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AI 2040: Plan A

ai-2040.com

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Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#101

Post by mysterydip »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #74
WarmWash wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 22 golf courses within a 30 minute drive from me, and people here a losing their minds over datacenter water usage...

People can care about more than one thing Personally I would happily close down all golf courses and put them to better use as literally anything else. Even just making them public parks would be great

Coming in for a landing on a flight recently, I was amazed at the contrast I saw between a housing development of 50+ homes and a golf course across the road that took up the same amount of space.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#102

Post by anuramat »

swatcoder wrote: post #83
WarmWash wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 22 golf courses within a 30 minute drive from me, and people here a losing their minds over datacenter water usage...

People have a dozen reasons to refuse data centers being built in their communities and zero reasons to encourage it. They're little more than post-industrial mines that take limited resources (power, land, water, quiet) from a community, sell them for profit as compute, and siphon those profits away onto the books of far-flung megacorps with no community reward. Meanwhile, golf courses are a traditional green space…

> data centers being built in their communities

> golf courses are a traditional green space where people in a community

I have a feeling those two sets of communities are disjoint

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#103

Post by swatcoder »

marcosdumay wrote: post #93
swatcoder wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have a dozen reasons to refuse data centers being built in their communities and zero reasons to encourage it. They're little more than post-industrial mines that take limited resources (power, land, water, quiet) from a community, sell them for profit as compute, and siphon those profits away onto the books of far-flung megacorps with no community reward. Meanwhile, golf courses are a traditional green space…

When mines pay a sizeable share of their profits as local taxes, and obey environmental regulations, people suddenly start to like them.

Can you point to some examples of where that's happening?

These data centers are specifically being scouted for communities whose governance is too weak to negotiate for some "sizeable share of their profits" and too ill-prepared to have suitable environmental regulations on the books already. The Ivy League sharks planning these buildout initiatives are sharp people who are looking out for the interests of their employers and know how to pick locations where they have the best opportunity to exploit locals unprepared for their kind of esoteric deal-making, political lobbying, and lawfare. They'd be failing at their job if they did what you're suggesting, and that's why we don't really see that happen.

For any benefit to national or global society AI data centers might provide to someone, the buildout looks a lot like the dirty and exploitative stories of rail expansion in the 19th century. That rail infrastructure proved a good thing for the US, but that doesn't mean the process of making it happen was honest or good for the people immediately affected.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#104

Post by scotty79 »

Animats wrote: post #81

This is from the "AI 2027"[1] people. [1] https://ai-2027.com/

This seems way more accurate. Up until early 2026.

Though it has bizzare fixation on geopolitics and China which it severely understimated. It's pretty obvious that China is going to outinnovate and outcompute US companies quite soon. Even if just because they care about higher education, providing enough electricity and letting smart people do smart things instead of randomly muzzling them with bans and export controls and coddling them with financial protectionism.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#105

Post by scj »

rayiner wrote: post #46
hollerith wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Is human extinction not permitted by the laws of physics?

That’s a possibility, but not the only one. The two most realistic ones are: we race ahead and maintain our status, or we slow down and open ourselves up to colonization.

Using an ASI to subjugate humans in any capacity is a terrible idea.

without sharing tech to make the ASI, you'd hope humanity could work together to determine how to align an AI for our common benefit.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#106

Post by simonreiff »

> Why exactly will AI never be able to do my job?

Because AI cannot retain memories or gain experience or insight based on the transformer/attention mechanism powering all modern AI models, it follows that AI lacks judgment and can never be trusted to handle truly critical decision-making responsibilities. Furthermore, AI agents lack any notion of an identity, so certainly are not capable of attaining legal personhood or being sued or fired, or owning property. I think slop burnout, cybersecurity, loss of privacy, even environment issues are far more concerning and real issues arising from AI than alignment or the prospect of mass labor displacement due to AI.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#107

Post by ekelsen »

swatcoder wrote: post #83
WarmWash wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 22 golf courses within a 30 minute drive from me, and people here a losing their minds over datacenter water usage...

People have a dozen reasons to refuse data centers being built in their communities and zero reasons to encourage it. They're little more than post-industrial mines that take limited resources (power, land, water, quiet) from a community, sell them for profit as compute, and siphon those profits away onto the books of far-flung megacorps with no community reward. Meanwhile, golf courses are a traditional green space…

How is this different from farming?

It takes the limited resources of land and water from a community and sells the result for profit as food or fuel. The vast majority of profit is made downstream and outside the community.

Golf courses being a traditional green place where people gather seems a bit far fetched to me when most of them are elite private clubs.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#108

Post by reasonableklout »

skybrian wrote: post #64
a_vanderbilt wrote: post #24

I found the AI 2027 paper to be overly optimistic, but not wholly fantastical. This paper feels wildly speculative, and relies on premises I am not confident even pass surface reasoning. Even under optimistic conditions, we are not going to see robots "capable of 95% of all cognitive and physical tasks" by 2035. Nor do I think a 74% unemployment rate is even remotely possible. Economic collapse would implode AI devel…

The "and physical" is the part I'm particularly skeptical of. Sure, drones are scary, but nobody's really solved getting a robot to deliver a package to your front porch in a civilian setting, and it seems unlikely to be solved quickly.

Do autonomous systems need to solve humanoid robotics to exert power over the physical world? Seems like a lot can be done with drones.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#109

Post by recursive »

gabriel-uribe wrote: post #73
nxc18 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true or does it only feel true because they nerf the old models just before every major release?

I remember being blown away by o1-o3 family of models finally stringing together coherent agentic tool calls to write and execute scripts semi-reliably for workloads in the several minutes before they would start hallucinating/flailing. GPT 5 was a bit ahead of that, but barely Now we take for granted that the latest models can juggle between multiple browser tabs, applications, databases, simulators, docker etc to w…

I always thought bootstrap was pretty good. All the gradients and sparkles don't do much for me.

Re: AI 2040: Plan A

#110

Post by mrdomino- »

ekelsen wrote: post #107
swatcoder wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have a dozen reasons to refuse data centers being built in their communities and zero reasons to encourage it. They're little more than post-industrial mines that take limited resources (power, land, water, quiet) from a community, sell them for profit as compute, and siphon those profits away onto the books of far-flung megacorps with no community reward. Meanwhile, golf courses are a traditional green space…

How is this different from farming? It takes the limited resources of land and water from a community and sells the result for profit as food or fuel. The vast majority of profit is made downstream and outside the community. Golf courses being a traditional green place where people gather seems a bit far fetched to me when most of them are elite private clubs.

In farming, the result is food that can be eaten.
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