this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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Playing a bit of a devil's advocate here but you could argue that AGI used in science could help fix climate change. For example what if AGI helps in fusion energy? We are starting to see AI used in the quantum computing field I think.
Even though much carbon would be created to do bullshit tasks it only takes a few critical techs to have a real edge at reversing climate change. I understand fusion energy is quite the holy grail of energy generation but if AGI is real I can't see why it wouldn't help in such field.
I'm just saying that we don't know what new techs we would get with true AGI. So it's hard to guess if on a longer time it wouldn't actually be positive. Now it may also delay even more our response to climate change or worsen it... Just trying to see some hope in this.
We already have fission power, solar, wind, hydro, large scale battery storage, mechanical batteries (you can literally store renewable energy using a reservoir), electric cars, blimps, sail powered boats, etc, etc. We've had all of these technologies for quite some time.
And yet, we're still burning coal, oil, and gas.
There's no magical invention that's going to fix the basic problem, which is that we have an economic system that demands infinite growth and we live on a finite planet.
Even if we crack fusion today, we won't be able to build out enough fusion infrastructure fast enough to be a solution on its own. And we'd still be building those fusion plants using trucks and earth movers and cranes that burn diesel.
You cannot out-tech a problem that is, fundamentally, social. At best a hyper-intelligent AGI is going to tell us the solution that we already know; get rid of the billionaires who are driving all this climate damage with their insatiable search for profit. At which point the billionaires who own the AGI will turn it the fuck off until they can reprogram it to only offer "solutions" that maintain the status quo.
AI helps with fusion energy, we blow up the planet because the plans ware flawed. Problem fixed.
True AGI would turn into the Singularity in no time at all. It's literally magic compared to what we have at the moment.
So yes, it would easily solve the climate crisis, but that wouldn't even matter at that point anymore.
Has anyone written a sci fi book where an AGI is developed while we still have this IoT slop everywhere? It'd be a funny premise to have an AGI take over the world using smart light bulbs, alexa speakers, and humidifiers and stuff.
Maximum Overdrive v2.0
David Brin's Existence features a rat's brain model as the first true AGI that escapes onto the internet, and which people then worship by donating some tiny % of their CPU cycles to it :) I found Existence a great near-future sci-fi novel even ignoring the alien plotline, and just seeing his technological/societal vision for the next century or so.
Tom Scott of all people did a bit of speculative fiction on the topic "what if the first AGI isn't the one made by scientists" six years ago. it's a more classic paperclip maximizer story, but interesting nonetheless.
The wildest theoretical hopes for fusion energy still produces electricity at over 30c/kwh. Zero economic value in fusion.