"i don't care if they make their whole way though uni with chatgpt" i think you guys are so internetpilled that you have forgotten there are actual jobs out there that require people to know what they are doing in any way possible or else people die
114 people died in the Hyatt Regency collapse, and in the US it's the third largest structural collapse fatality count, behind 9/11 and the Pemberton Mill collapse in 1860.
I've learned about this tragedy in my physics classes, to demonstrate tensile strength, and as a reminder about the importance of calculations being done right. I've also learned about it in my legal classes as an example of construction defect lawsuits. I've seen it referenced in disaster response classes.
Between AI and the current Presidential administration, we're barrelling right back towards this nightmare.
There are multiple errors that resulted in this collapse, but these stand out to me:
1. Kansas City was facing high unemployment and needed to attract jobs and business into the city. So the planning and inspection departments may have looked too closely at the designs.
2. An engineering firm too lazy to double check their designs or design changes by the manufacturer before approving them. The error that resulted in the collapse was one that the owner of the engineering firm said that a "first year engineering student" would spot.
3. The steel manufacturer treating preliminary plans as final plans, not verifying the math on their end.
The bridges' original design could only hold 60% of the minimum load required by city code. The design changes recommended by the manufacturer halved that. Less than a year and 3 weeks from opening to the public, the whole thing collapse.
Articles about the collapse say that everyone "trusted" the other party to have done the calculations correctly.
A significant portion of the population trusts what the computer or AI tells them, without checking. Imprecisely calibrated AI hallucinate information. The US economy is going into a downturn and federal regulatory agencies are being gutted.
We are going to see the Hyatt Regency Collapse repeat over and over for decades, not just in buildings, but in medicine, manufacturing, the environment, etc.
Some of this we're just going to have to weather, but the message for AI users comes straight from IBM (once the world's leading computer manufacturer) back in 1979:
"A Computer Cannot Be Held Accountable. Therefore A Computer Should Never Make A Management Decision."
The owner of the engineering firm that designed the Hyatt Regency spent the rest of his life lecturing on the disaster, to serve as a warning to his fellow engineers about the real-life consequences of sloppy design.
I don't think Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk will have the courage or the honor to do that when OpenAI / Meta / xAI are responsible for getting people killed.
So if you're going to blindly trust the AI to do critical work tasks, I hope you're prepared to be making an apology tour for the rest of your life if it all goes wrong.
If anyone wants an explanation of what was wrong with the Hyatt Regency - basically, the original design had two floors that were suspended by a metal rod that went through both floors (actually it was several rods at different points, but the important part is that it one rod straight through). But because there needed to be a fastener underneath the top level to keep it up, that means the entire rod would need to be threaded, which costs money. So somebody decided to change the plan so that there's one rod connecting the top floor to the ceiling and a second rod that connects the lower level to the top level.
If you have no experience with structural engineering, that's probably not ringing any alarm bells in your head. But it's the difference between two people hanging from a single rope, and one person hanging from a rope and a second person hanging from the first person's ankles.
This design would work if the top floor and the fasteners were designed to be able to support the weight of the lower floor, but they weren't. In fact, it turned out that the fasteners and the frame were barely strong enough to just hold up the lower floor, let alone any people on. And then there was a party where there was a bunch of people dancing on the platforms, and they collapsed and a lot of people died.
For other examples of engineers missing something small that either killed people or could have killed a lot of people, AKA instances they literally teach in Intro to Engineering, please see:
Big Dig Tunnel
Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Challanger Shuttle (okay, this one was higher ups ignoring the engineers but it has the same results)
Columbia Shuttle
The CitiCorp Tower (they managed to fix it in time, but the problem was literally discovered by an engineering student)
Lotus Riverside Complex
Vdara Hotel aka The Walkie Talkie (Didn't actually kill anyone but it created a beam of concentrated sunlight hot enough to melt cars)
Rana Plaza (another Ignoring the Engineers)
Grenfell Tower (another Ignoring the Engineers)
St Francis Dam
Quebec Bridge
Quebec Bridge again (they fucked this one up twice)
Banqiao Dam
And that's just like, structures. I've got more that were small(er)-scale, or transportation.
As a treat, here's some footage of the Tacoma Narrows before it collapsed
For the record, that is concrete and iron that's moving like that.
This one is adjusted to stimulate what it was like if you were standing on it.
The bridge was nicknamed Galloping Gertie, for obvious reasons. They didn't account for wind when they designed the bridge. Thankfully, no human lives were lost when it collapsed (a dog died), because it moved so much that it became impossible to walk or drive on.
The collapse itself was also filmed, which you can watch here.
Galloping Gertie only survived for four months, by the way
The standoff with agents happened on Jan. 8, one day after an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good in south Minneapolis. Wooten’s refusal to comply with ICE was captured on video and posted to Facebook.
The agents tried everything to intimidate the guard.
“You can’t come back here, bro,” Wooten can be heard in the video saying to an agent wearing a mask and sunglasses. “I’m talking to your manager,” the agent said. Wooten responded: “No, you’re talking to security, I’m in charge.”
ICE left empty-handed. Wooten said he just stood his ground, “10 toes down.”
“I was doing my job like I’m supposed to,’’ Wooten said. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. I just want to make my family safe because I’ve been here three years.”
I it weird if I reach out to you even though we haven’t talked in 4+ years.?
I got tired of waiting around for you to reach out to me again. I know that’s mainly on me with how I needed space. But then when I was ready for a friendship again and we did start talking you “ghosted me” and physically ran every time you saw me.
But I randomly saw photos from our secret Santa. Way back before we even dated. And I forgot we haven’t talked in years and picked up my phone to message you and then remembered that friendship was blown to shit. It’s like I forgot for a moment.
Now I’m wondering if you even think about our friendship anymore. If you’ve ever gotten a random gut punch all these years later and holding back from reaching out too.
I don’t know. People grow and change. But I mainly hope you’re okay. That you’re thriving in life.
unfortunately a lot of the corny self help advice turns out to be true but the thing is you have to come to those conclusions yourself otherwise it just sounds dismissive and dumb
turnnoffyourmind
theartofmadeline
areudirty
blakekathryn
stormborns
