A cautionary warning about AI I'm starting to use is, "make sure you aren't taking a forklift to the gym". Getting heavy objects of the ground is vastly easier with mechanical assistance, but doing so completely misses the point of lifting weights.
A work related example I have is using AI to generate project plans. LLMs can probably generate an ok project plan for straightforward projects with plenty of examples to be trained on. But perhaps the most important value of generating a plan is the thinking that goes into it. Considering alternatives, likely failures, unlikely failures, etc. In generating the plan you are starting to practice dealing with problem that would come up while implementing it. The knowledge in your head is more valuable than the document produced. The document is just a summary of all the thinking you have done. Essentially a collection of mnemonics. Many details in your head will never make it into the formal plan, but will be needed during implementation.
A more accurate metaphor comparing the gym to LLMs IMO is using cable machines in place of old-school barbell and dumbbell work.
You can --- and people have --- built strength-focused programming around cable machines. "They're safer and work target muscle groups more efficiently" is usually the argument. A Life Fitness Synergy system is also much more practical to own inside of one's house than a power rack and 1000+ lb of plates that will make quick work of most home flooring.
This strategy works. It's sure as shit better than doing nothing. But quadriceps, delts and lats don't work in isolation. They rely on secondary and tertiary muscles and entire kinetic chains to help them accomplish tasks.
Cables do hit muscle groups directly, but they also lead to diminishing strength and physique returns much more quickly than boring traditional weight training. They also lead to problematic muscle imbalances that, ironically, can cause overuse injuries later in life (super heavy leg extensions with improper knee flexion comes to mind).
Just because LLMs are a technological innovation for "going to the gym" does not make cable machines a good metaphor. Maybe cable machines with cables made of highly variable grade hemp are comparable to LLMs-- they'll break randomly, and cause unexpected friction here and there. A cable machine still involves a human doing a thing. A forklift at the gym does the work instead.
All this fluff about targeting specific muscles etc is simply not analogous to LLMS. Maybe old-school barbells are paper files and fax machines, and cable machines are Slack, Asana, and Excel?
The cable machines are efficient because they _do the work_ of performing a movement for you, much like how LLMs do the work of writing an e-mail from a prompt describing what you want to write.
They are designed to only activate the target muscle/muscle group during the movement, which is good for working that muscle but bad for working all of the other muscles that _should be_ activated in the kinetic chain for that movement.
I'm curious how you are using 3-D printing for an electric motor. Most of the key components, steel laminations, copper windings, magnets, commutator and brushes (if you are going old school :-) ) don't lend themselves to 3-D printing. I just see some mounting hardware being usefully printed.
Induction motor as currently built are actually pretty good. Nothing to improve there, as they are usually fixed speed motors. When you think about automative or very variable speed motors, which have much higher power density and energy density, in those situations rotor cooling problems, eddy current losses, hysterisis losses are very fun problem to solve in context of 3D printing. Im not sure how much improvement can be done, but lets see..
I actually did this a lot when I was designing electric motors. One detail the original article didn't note, is the 39th root of 92 is very close to the 6th root of 2, off by half a percent. This makes scaling for voltage changes simple. Going from US 120V to European 240V? Go up three wire gauges and double the number of turn.
In practice, it was not quite that simple, because of the half percent error, and wire insulation doesn't follow the same scaling pattern, but it was still quite handy, and much less trouble than metric, where you constantly had to dig out the wire gauge chart.
The classic example of this is ultramarine blue in the Renaissance. Typically cost three times its weight in gold. Painters often had to have their patrons supply the ultramarine if they wanted blue in their painting. Having a very blue painting was naturally a status symbol.
I wonder what the direction of causation is. Perhaps the issue is not the cool, thoughtful, and kind are pushed out of the forums, but they are successful in engaging people on a personal level and are less motivated to go public. The obnoxious, however, however tend to get avoided on the personal level and find it easier to get an audience in a public forum.
A while back as I was meandering through my history readings, I noticed that most of the philosophers, sages, and artists of ancient Athens weren't from Athens. I didn't actually follow that up with a study to confirm it, but I can't help but wonder if there is some deep truth hidden here.
No deep truth, if you're ambitious and determined enough go leave your home and everything and everybody you know, you're not going to arrive in a foreign land and sit on your ass - the drive will keep pushing you to achieve great things... otherwise you could just have stayed at home and eaten your mom's potatoes for the rest of your life, right?!
A work related example I have is using AI to generate project plans. LLMs can probably generate an ok project plan for straightforward projects with plenty of examples to be trained on. But perhaps the most important value of generating a plan is the thinking that goes into it. Considering alternatives, likely failures, unlikely failures, etc. In generating the plan you are starting to practice dealing with problem that would come up while implementing it. The knowledge in your head is more valuable than the document produced. The document is just a summary of all the thinking you have done. Essentially a collection of mnemonics. Many details in your head will never make it into the formal plan, but will be needed during implementation.