Dwarkesh Patel
Category: robotics/AI
ARK Robotics Research
Automation and robotics, particularly with the integration of AI, are transforming industries and poised to significantly impact the workforce, but are likely to lead to a reduction in work hours and increased productivity rather than total job destruction.
## Questions to inspire discussion.
Investment & Market Opportunity.
🤖 Q: What is the revenue potential for robotics by 2025? A: ARK Invest projects a $26 trillion global revenue opportunity across household and manufacturing robotics by 2025, driven by convergence of humanoid robots, AI, and computer vision technologies.
💰 Q: How should companies evaluate robot ROI for deployment? A: Robots are worth paying for based on task-specific capabilities delivering 2–10% productivity gains, unlike autonomous vehicles requiring full job performance—Roomba succeeded despite early limitations by being novel and time-saving for specific tasks.
Implementation Strategy.
AI model uses social media posts to predict unemployment rates ahead of official data
Social media posts about unemployment can predict official jobless claims up to two weeks before government data is released, according to a study. Unemployment can be tough, and people often post about it online.
Researcher Sam Fraiberger and colleagues recently developed an artificial intelligence model that identifies unemployment disclosures on social media. The work is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.
Data from 31.5 million Twitter users posting between 2020 and 2022 was used to train a transformer-based classifier called JoblessBERT to detect unemployment-related posts, even those that featured slang or misspellings, such as “I needa job!” The authors used demographic adjustments to account for Twitter’s non-representative user base, then forecast US unemployment insurance claims at national, state, and city levels.
Too much screen time too soon? Study links infant screen exposure to brain changes and teen anxiety
Children exposed to high levels of screen time before age 2 showed changes in brain development that were linked to slower decision-making and increased anxiety by their teenage years, according to new research by Asst. Prof. Tan Ai Peng and her team from A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential (A*STAR IHDP) and National University of Singapore (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, using data from the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) cohort.
New robotic skin lets humanoid robots sense pain and react instantly
If you accidentally put your hand on a hot object, you’ll naturally pull it away fast, before you have to think about it. This happens thanks to sensory nerves in your skin that send a lightning-fast signal to your spinal cord, which immediately activates your muscles. The speed at which this happens helps prevent serious burns. Your brain is only informed once the movement has already started.
If something similar happens to a humanoid robot, it typically has to send sensor data to a central processing unit (CPU), wait for the system to process it, and then send a command to the arm’s actuators to move. Even a brief delay can increase the risk of serious damage.
But as humanoid robots move out of labs and factories and into our homes, hospitals and workplaces, they will need to be more than just pre-programmed machines if they are to live up to their potential. Ideally, they should be able to interact with the environment instinctively. To help make that happen, scientists in China have developed a neuromorphic robotic e-skin (NRE-skin) that gives robots a sense of touch and even an ability to feel pain.
Passengers’ brain signals may help self-driving cars make safer choices
Cars from companies like Tesla already promise hands-free driving, but recent crashes show that today’s self-driving systems can still struggle in risky, fast-changing situations.
Now, researchers say the next safety upgrade may come from an unexpected source: The brains of the people riding inside those cars.
In a new study appearing in Cyborg and Bionic Systems, Chinese researchers tested whether monitoring passengers’ brain activity could help self-driving systems make safer decisions in risky situations.
New AI model accurately grades messy handwritten math answers and explains student errors
A research team affiliated with UNIST has unveiled a novel AI system capable of grading and providing detailed feedback on even the most untidy handwritten math answers—much like a human instructor.
Led by Professor Taehwan Kim of UNIST Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence and Professor Sungahn Ko of POSTECH, the team announced the development of VEHME (Vision-Language Model for Evaluating Handwritten Mathematics Expressions), an AI model designed specifically to evaluate complex handwritten mathematics expressions.
The research is published on the arXiv preprint server.
What’s inside Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano? Scientists obtain first 3D images
In the predawn darkness, a team of scientists climbs the slope of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano, one of the world’s most active and whose eruption could affect millions of people. Its mission: figure out what is happening under the crater.
For five years, the group from Mexico’s National Autonomous University has climbed the volcano with kilos of equipment, risked data loss due to bad weather or a volcanic explosion and used artificial intelligence to analyze the seismic data. Now, the team has created the first three-dimensional image of the 17,883-foot (5,452-meter) volcano’s interior, which tells them where the magma accumulates and will help them better understand its activity, and, eventually, help authorities better react to eruptions.
Marco Calò, professor in the UNAM’s Geophysics Institute’s vulcanology department and the project leader, invited The Associated Press to accompany the team on its most recent expedition, the last before its research on the volcano will be published.
New ErrTraffic service enables ClickFix attacks via fake browser glitches
A new cybercrime tool called ErrTraffic allows threat actors to automate ClickFix attacks by generating ‘fake glitches’ on compromised websites to lure users into downloading payloads or following malicious instructions.
The platform promises conversion rates as high as 60% and can determine the target system to deliver compatible payloads.
ClickFix is a social engineering technique where targets are tricked into executing dangerous commands on their systems under believable pretenses, such as fixing technical problems or validating their identity.
TSMC officially begins 2nm chip volume production in Q4 2025
Taipei, Dec. 30 (CNA) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to a recent update on the company’s website.
The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” the website said.
The company described the 2nm process as the most advanced in the semiconductor industry in terms of transistor density and energy efficiency, adding that it is designed to “address the increasing need for energy-efficient computing,” particularly for AI and mobile applications.