship disassembly robot without making sure your algorithms are actually sound. Look at self driving cars, they’re far from being safe and acceptable. Jumping straight into this problem without testing the shit out of your code in a virtual world is a mistake.
I mean automating it would certainly be a challenge but the first step would be building tools and robotics to allow human operators to more safely and effectively manage the tasks. Then you streamline the industrialized processes. Then you think about automating things.
But this is all really an economic problem, not a technical one. Software tools have minimal resource costs (compared to building/destroying a ship) but require skilled (expensive) laborers to operate. So to cut costs in any digital field you need to get rid of the expensive laborers. Thus the push for AI to replace any computer-bound work. Physical labor is already considered dirt-cheap in our fucked society, and no one is rushing to add expensive tools in fields where disposable people will suffice.
I sympathize immensely with the OP image’s final point, but “working for the right company” isn’t going to fix it. Reorganizing society is necessary, rethinking what we culturally value and uphold.
I think the solution for ship breakers is for the job to be a highly paid respectable job with protections. In other words the technology that desperately needs to disrupt this industry is probably… unions
Yeah I think that’s the point. Ship breaking is apparently poorly paid so they need unions.
I also not sure how much scope there is for automation on tasks like this as each shit will be different there isn’t going to be a huge amount of repeatable action
Yeah exactly, I work in AI and robotics for medicine, and im so goddamn sick and tired of these people and their absolute god-awful uneducated takes on AI.
And yet, people do… https://www.leviathan.eu/
That is really cool job description I haven’t seen pop up before! Would you mind sharing what type of things you need to automate? It sounds so interesting, I never really understood why factory line jobs should exist for example * because the work is dangerous, the opposite of stimulating/engaging (works for some sure), and just generally overall depressing unpleasant places to work. We SHOULD be striving for a world where humans don’t have to do such menial unfufilling work.
*very superficially, all the nuance that makes it continue to be necessary and exist I understand)
I work in the auto industry, so programming the machines that make the car parts. Humans are still involved because getting machines to handle changing conditions is very slow, expensive, and still winds up unreliable in a lot of cases. The simple process of picking a randomly oriented part up out of a bin and placing it accurately on a fixture is actually very difficult for a machine to do, when compared to how easily a human can accomplish the exact same task.