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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   23932 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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5 years ago, the idea of training robots to part out chickens was complete science fiction.

5 years ago we already had robust image segmentation models based on labelled data https://paperswithcode.com/sota/instance-segmentation-on-coco Given the controlled lighting and camera angles on a factory floor, it's definitely tractable problem with that period's technology.

Of course that period's AI would lack decision making and merely use vision as a mechanism to adjust the tool path with feedback. But processing chickens is quite mindless and mechanical, merely accounting for variation in the size and shape of the chicken. I don't see how modern humanlike AI will help here, when we end up training assembly line workers to be more mechanical.

I'd guess that making and foodproofing an industrial robot to be able to function safely in the factory environment would be the hard part. Even if the software package was already perfected, I doubt you could build the robot cheaply enough to make it worth it.

I believe that things like iphones are still assembled by hand even though those are perfectly uniform and good for automation.

Isn't this a solved problem?

I'm sure I've seen footage of automated chicken processing in the Netherlands or Germany.

For example https://youtube.com/watch?v=QIciSPOm1h0

No AI required.

Yes, and here's a machine that does the plucking / beheading / de-footing, and claims to also do eviscerating though that's not in the video. All done without AI. There are still humans in the loop hanging up the carcasses onto the machine, so possibly the question is at what point would it become profitable to replace those with automation.

While the capabilities seem impressive, I can't help but notice the difference in quality between those two machines, and legitimacy of the demo video.

The second has simpler, non-moving parts that probably degrade the quality of the product, jump cuts, and is moving pretty slowly. Can't believe that selling an expensive machine like that isn't worth paying an American a couple of bucks to read a script instead of just some shitty TTS engine.

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