What Schumacher's 'Small Is Beautiful' Teaches Us About Embodied AI
yongqianme · x · 2026-09-13
Drawing on E. F. Schumacher's 1973 classic Small Is Beautiful, the author pushes back on the embodied AI industry's obsession with scale — bigger models, more data and GPUs, larger funding rounds, and pitch decks promising general-purpose humanoids in factories, hospitals, and homes. The essay revisits Schumacher's core question: why must technology always grow bigger, and do we actually need the biggest solution?
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