Comment by bbarnett
19 hours ago
By that metric, there are lots of connections between space flight and any other aspect of modern society.
No plane, relying upon air pressure to fly, can ever use that method to get to the moon. Ever. Never ever.
If you think it is, you're adding things to make a plane capable of space flight.
>By that metric, there are lots of connections between space flight and any other aspect of modern society.
Indeed. But there's a reason "aerospace" is a word.
>No plane, relying upon air pressure to fly, can ever use that method to get to the moon
No indeed. But if you want to build a moon rocket, the relevant skillsets are found in people who make airplanes. Who built Apollo? Boeing. Grumman. McDonnell Douglas. Lockheed.
I feel like aeronautics and astronautics are deeply connected. Both depend upon aerodynamics, 6dof control, and guidance in forward flight. Advancing aviation construction techniques were the basis of rockets, etc.
Sure, rocketry to LEO asks more in strength of materials, and aviation doesn’t require liquid fueled propulsion or being able to control attitude in vacuum.
These aren’t unconnected developments. Space travel grew straight out of aviation and military aviation. Indeed, look at the vertical takeoff aircraft from the 40s and 50s, evolving into missile systems with solid propulsion and then liquid propulsion.
AGI may use the same hardware, or same compute concepts.
But LLMs (like low/high pressure wing flight) will never result in AGI (you won't get to the moon with a wing).
You're making my point.
Your point is good enough any spaceflight, despite some quibbling from commenters.
But I haven't seen where you make a compelling argument why it's the same thing in AI/AGI.
In your old analogy, we're all still the guys on the ground saying it'll work. You're saying it won't. But nobody has "been to space" yet. You have no idea if LLMs will take us to AGI.
I personally think they'll be the engine on the spaceship.
I thought your point was terrible about aerospace. And since you're insisting I follow you further into the analogy, I think it's terrible here.
LLMs may be a key building block for early AGI. The jury is still out. Will a LLM alone do it? No. You can't build a space vehicle from fins and fairings and control systems alone.
O1 can reach pretty far beyond past LLM capabilities by adding infrastructure for metacognition and goal seeking. Is O1 the pinnacle, or can we go further?
In either case, planes and rocket-planes did a lot to get us to space-- they weren't an unrelated evolutionary dead end.
> Yet powered flight has nothing to do with space travel, no connection at all.
Fully disagree.