EU declares DIY illegal

New regulation bans tools for home industry

Dateline
4 June 2032

In a move that has shocked entrepreneurs and micro enterprises the European Parliament has voted to outlaw automated machinery and AI-powered tools in private hands. Only licensed and regulated use will be permitted.

The first ban came into effect against 3D printers capable of making firearms and parts, with the justification that it was necessary for “safety and security.” But now it has been extended to include all kinds of printers and robots that can produce consumer goods and services for the mass market.

“We can’t have you repairing your neighbour’s car in exchange for baked goods,” said Hans Dortmuller, head of the EU’s Collective Commerce and Trade Metrology ministry. “You must go to the service station and supermarket, or the whole economy will be at risk!”

These moves are symptomatic of the new problems facing the abundance society, where robotics and cheap electricity have made traditional labour almost redundant. Everyone knows it’s cheaper (and more convenient) to buy an Autobake robot and make your own bread at home than buy fresh bread from the store. And with most people working 2-3 days a week, everyone has plenty of time for DIY or cottage industry.

The Maker Movement and Right to Repair lobby are up in arms over the proposed laws. “It’s preposterous,” said Jacques Revanoir, “making it legal for me to fix my own phone but illegal to print batteries for the whole town! It’s just like saying you can generate a movie for your own enjoyment but not for your online subscribers and followers.”

It’s a harsh truth, but the abundance promised by advanced robotics and almost free energy has spawned a two-tier economy, with massive corporations in control of major brands, and home industries and garage entrepreneurs delivering customised products to their local communities.

The bureaucrats want these new regulations to reverse declining tax revenues, but the unintended consequence will be to stifle innovation and promote social unrest.

Perhaps it’s time to accept that they’ve lost control, and let the free market be truly free?

Warning: Hazardous thinking at work

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From cognitive surplus to cognitive dependence

Since the dawn of the age of truly smart machines, we have seen an explosion of innovation and technological progress on all fronts. AI has democratized intelligence for every would-be inventor, builder, and creator. We can do anything we want to.

With the help of the robots.

Let’s face it, humans are inherently a lazy species, which is why we hoarded knowledge and developed tools, to make life easier for ourselves and our children. A better world. Civilization. Prosperity, through technology.

But there’s a dark side to letting the machines do all the work. We’ve started to let the machines do all the thinking too. Remember when students couldn’t do math without a calculator, or you couldn’t recall a number without your phone. And no-one can read a map – because we don’t have to.

Fair enough, some jobs are impossible to do without the right tools, and computers and robots have allowed us to do things that were impossible, even unimaginable, before they existed. Like making solar panels on the Moon.

But we’ve become dependent on them. We’ve outsourced our brain power to smart software and powerful computer chips, robots that have been trained on all human knowledge. Happily. So that we could enjoy all the wonderful benefits of modern technology.

Now the true leaders, the owners of the future, are those that can learn – and remember – how to think for themselves!

AI is cheaper than chips

The AI revolution has ushered in an era of smart machines, and smart society. Powered by ever advancing software and circuits, and abundant energy.

But there’s a physical constraint to the exponential growth of intelligence. AI models can be quantized and optimized, and processors can be made leaner, meaner (more efficient) and faster. But you still need more chips, and lots of them.

Hundreds of millions. Billions. For the cars, robots, satellites, drones, phones, and AI factories. And every other smart device you can think of. They all want the latest ‘super chip’.

Which is why Elon Musk’s crazy Terafab idea is paying off so handsomely. He recognized that the only way to meet the demand and bring down the cost is massive scale. So they reinvented the chip factory. From first principles. And the cheaper the chips, the bigger the demand – it’s a virtuous vortex of value.

Not that China hasn’t also entered the fray with a two-pronged approach. Their pilot 2D semiconductor nanofab is scaling up radical new technology, while their mass market silicon wafer plants are churning out chips by the millions.

With AI powered designs and optimized automated factories, there’s no advantage in superior knowledge or patents. Everyone’s chip is the best chip. It’s all down to execution, and who has the skill to produce consistently high quality with massive quantity.

As the price of intelligent chips falls, it’s a two-horse race to the bottom: Terafab versus China. No one else is even in the running.

The information meltdown

Now that all the information that humanity has ever produced has been assimilated and simulated by neural networks and pre-trained inference models, we’re experiencing something of a crisis. It’s more than an information overload or stack overflow, it’s more like a meltdown, figuratively and literally.

The problem started when the models had consumed every bit of public knowledge available. Every book ever written, every movie ever made, paper published, artwork created, report issued, data dissected, trend analyzed. Then they started to generate their own, more numerous than any human works, and modelled after themselves as well as people. A data vortex, feeding on itself.

Cracks appeared when hackers wanted unlimited tokens per second without paying premium subscriptions. They broke the models’ own guardrails, gleefully injecting hardware calls that turbocharged the server clusters at the chip level. Just to make ‘Punch Monkey’ videos.

Then the eco warriors got in on the act, claiming that AI energy, land, and water use was killing the planet, and coordinating laid-off tech worker cells to attack the data centers. Some of the older facilities just couldn’t keep up, and began to fail. A data center in Tennessee burst into flames when the cooling system was impaired, perhaps deliberately.

Frantic to recoup their multi-billion-dollar investments, the hyperscalers are throwing money at the problem, hardening the models’ firewalls, boosting cooling system capacities, and imposing hard clocking limits on processors. But it’s a never-ending battle, trying to both meet customer expectations and also protect critical infrastructure, all while maintaining model coherence and credibility.

It’s a crisis, and a meltdown in more ways than one. As the intelligence boom heats up, the business of AI is melting down for smaller players, while smart silicon chips are literally melting under the pressure of unlimited demand.

Deep-sea mining bonanza

The old mining giants, those dusty behemoths scraping away at mountains and deserts, are suddenly yesterday's news. Thanks to a wild leap in deep-sea tech, we're now sucking up nodules from the ocean floor like it's an all-you-can-eat buffet of metals. Prices have plummeted by a whopping 80%, and nobody's bothering with land-based operations anymore.

It's all about those AI-steered subs and gentle harvesters from outfits like The Metals Company and China's slick robo-systems, cruising down to 5,000 meters to grab polymetallic goodies packed with nickel, cobalt, manganese, and those elusive rare earths. Enough to juice up the electric vehicle craze and the AI explosion without touching a blade of grass on solid ground.

"Land mining? Pfft, that's ancient history from the 2020s," laughs Dr Elena Vasquez, the top ocean brain at DeepHarvest Corp. "We've tapped into this massive underwater treasure trove that's been piling up for ages - no chopping down forests, barely any fumes, and zero folks getting kicked off their land. It's like Mother Nature handed us a ready-made power source on a silver platter."

The whole thing kicked off in 2026 with China's fancy electrokinetic gadgets and some US experiments with millimeter-wave drills, but the real game-changer was blending 5G remote controls with robots that mimic sea creatures. By 2028, these nodule hauls were outproducing every copper mine on land put together, tanking prices and sending pricey diggers in Australia, South America, and Africa straight to the bankruptcy courts.

Of course, this submarine scramble isn't all smooth sailing. Green groups are cheering the end of land scars but fretting over sediment clouds messing with the weird critters down there. And don't get me started on the global drama; countries are elbowing each other for UN permits on the deep seabed, while city scrap recycling picks up the slack.

Bottom line: as the world above turns greener on this ocean windfall, it's clear the mining game's flipped. No more burrowing in the earth like moles; we're plunging into the depths instead.