Ron Gilbert (GrumpyGamer)You know what I want AI and robots to do? Sort trash so we can just dump everything in one bin and not be confused and paralyzed every time we throw something way.
geoma 
@grumpygamer I would love an AI to help me in finding a way to convince politicians to tax trash disposal.
Allan Chow@geoma @grumpygamer AI LOBBYISTS TO THE RESCUE
KellyWhere I am they offer bigger residential wheely bins on request and add some fees to you next rates bill. The marginal costs work out at au$37 per m³ of landfill or au$25 per m³ for recycling.
JSON@grumpygamer what, no compost bin? That is the one I never know how to deal with.
lucas 🎺@grumpygamer @cornickj green should be compost. This recycle system is confusing
Adam Wilbert
TᴀᴄᴋᴇʀTᴀᴄᴋᴇʀ 🐰@awilbert @grumpygamer @arstechnica
> "...can recognize trash and perform complex actions "
Robot: You are trash!
*Starts break dancing*
Ric@grumpygamer I'd just be thankful for something similar to your photo, to be honest.
Over here, every council has different rules on what can be recycled, and then just dots bins around their cities with uninformative "general" and "recycling" stickers. So it's literally impossible to know which bin to put your thing in if you're not resident of that council. And since our councils are so small that a 30 minute drive will take you through 3 of them, you're basically never in a familiar zone. 😫
Ravindra Kanodia
JESSE JANOWIAK HAS MOVED@ravindra @grumpygamer Mine did exactly the same thing!
Luís Correia@grumpygamer I got a flashback of Idiocracy Movie :)
J.O.
Evan K. Stone@grumpygamer that would be an awesome application of AI. 💯
@grumpygamer that's not how it works. We're still supposed to do all of the boring stuff, while the AI writes books, music, art, games etc.
David Olsen@grumpygamer You don't need AI, there's already good ways to sort recycling at the depot it just costs more so most areas push that cost (time) on the end user.
Philip Mallegol-Hansen@grumpygamer @flameeyes Good (?) news: Depending in where you live, that problem is easily solvable by simply accepting that everything likely goes in the garbage bin in the end anyway.
I’m joking about it being a good thing, but not about it being true.
Maxilo Overit@grumpygamer I want it to break the trash down and turn it back into resources that can be used to grow or build things again. Recycling as it is today is a dead end I'm afraid.
synlogic@aka_quant_noir @grumpygamer dead people especially are extremely underutilized
yes I learned this from the film Soylent Green
Andrew@aka_quant_noir @grumpygamer plastic recycling is. paper, metal, and glass DO end up being reused. Especially aluminum and steel.
@cinebox @grumpygamer Understand that. But not everywhere and not enough to turn 100% to recycled materials. We aren't anywhere close to a sustainable waste stream, and to an end to virgin extraction. It's not even on industry's radar. We need to put it there.
Stephanie MacLellan@grumpygamer @kcarruthers And it would cut down on the rampant contamination that makes the stuff in recycling bins unusable! There’s nothing more frustrating than carefully separating my compostables all week, then seeing random fast food bags in our building’s communal bin.
Fan of Shared Truth & Empathy@grumpygamer @thor Forgive me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that the plot line in a Disney film already?
daniel s.@grumpygamer it's called single stream refuse and many major cities have it
Very Human Robot@grumpygamer in many cities that's what happens after the trucks pick it up anyway.
Also: "plastic recycling" doesn't work, never did, and was a petro-industry psy op to put the burden of plastics onto individuals instead of industry. (True story!)
Composting works, though, so there is that!
GutotitoOne of my former employers had a setup like this. I once watched the trash folks come by late at night and dump them all into the same bag, then off to the dumpster. /csb
Bret Mogilefsky
Jari Komppa 🇫🇮@grumpygamer zenrobotics has been doing that since 2007 https://www.terex.com/zenrobotics/
elmuerte@grumpygamer Not shown are the buckets for mayor waste and private waste.
n3wjack@grumpygamer looks like a game of Square Hole to me
samir, an unknown quantity@grumpygamer Someone fairly high up in government once told me that it’s all re-sorted anyway, because you can’t trust people to use the right bins. The bins are there to teach people what’s *not* recyclable.
And, as others have said, it likely all ends up in the same place as the regular trash anyway, at least in most jurisdictions.
I think what I’m trying to say is that the problem is, as always, not a technical problem.
kaiserkiwi 
@grumpygamer But Ron. The AI is busy to draw and write. It has no time for such tedious stuff!
Torbjörn AnderssonI can see it now...
"The broken lawn mower goes into the compost."
"I don't think that's right..."
"I apologize for my mistake. You should put it with the cardboard."
"Thay doesn't work either."
"I'm happy that you feel so passionately about this. Did you know that there are many other things you could throw away instead?"
@grumpygamer the main problem is that we spend all this time sorting stuff and then all the “recycle” stuff ends up being thrown in the garbage anyways
Penguin@grumpygamer @tchambers Our town’s recycling center has a 1-bin system that separates the items during processing. You don’t have to wait for AI or robots 🙂
Lucifer ☄️@grumpygamer Yes.
Leave art and poetry for people to do, don't use AI to replace skilled workers or artists, use it to do work that's needed but for which manual labor would be too expensive
Leave art and poetry for people to do, don't use AI to replace skilled workers or artists, use it to do work that's needed but for which manual labor would be too expensive
@grumpygamer but you have to admire the blue and red are idiot proof
@grumpygamer The last time I read up on this post collection sorting was actually more efficient than pre sorting by people. Mind you that was here in NL, so how that works out in the US is another matter. I'd link you the source, but it's a journalistic program in Dutch.
Matthias Mailänder@grumpygamer I agree, but you are just there for coarse sorting. They already do the fine-grained stuff using machines and manual labor. In the end, most of the plastics gets burned.
Gorba@grumpygamer bahh AI is designed & owned by the rich, so it will only be deployed where there is a good profit margin.
You see if idiots realized government should NOT be run like businesses then government would get AI to do such things.
You see if idiots realized government should NOT be run like businesses then government would get AI to do such things.
garbagecollector@grumpygamer 👀 can I please add this picture of bins to my collection?