AI is already hastening our demise without a bioweapon. Its energy and water use are egregious, directly contributing to temperature rise, and competing with human needs in drought stricken regions. Little doubt we could come up with a dozen ways this tech is destructive to attempting to live as a human on the planet we are making uninhabitable. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-is-hot
The huge water requirements for AI in this age of increased worldwide droughts should be enough to prevent a rapid, wide scale implementation. But, it won’t be. The oligarchs will, without hesitation, deny animals and humans the water they need to survive in favor of huge AI system implementations. It’s their perverse form of Degrowth.
I think that the authors are being overly optimistic for a few reasons.
The insurmountable one that they ignore is overpopulation which is the root cause of our problems. Like it or not it's the cause of climate change, ecocide and most human suffering. Collapse and mass extinctions are the inevitable result in the very near future if nothing is done about population. Artificial intelligence, regardless of how advanced it becomes, cannot solve climate change and ecocide while maintaining an increasing or sustained population. The tipping point has been reached with population and is hardly mentioned. The resources are not available. The paper does however include a scenario for a bioweapon to reduce population. The means for creating a bioweapon is almost certainly available, with COVID being a bioweapons test or perhaps the weapon itself with the nebulous reason for research being "gain of function". Vaccines would protect the chosen few of half a billion. Non human species would not be affected nor plant life. Robotics can replace humans for mundane tasks and while not capable of technically supporting the hardware required for doing multiple tasks, they can be downloaded from AI centers for individual tasks as required. Hence the frantic development of AI facilities and robotics. It's now a race of development of AI and robotics and whether or not climate change has passed the point of no return. AI is currently capable of handling the tasks needed and certainly will be by the time robotics has been fully developed.
Another point to consider is if robots can perform all the tasks of humans, what are the humans going to do if no longer necessary? Musk has stated humans are "parasites". Gates stated that "robots will be able to replace humans in all but a few jobs". A leader of the world economic forum stated that we are being kept alive by their charity and good graces".
In the 70s we were told technology would give us a 20 hour work week. What we received were "bullshit jobs" as busy work while computer tech in mfg advanced to where it is now and still advancing.
Computer tech began elimination of skilled workers in the 70s and is now on steroids.
If AI actually worked and asked what the solution for climate change would be, the answer would be to depopulate the earth to sustainable levels. Depopulation would immediately lower carbon emissions, pollution and food requirements for the remaining population stopping climate change. Nuclear war is not an acceptable option for obvious reasons. Chemical weapons are too difficult to deliver and poisonous for the environment. Regular weapons to slow for massive depopulation and damaging to infrastructure.
So the question is one of "Would our current leadership be willing to do this?". Personally I think that the answer is a clear yes.
Psychologically it's no different than launching an all out nuclear strike, from the president down to those in the nuclear silo or submarine. The fact that we clearly have psychopaths in charge of government should eliminate any doubt about their willingness.
Covid is still spreading but monitoring has ceased. We have a worm brain in charge of health promoting a return to medicine of the 1700s. Actively blaming people for poor health when the damage is being inflicted by corporate America by chemical laced food, pollution, slavery wages and stress to name a few. " Blame the victim."
Cuts are being made in social programs which will weaken the population physically and mentally. Economic collapse is in progress. Nuclear plants being built to supply AI while the NRC is gutted . Our president is deliberately creating chaos in the world and nation. Insanity does not mean stupidity, the two are mutually exclusive. Drastic measures need to be taken immediately, but everything that has been done to avoid climate change has been a facade and will only make things worse. Climate change is accelerating faster than anticipated.
The overpopulation crisis has been known about for over 100 years. Malthus correctly predicted it but has been ignored. Climate collapse was not even factored in by Malthus. Why Malthus was ignored is a good question. Overpopulation could have been prevented. Was it capitalism or just human nature? I highly doubt communism would have changed anything given the USSR and the path China is taking.
So if you had the decision to make of preservation of the planet and the human race, what would it be? I posed this scenario and question a couple of years ago to someone I was working with, a professor emeritus of mathematics and his response was "Good God, you don't really believe that do you?" Denial at the highest intelligence.
Overpopulation is an extremely touchy subject.
Humans are a failure of evolution as have been 99.99% of all species. So what is currently happening shouldn't be a surprise.
As always when such dire predictions show up, I reread The Honest Sorcerer‘s article „AI Has A Survival Dilemma“ from 2023. Nothing has changed in the realm of physics so far… namely available resources and energy. The whole enterprise is as doomed as is the rest of the ongoing circus. Also, Tom Murphy of „Do The Math“ has some valuable insights on the topic.
AI is already hastening our demise without a bioweapon. Its energy and water use are egregious, directly contributing to temperature rise, and competing with human needs in drought stricken regions. Little doubt we could come up with a dozen ways this tech is destructive to attempting to live as a human on the planet we are making uninhabitable. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-is-hot
"...competing with human needs" is a key idea. Once AI gets to a level at which it realizes we are competition, we have serious problems.
An all too likely possibility long foreseen in the Terminator movies as you obviously know.
The huge water requirements for AI in this age of increased worldwide droughts should be enough to prevent a rapid, wide scale implementation. But, it won’t be. The oligarchs will, without hesitation, deny animals and humans the water they need to survive in favor of huge AI system implementations. It’s their perverse form of Degrowth.
I think that the authors are being overly optimistic for a few reasons.
The insurmountable one that they ignore is overpopulation which is the root cause of our problems. Like it or not it's the cause of climate change, ecocide and most human suffering. Collapse and mass extinctions are the inevitable result in the very near future if nothing is done about population. Artificial intelligence, regardless of how advanced it becomes, cannot solve climate change and ecocide while maintaining an increasing or sustained population. The tipping point has been reached with population and is hardly mentioned. The resources are not available. The paper does however include a scenario for a bioweapon to reduce population. The means for creating a bioweapon is almost certainly available, with COVID being a bioweapons test or perhaps the weapon itself with the nebulous reason for research being "gain of function". Vaccines would protect the chosen few of half a billion. Non human species would not be affected nor plant life. Robotics can replace humans for mundane tasks and while not capable of technically supporting the hardware required for doing multiple tasks, they can be downloaded from AI centers for individual tasks as required. Hence the frantic development of AI facilities and robotics. It's now a race of development of AI and robotics and whether or not climate change has passed the point of no return. AI is currently capable of handling the tasks needed and certainly will be by the time robotics has been fully developed.
Another point to consider is if robots can perform all the tasks of humans, what are the humans going to do if no longer necessary? Musk has stated humans are "parasites". Gates stated that "robots will be able to replace humans in all but a few jobs". A leader of the world economic forum stated that we are being kept alive by their charity and good graces".
In the 70s we were told technology would give us a 20 hour work week. What we received were "bullshit jobs" as busy work while computer tech in mfg advanced to where it is now and still advancing.
Computer tech began elimination of skilled workers in the 70s and is now on steroids.
If AI actually worked and asked what the solution for climate change would be, the answer would be to depopulate the earth to sustainable levels. Depopulation would immediately lower carbon emissions, pollution and food requirements for the remaining population stopping climate change. Nuclear war is not an acceptable option for obvious reasons. Chemical weapons are too difficult to deliver and poisonous for the environment. Regular weapons to slow for massive depopulation and damaging to infrastructure.
So the question is one of "Would our current leadership be willing to do this?". Personally I think that the answer is a clear yes.
Psychologically it's no different than launching an all out nuclear strike, from the president down to those in the nuclear silo or submarine. The fact that we clearly have psychopaths in charge of government should eliminate any doubt about their willingness.
Covid is still spreading but monitoring has ceased. We have a worm brain in charge of health promoting a return to medicine of the 1700s. Actively blaming people for poor health when the damage is being inflicted by corporate America by chemical laced food, pollution, slavery wages and stress to name a few. " Blame the victim."
Cuts are being made in social programs which will weaken the population physically and mentally. Economic collapse is in progress. Nuclear plants being built to supply AI while the NRC is gutted . Our president is deliberately creating chaos in the world and nation. Insanity does not mean stupidity, the two are mutually exclusive. Drastic measures need to be taken immediately, but everything that has been done to avoid climate change has been a facade and will only make things worse. Climate change is accelerating faster than anticipated.
The overpopulation crisis has been known about for over 100 years. Malthus correctly predicted it but has been ignored. Climate collapse was not even factored in by Malthus. Why Malthus was ignored is a good question. Overpopulation could have been prevented. Was it capitalism or just human nature? I highly doubt communism would have changed anything given the USSR and the path China is taking.
So if you had the decision to make of preservation of the planet and the human race, what would it be? I posed this scenario and question a couple of years ago to someone I was working with, a professor emeritus of mathematics and his response was "Good God, you don't really believe that do you?" Denial at the highest intelligence.
Overpopulation is an extremely touchy subject.
Humans are a failure of evolution as have been 99.99% of all species. So what is currently happening shouldn't be a surprise.
"The Great Reset." is about to take place.
The US government has unleashed a war on its own.
I just hope that they spare my cats.
As always when such dire predictions show up, I reread The Honest Sorcerer‘s article „AI Has A Survival Dilemma“ from 2023. Nothing has changed in the realm of physics so far… namely available resources and energy. The whole enterprise is as doomed as is the rest of the ongoing circus. Also, Tom Murphy of „Do The Math“ has some valuable insights on the topic.
Oh no.
Lars Larsen's "Land Export Model" points to the 2027-2032 timeframe as a turning point.
https://archive.org/details/oil-exports.-34odt-1/Oil%20exports.100odt.odt%287%29.pdf