“AI is fine, just remember that if the extra energy expenditure means that the ice shelves start falling into the sea, we can just start pumping ocean water back onto Antarctica in a frantic effort to prevent a quadrillion dollars of damage to every coastal city in the world.”
Sam Altman’s vision for AI proliferation will require a lot more computation and the energy to power it.
He admitted it at Davos, but he said we shouldn’t worry: an energy breakthrough was coming, and in the meantime we could just use “geoengineering as a stopgap.” That should set off alarm bells.
We are already going to have to use geoengineering as a stopgap for the shit that’s going on NOW.
It is much, much cheaper to expect people adding an entire country’s worth of energy expenditure to figure out how to not fucking destroy the planet with their stupid technology.
My fucking GOD do you know how expensive geoengineering is going to be? We are probably going to be talking about trillions of dollars of geoengineering. TRILLIONS.
And the geoengineering is basically climate duct tape: you can’t solve the problem, but you can delay the problem coming to pass for maybe 10-20 years if you spend money like water and in that time, it will maybe give time for carbon drawdown technology to kick in.
Person: so it looks like you stole all your material
Altman: yes, we couldn’t function if we do
Person: and your tech is causing incalculable damage to the environment
Altman: yes, we couldn’t function if we did
Person: so your answer is??
Altman: well, obviously, our existence is more important
Altman: but there’s going to be an energy revolution
Person: and you can’t wait until it comes to do this because…
Altman: well, that would be personally inconvenient
Well stated. They always handwave the biggest expenditures like it ain’t no thing and it works on too many rubes.
We need a more literate society that looks at these CBEs and instead of taking them wholesale asks: “what aren’t they enumerating on here?”
And who is going to pay for that?
That's always the question. We can't even get Americans health insurance. But somehow the governments of the world are going to spend tax money on something like this?
The equivalent of paying $2/roll for TP at the local bodega instead of spending $15 for a 20-roll bulk pack.
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do when you don't have the capital to outlay. But such limits do not exist for major governments.
