I had this dream once where we invented a type of tattoo that would make your skin transparent so you could see muscle and veins underneath. I think it could still happen.
I would really like to build out little hardware products the way I build software, but I need PCB design to become a “solved” problem with AI. Being able to build stuff you can hold in your hand in the real world is a kind of magic I’d like to experience.
It seems "solved" to me, and I've been designing circuits and PCBs for 40 years.
I recently asked Claude (Opus 5.5) to design a wifi fan speed controller based on the ESP32 microcontroller. I told it to design a circuit for KiCad 10. I told it to write the software based on the ESP-IDF framework (for ESP32). I told it I would design the PCB based on the schematic it created.
It went to work. About 15 or 20 minutes later, it was done.
Everything looked good. Parts selection was reasonable. The first schematic was kind of weird, every part was placed on its own without any interconnected lines, so I had it re-do the schematic to show the part interconnections. It did a pretty good job.
Then I went to work designing the PCB. I had to find a project case and gave Claude some JPG images from the amazon page of the case dimensions, and it created a perfect PCB outline complete with mounting holes for the PCB.
I designed the PCB, but it's been a while since I did anything with mains voltage (120v here in the US). I asked Claude to analyze my PCB design, and it pointed out some issues with my trace routing, like not putting low-voltage traces crossing high-voltage traces, etc.
I then directed Claude to design its own PCB based on the project case constraints, and it did a fantastic job - way better than I did, honestly. It separated all the high voltage areas of the circuit from the low voltage areas, and clearly marked them with warnings on the silk screen.
I had it do all the part selection, and I purchased the parts - I'm not giving it my credit card to order parts, I can still do something useful towards this project.
I did not have to install anything for Claude to do any of this, it installed whatever tool it needed, and it generated the KiCad files.
So, this seems like PCB design is "solved".
Claude also wrote all the software for the ESP32 in another folder, including a web-based interface to control fan speed.
The PCBs and parts are on their way to me now. I guess I'll find out in about a week how "solved" this really is, but looking at the PCB design, it's looking really good.
Now it probably helps that I have 40 years experience doing exactly these tasks, so I can tell when something is going to work or not, and I know how to tell Claude what I want. Someone new to circuit/PCB design might have a more difficult time because you don't know what you don't know. I was very specific about the kind of circuit and parts I wanted - an ESP32 controlling a Triac controlling mains voltage with an optocoupler, etc - this is something I've built myself decades ago, so I already knew what "solved" looks like.
I agree with this. Sex may actually be overrated. It’s just another way of seeking instant gratification, using another person for it. It requires a lot of effort to get there (for most people), and even more to maintain it being exciting over time (with the same person). In the past people didn’t have that many ways to get intense pleasure, so sex always was the pinnacle and gold standard. But that clearly has changed.
To me it’s surprising that so many observers and pundits seem to be so confused about this development.
Would people really pull the level to save 5 people? It seems to me like the default would be to just do nothing, stand by and record what happens with your phone.
I wonder what percent of that 81% would switch their answer if the question was phrased such that they were the one that would die if they pulled the lever.
Just standing by makes total sense. By participating you become part of the problem.
If you pull the lever, your direct action kills a person. Legally saving 5 people does not offset the murder of a single person. This is no special case like self defense. Congrats for saving 5 people, you still go to prison as a murderer! Train company has responsibility to save those 5 people, not some random stranger.
The person at lever would became active participant on that train disaster. All we know the train could go too fast, apderail and kill 100 people.
> Just standing by makes total sense. By participating you become part of the problem.
Consider also the variation of the problem where you're a surgeon, you have 5 patients, and one healthy person whose organs/blood/... could save all 5 if only you murdered the one... (but none by simply maiming them, i.e. one needs a heart, one a stomach, one a liver, one so much of this particular kind of blood that you'd have to kill the donor, etc).
> The person at lever would became active participant on that train disaster. All we know the train could go too fast, apderail and kill 100 people.
Standard philosophical interpretations would reject this possibility as impossible (the purpose of the question is to have a simplified environment to probe ethical beliefs - not to reflect reality). I'd also say even outside of that this is like saying you have to consider the possibility that by wearing a green sweater you might distract a driver and cause an accident - you might - but so might doing literally anything else - it's not a foreseeable outcome and has no ethical weight as a result.
Consider also the variation of the problem where you're a surgeon, you have 5 patients, and one healthy person whose organs/blood/... could save all 5 if only you murdered the one
I have the book where that idea originated and the author is very proud of the additional ethical complexities he exposed with this example. But for some reason he never considered the possibility of kill (or allowing the natural death of) one of the 5 terminally ill patients and sharing out their otherwise undamaged organs to the other 4.
I'd say for the sake of argument we're assuming that's not possible. Perhaps the blood types are incompatible in any direction but killing the healthy person [1]... the point isn't why these are the only options but assuming these are the only options what would be more ethical. Same way the point of the trolley problem isn't to say "derail the trolley" but to probe at which of two options is ethical in the nice simple world where those are the only two options - because if you can't say what's ethical in a simple world you certainly can't in a complicated one.
[1] do you need blood type compatibility for organ transplants? I really don't know... But I'm certain there are some compatibility constraints to ground the example in the real world...
The problem is stated is that all 5 terminally patients are fine but for a deadly tumor in a single organ that is going to kill them unless its replaced, and the oblivious jogger happens to be a compatible donor for all 5.
Frankly, I think it's superfluous, since it doesn't substantively iterate on the trolley problem, just tries to make it (literally) more visceral.
This outcome is highly unlikely. The difficulty with trolley problems is that you rarely have such such perfect insight into real world problems such that you can make definitive statements about what # of people will be saved vs the impossibility of finding some other way to help the strangers on the tracks. Indeed the kind of people who make up new parts of the problem statement to avoid making a difficult moral decision are in my view most likely to freeze up and do nothing in a dangerous situation.
Most people aren't railway engineers and don't spend their days being comfortable around train switches. That aspect alone would scare off a large amount of people because pulling a train switch is very outside their normal every day experience.
I'd probably just watch it all unfold like an idiot.
We'd all think we were Captain Kirk in that situation I think. We'd somehow manage to kill all 6 people trying to come up with a solution that avoids anyone getting killed. Except for the actual Captain Kirk of course, who would do just what we wanted.
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