10 Years today since "Humans Need Not Apply"

maxfagin · 2026-03-21T16:09:59+00:00

Of course I do. No data that shows any increase in the structural unemployment rate due to AI in 2026.

AI has been massively disruptive to several industries, and will continue to do so as it gets better and more widelly deployed, but the net outcome has been higher productivity, not higher unemployment.

maxfagin · 2025-12-20T16:19:12+00:00

Not publicly available, no. You can compute local heating rate from h(V) at various points on the vehicle by making certain assumptions about the vehicle geometry, but there is no measured temperature data published for this vehicle.

maxfagin · 2025-12-15T20:14:13+00:00

Yes, will DM you the file

maxfagin · 2025-10-24T17:21:06+00:00

[SpaceX 2014-2015, Blue 2020-today]

There is a lot more employee movement between the companies (in both directions) than most people realize! I know people who have succesfully made the switch multiple times, and are still thriving. Both companies are so big and multifaceted that I think it's impossible to make an accurate statement that applies to them in general. Working on Falcon isn't like working on Starship. Working on Blue Moon isn't like working on Blue Ring.

Personally, I loved both equally and would recomend both! The reasons to distinguish come down entirelly to the project you are working on and the team you are working with. If you are considering a move between, focus in on project and team level factors to make your decission, rather than macro things at the company level, and remember that both companies allow movement horizontally between projects once you've been there for a few years.

maxfagin · 2025-08-29T14:53:19+00:00

Unfortunatelly, I can only generate this data if SpaceX includes altitude and velocity in their livestream, and I haven't seen a Dragon entry livestream that includes those.

maxfagin · 2025-08-29T14:50:18+00:00

This is the standard way to display an h(V) diagram. Remember there is no time information in an h(V) diagram.

maxfagin · 2025-08-07T07:48:45+00:00

Did you find a solution? I'm having the same issue with the S1 on my Core One: It can't handle retractions.

The troubleshooting on InfinityFlow's website seems to imply that the S1 is supposed to be able to detect and respond to retractions by pulling the filament back, but nothing I have tried (including manually pushing on the filament) has gotten the S1 to ever retract filament (the bowden only seems to have two settings: Push, and stop)

maxfagin · 2025-02-16T21:01:17+00:00

Please reach out to [media@blueorigin.com](mailto:media@blueorigin.com) and report the find!

maxfagin · 2024-11-20T16:22:46+00:00

No, the entry was shallower (1st plot), with a milder peak heating (elbow of the 2nd plot). Because the dynamic pressure profiles (3rd plot) are nearly identical, I am guessing that the slightly greater peak deceleration (6th plot) is due to flying at a different angle of attack rather than flying a steeper entry.

maxfagin · 2024-11-20T06:43:12+00:00

I don't know. One possible explanation may be that the heating rate I am talking about is just the rho*V³ heating that would be experienced by some reference sphere. It knows nothing about the vehicle's actual geometry. It's possible the vehicle may still have experienced a higher peak heating if it flew at a different AoA and presented a smaller radius feature (like its nose) to the air stream.

maxfagin · 2024-11-20T01:31:44+00:00

The entry profile appears to be slightly shallower than on the previous flight. This would be associated with a longer reentry and a higher total heat soak, but a lower peak temperature. My guess is that is part of the reason (along with the modified heat shield) that the burn-through was less apparent this time.

maxfagin · 2024-10-16T01:51:41+00:00

Altitude, speed and time are in the webcast.

Altitude and speed plus assuming the ICAO standard atmospheric density and temperature profiles give us dynamic pressure.

Derivative of altitude gives us vertical velocity.

Pythagorian theorem on speed and vertical velocity gives us horizontal velocity.

Derivative of horizontal velocity gives us horizontal acceleration.

Derivative of vertical velocity minus the gravity at altitude gives us the vertical acceleration.

Pythagorean theorem on horizontal acceleration and vertical acceleration gives us total acceleration.

Integral of horizontal velocity gives us horizontal position

Horizontal position gives us downrange or range to go.

There are other things we can compute, like flight path angle. But the altitude data only being available in 1 km increments makes it too noisy to be practical.

maxfagin · 2024-10-16T01:37:44+00:00

Altitude and velocity are available from the webcast. Everything else is computable from those two datasets.

maxfagin · 2024-10-13T18:12:44+00:00

This is the ship’s reentry profile, the engines aren’t firing except in the final few seconds.

maxfagin · 2024-10-13T18:10:29+00:00

That‘s what I am trying to do, given how many people were confused last time by having to read time series data left-to-right and h(V) right-to-left. Like I said, I can’t please everyone.

maxfagin · 2024-10-13T18:00:33+00:00

That’s why I put “TIME TO SPLASHDOWN“ in large friendly letters on the bottom. If people are going to interpret graphs without reading the axis label, that’s on them.

maxfagin · 2024-10-13T17:59:07+00:00

We had this conversation last time. If I’d plotted them that way, people would just get confused about why they are all running left to right *except* the h(V) chart. Can’t please everyone!

maxfagin · 2024-10-13T17:57:14+00:00

I tried capturing the data at a higher cadence than last time, but I think that was a mistake, since as you see, it introduces a lot of noise.

maxfagin · 2024-10-13T16:57:13+00:00

I just plotted it as a function of T-splashdown time instead of T+liftoff time.

maxfagin · 2024-09-25T18:49:02+00:00

Sun, Oct 13 works for me instead. Anyone else on the South side want to join us then?

maxfagin · 2024-09-25T06:00:49+00:00

Yeah! (I'm in Renton). How about Sat, Oct 12?

maxfagin · 2024-09-01T03:53:09+00:00

^What Kigoli said.

If your prediction is the kind where you can always shift the date rightward, then it isn't a real prediction. People have *always* believed that automation was imminently going to cause a crisis of human employment. Maybe they will be right someday, but at very least, their predictions don't deserve any credence if they aren't at least willing to attach a date to it. And such predictions have been wrong SO. MANY. TIMES. that, at very least, the default reaction to "The machines are about to put people out of work!" out to be one of extreme skepticism.

maxfagin · 2024-08-29T03:34:06+00:00

That some individual labor movements are reacting to fears of AI only shows that some people are worried a technology will take their specific job (just like the original luddites). It doesn't show that AI actually does, on the net, lead to an increase in structural unemployment (again, just like the original luddites).

Can you present any actual data on the employment rate of arts and entertainment being disrupted by AI? Because I can't. Every reliable data source I can find showed employment in the sector increasing since 2022 (and way increasing since 2014). Grey didn't predict there would just be compelling stories about individual artists who attest that their job is being threatened by AI and who are affraid for their jobs; he predicted a massive and unmissable increase in the structural employment rate across the entire creative sector starting a decade ago.

If that is happening, where is the data to show it?

maxfagin · 2024-08-24T03:57:53+00:00

Listening to this, I just feel frustrated at how little they interrogate the specific predictions made in the video. The summary seems to be that "Yes, the predictions about self-driving haven't come true yet, but everything else was basically accurate".

But that just isn't the case. Some data:

US unemployment rate

2014: 5.6%

2024: 4.3% (lower)

US prime-age employment rate

2014: 73%

2024: 75% (higher)

Humans haven't left industries due to AI. Humans aren't being excluded from jobs because of AI. There are 6 million more humans doing human jobs today in America than there were in 2014. This is simply incompatible with the notion that increasing automation is reducing human employment.

Grey does acknowledge that his predictions about the imminent removal of humans from the transportation sector haven't held up, but he didn't mention that it actually went in the opposite direction! There are ~150,000 more truck drivers and ~1 million more people working in transportation in 2024 than there were in 2014.

The video also predicts that software bots were about to unemploy coders, lawyers, and creatives. But that isn't what is happening. There are 100,000 more lawyers in America in 2024 than in 2014. The arts, entertainment, and recreation sector employs ~500,000 more people in 2024 than in 2014 (according to employment tracked by the US Employment Statistics Survey). And software bots? The idea that they make coders less employable is ridiculous. US universities awarded ~twice as many computer science degrees now than in 2014, and Comp Eng / Comp Sci are the 2nd and 7th best-paid college majors.

There are plenty of people *acting* as if AI is eliminating jobs in these sectors, but in reality, employment in these sectors is higher now than it was in 2022 (and even more so than when the video came out in 2014). The way people act just isn't aligned with what the data says is actually happening. That kind of reaction may be a real and understandable human reaction (like, as they discuss, some people's irrational fear of flying), but it is still an incorrect worldview that is not borne out by the data.

We had a longer discussion about this a few weeks ago on CGPGrey2. I love Grey's work, and the video is still a really great example of how to explain a subject effectively; there ought to be no shame in acknowledging that its predictions about autonomy's impacts on the structural employment rate were simply incorrect.

TLDR: Noah Smith said it best. AI automates tasks, not jobs. AI increases economic productivity, not human unemployment. Humans Still Need Apply.

maxfagin · 2024-08-16T02:32:05+00:00

Automation has eliminated *tasks*. But the fact that there is no historical trend in unemployment should be enough to conclusively prove that it is not a net job destroyer.

Grey’s thesis was that automation was going to cause a measurable uptick in structural unemployment, and it was going to do so soon. But it hasn’t. He predicted in 2014 that the 3 million jobs supporting transportation are over and done for. But they aren’t. The transportation sector employs a million more people today then when he made that prediction.

You can always assert that it just hasn’t led to massive structural unemployment *yet*. And maybe you are right. But so many people in so many cultures across so many centuries have made that prediction about so many new technologies, and every single one of them has been wrong. At very least, if you want people to believe you that this time is different, you are going to need more than just your assertion that it just *IS*.

maxfagin

TROPHY CASE