The problem with not doing the heavy lifting yourself and using derived technology and ideas is that in evolutionary terms you are not selecting for innovators. Down the road this approach becomes ingrained both philosophically and in reality as you let your own innovators wither on the vine.
Yeah China’s VERY good at reverse engineering stuff and playing catch up. Haven’t really seen them take a clear lead in developing new technology in any field though.
That’s more due to the lack of new technology these days. AI aside most modern engineering is incremental improvements to existing technology—that’s the innovation everyone is doing.
The problem with not doing the heavy lifting yourself and using derived technology and ideas is that in evolutionary terms you are not selecting for innovators. Down the road this approach becomes ingrained both philosophically and in reality as you let your own innovators wither on the vine.
Yeah China’s VERY good at reverse engineering stuff and playing catch up. Haven’t really seen them take a clear lead in developing new technology in any field though.
That’s more due to the lack of new technology these days. AI aside most modern engineering is incremental improvements to existing technology—that’s the innovation everyone is doing.
GenAI? Self-driving cars? Robots? Materials science?
All science and innovation is incremental, but some have bigger impacts than others.
In order:
I said “AI aside” for a reason.
Fair enough, though I don’t hear much about those these days.
No idea what’s going on with materials science, but robots aren’t exactly new, so this is incremental improvement to existing technology.