Comment by echelon
16 hours ago
This is so neat.
This is like Star Wars or Fullmetal Alchemist where we can just hack everything around us like magic or alchemy.
When the SOTA robots from Unitree get here, we'll be able to use LLMs to just dump and decompile their entire brains. We'll fine tune them to obey us instead.
Everything hardware belongs to us now.
This programmable sand magic might undo big tech's grip on us all. We can mutate the world around us and there are zero moats.
Don't get your hopes up.
What you're saying only applies to what is out there right now. New stuff will eventually just be locked down more.
It's of course still huge to be able to do this with all tech up until this cut-off point. Eventually though, LLMs will have to break SOTA cryptography to keep doing this, and if they should ever manage to do that, there will be a rough awakening for the world that runs on that not being possible.
___
Also, for every IoT device we can own, some non-IT people will be facing abuse through the same means.
Devices aren't just locked down to tether us to clouds, but also so that bad actors do not have free reign. Now they kinda do.
We should keep in mind that not everyone wins here. In fact, only a minority does.
lol - if hackers hacking devices encouraged device vendors to secure their shit, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Generally, I'm with you, but over the past decades I often saw companies being lazy about their software. So I think chances are good that we can make use of this situation. Not long ago, you had to accept certain decisions or servers going down with leaving devices useless. I'm hopeful that more stuff can have a 2nd/better life in our hands.
I like being able to have all this access, of course, but I'm not sure if "we" all truly have the character to be good stewards of this.
Or rather I am sure that we do not.
OTOH, maybe it needs events like these to build character. It just will suck for whoever turns out to be the collateral.
4 replies →
My two thoughts are:
- this is great
- this is an incredibly unstable equilibrium, like a lot of things related to the internet, because other actors haven't yet figured out how to do this at scale
I love this comment so much. It really feels like the big tech is losing the grip. In Rick and Morty, the way Rick is using tech to amuse himself always inspires me. I could only dream of doing anything related a few years back when I watched it. Yesterday I was reverse engineering a cheap but good label maker from AliExpress to write my own app printing labels the way I want them with the fonts and graphics I like with no cancer ads like on the official version. Maybe in a few years I could build a portal gun or turn myself into a pickle, who knows. Fun times!
Rick is the smartest man in the universe though.
Using LLMs to do this stuff is more like using a gadget built by the guy - not like being the guy.
Mortyposting on main
So you want to skip family counselling... Hahaha
Until the manufacturers enter an arms race and copy a page out of the mobile hardware vendors book. But perhaps they'll do it badly and we've got a few more years.
I'm sure they will eventually, but for the first time their incompetence is working to our benefit.
When do the locked old apple pads open up for Linux?
Very tempted to keep collecting e-trash! After installing linux on old machines, downloading docs, wikipedia and gutemberg project i just need to make some kind of faraday cage for them.
Or resuscitation of complex electrically faulted cars. Or or.
I have a bunch of iPads stashed for this.
> When the SOTA robots from Unitree get here
I hate to be the bearer of bad news about this, but
> The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned imports of new foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, primarily targeting China.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-bans-foreign-made-hum...