James East

@altantutar Good to see the AI belt but what it really does is show how lacklustre the numbers and financing are which are peanuts unfortunately compared to the US. We just don’t have the venture capital opportunities here to get behind innovative British AI businesses.

London robotics, listed by total funding raised: 1/ Wayve (King's Cross) $2.58B 2/ Automata (Old Bailey) $152M 3/ Skyports (Battersea) $151M 4/ Humanoid (Paddington) $50M 5/ Greyparrot (Bermondsey) $27M 6/ SLAMcore (South Kensington) $26M 7/ Recycleye (Old Street) $23M 8/ Cron AI (London) $7M 9/ Kaikaku (Bloomsbury) $4M 10/ Shadow Robot (Kentish Town) n/a

@Birdimol @brivael Philosophy? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Mes enfants ont 13 et 11 ans. Ils sont excellents à l'école, ils savent changer une roue de voiture, conduire une voiture, ils savent coder une api à l'aide de l'AI, ils parlent trois langues, ils sont champions régionaux d'échecs, ils savent souder, fabriquer une lampe de chevet, etc... J'ai fait beaucoup d'effort d'éducation et avec l'arrivée de l'IA et des robots, non seulement je ne sais pas quoi leur apprendre de nouveau et d'utile mais j'ai l'impression que toutes les compétences que je leur ai transmises sont déjà obsolètes. Conduire ? Il y a le FSD qui arrive partout. Coder ? L'IA le fait mieux qu'eux. Le travail manuel ? Bientôt du passé... Le gout du travail bien fait et la curiosité d'apprendre sont utiles à transmettre, mais concrètement, que doit-on apprendre à nos enfants qui ne sera pas obsolète dans 10 ans ?

Je ne pense pas qu'on réalise le tsunami qui arrive. Ce que vous voyez là, ce n'est pas une démo de plus. C'est le premier domino d'une cascade qui va redéfinir ce que ça veut dire être humain au 21e siècle. Pendant 200 ans, la révolution industrielle a automatisé la force brute. Mais la dextérité fine, le geste précis, l'adaptation à un environnement non standardisé, c'est resté la chasse gardée de l'humain. Casser un œuf. Plier une chemise. Réparer une fuite. Ce mur vient de tomber. Étape 1 : les robots humanoïdes commencent vraiment à marcher. Pas des prototypes de salon, des machines qui exécutent des tâches manuelles complexes en autonomie, à vitesse réelle, avec un seul modèle pour tout. Le hardware suit la loi de Wright. Comptez 5 ans pour passer de 100K€ à 15K€ l'unité. Étape 2 : toutes les tâches manuelles non créatives vont être automatisées. Cuisiner, nettoyer, ranger, jardiner, livrer, soigner, construire. Pas "certaines" tâches. La quasi-totalité du travail manuel répétitif que l'humanité produit depuis qu'elle est sortie de la savane. Étape 3 : tout le monde aura un service 3 étoiles chez soi. Aujourd'hui, avoir un chef privé, un majordome, un kiné à domicile, c'est réservé à 0,01% de la population mondiale. Demain, c'est le standard. Le luxe va se démocratiser à une vitesse jamais vue dans l'histoire. Étape 4 : la société va se réorganiser entièrement autour des robots. L'urbanisme, le droit, la fiscalité, l'éducation. Tout est designé autour d'une contrainte qui disparaît : la rareté du travail humain. Comparable en ampleur à l'arrivée de l'électricité, sauf que ça prendra 20 ans, pas 80. Étape 5 : la place de l'humain est à retrouver. Si une machine cuisine mieux, soigne mieux, code mieux, à quoi ça sert d'être humain ? La réponse n'est pas dans la productivité. Elle est dans l'expérience subjective, la création de sens, le lien, le jeu, le risque, la transmission. Étape 6 : abondance totale de biens et de services. Le coût marginal de produire un repas, un vêtement, un logement, un soin tend vers zéro. Marx pensait que c'était la révolution prolétarienne qui apporterait l'abondance. Erreur. C'est le capitalisme et la technologie qui le font. Étape 7 : on réalise que la vie est un énorme jeu. Toutes les civilisations qui ont atteint un seuil d'abondance ont basculé vers la culture, le sport, la philosophie, l'art. Sauf que cette fois, ce n'est pas 0,1% de la population qui accède au jeu. C'est 100% des 10 milliards d'humains. Étape 8 : le but devient de coloniser l'intégralité du cosmos. Une espèce qui a résolu sa subsistance et qui dispose de robots autonomes ne reste pas confinée à une bille bleue. Mars dans 15 ans. La ceinture d'astéroïdes dans 30. Les lunes de Jupiter dans 50. L'univers observable contient 2 trillions de galaxies. C'est notre terrain de jeu. Le 20e siècle nous a appris à craindre la technologie. Le 21e va nous apprendre à la chérir. Parce que c'est elle, et elle seule, qui nous sort de la condition de primates obligés de travailler 40h par semaine pour ne pas mourir de faim. Les luddites ont toujours perdu. Ils perdront encore. Et heureusement. L'humanité n'a jamais été aussi proche de devenir ce qu'elle est censée être : une espèce de joueurs, d'explorateurs, de créateurs, libérée de la nécessité, partie à la conquête des étoiles. Le tsunami arrive. Ne le subissez pas. Surfez-le.

@brivael Meanwhile in Sudan, people are eating one meal, or less, a day.

@gothburz Obviously it was high calibre wine.

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

Our media focus is on those waging war. But take a moment to remember three humanitarian workers killed today: in Sudan, Congo and Lebanon. Such aid workers engage in thankless, dangerous work; they are warriors for the world's neediest people. Condolences to their families.

@GBPolitcs But his wife is from Uzbekistan and he lives in Portugal!

🚨NEW: Self-made British businessman Duncan Bannatyne, who starred on Dragon' Den from 2005 to 2015, has come out in support of Sir Jim Ratcliffe

@SamaramGill @TalkTV Mmm… the irony of an Australian migrant reporting on asylum seekers.

🚨JUST IN: Just before dawn, around 3.30am, the first group of asylum seekers were quietly transferred into Crowborough Army Barracks, accompanied by a police escort. EXCLUSIVE with locals @TalkTV

@TheBritLad This is total rubbish. I work in humanitarian aid and Lebanon, Türkiye, Jordan, Iran, Chad, etc have all taken in very signifiant numbers of refugees. In Lebanon one in every four people is a refugee.

85% of the worlds refugees are Muslim. Not one of the 56 Muslim countries are taking in refugees. 11 of these countries are the richest in the world. If Islam is so great; why are Muslims countries not taking care of their own?

Only it's not "free communication"... the massive social media companies extract your personal data and sell or monetise it by feeding you a diet of adverts, and dopamine-driving anger and angst content that keeps you locked to your screens. #socialmediaban

And like @HackedOffHugh don't let @Keir_Starmer off the hook. We need an open and decent press... not one that abuses its power, peddles influence and damages our fragile democracy.

To learn more about why it's essential that the inquiry into wrongdoing by the media be allowed to continue watch the compelling 'The Hack' about the amazing work of the @guardian in uncovering the hacking scandal: itv.com/watch/the-hack… @hackinginquiry

@UKLabour I can't believe you had the gall to invite media magnate Murdoch to dine with the King... a man whose paper hacked phones like that of murdered schoolgirl Milly Downer. I stand with @HackedOffHugh saying you have betrayed the victims. youtube.com/watch?v=A9AkTV…

@Spen_Saba @grok is this AI generated?

اگر کوئی ملک زلزلے، سیلاب اور دیگر آفات کا مقابلہ نہیں کر سکتا، جیسا کہ جاپان اور دیگر ترقی یافتہ ممالک نے کیا ہے، تو ہمارے حکمرانوں کو چاہیے کہ بروقت اپنی اصلاح کریں، اس سے پہلے کہ قیامت کے دن ان سے اس کی بازپرس کی جائے۔ #AfghanistanEarthquake #PrayForAfghanistan #HelpAfghan

@adcock_brett Having a robot might save on arguments between me and my wife about how much laundry to stuff in the machine. I like the robot’s idea of load. My wife would require the robot to also use his foot.

@TheHumanoidHub Is this the first documented case of a humanoid injuring a human?

Yikes! The operator picked the exact wrong moment to hand off the controller.

A group of boys went out to play but two didn’t come home. Wars might end but children can pay the price years later. instagram.com/reel/DL62O1UNA… #Afghanistan

@sajidjavid You are a decent man Mr @sajidjavid among so many politicians who appear to be heartless. It’s the lack of grace and compassion in society that more than anything that makes me fear for my country.

Whatever your politics, it was hard not to feel for Rachel Reeves today. Wishing her all the very best.

@AnnaMcGovernUK Photography in a public space is not illegal and most journalists and photographers would defend the right to take photos as being critical to a free press. Clearly though this is creepy, harrassing and should be illegal. How to update the law to get the balance right?