31–40 of 163 posts
Clearly AI is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by tech interests, how can we be sure that public AI funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
Clearly AI is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by tech interests, how can we be sure that public AI funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
Clearly AI is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by tech interests, how can we be sure that public AI funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
2. Inevitable AI winter
3. Keep running the plants, clean energy achieved, stop burning coal, global warming solved
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
To the extent that further improvements to AI remain economically useful, "let's do these other things first" means your economy trails behind those of whoever did work on the AI. To the extent that further improvements to AI are either snake oil or just hard to monopolise on, doing everything else first is of course the best idea. Even though I'm more on the side of finding these things impressive, it's not at all c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
To the extent that further improvements to AI remain economically useful, "let's do these other things first" means your economy trails behind those of whoever did work on the AI. To the extent that further improvements to AI are either snake oil or just hard to monopolise on, doing everything else first is of course the best idea. Even though I'm more on the side of finding these things impressive, it's not at all c…
The major question is: at what point will unaddressed climate change nullify these economic gains and make the fact that anyone worried about them feel silly in retrospect?
Or put another way, will we even have the chance collectively enjoy the benefits of that work?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
1. Build atomic power plants sufficient to supply electricity needs for projected future AI megaprojects 2. Inevitable AI winter 3. Keep running the plants, clean energy achieved, stop burning coal, global warming solved
Clearly AI is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by tech interests, how can we be sure that public AI funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
The absolute dollar value might seem high, because we're working with the budget of not just a country but the wealthiest country, but as a percentage it is quite low. You can certainly pull funds from other areas too, like the military, which also greatly benefit from such research endeavors.
Even if these were exclusively non-weapons and non-military based technologies being developed it'd be naive to not recognize that the best military defense is to stop a war before it happens. That comes through many avenues, but notably the development of new technologies, especially those that benefit people as a whole (e.g. medicine or see the Taiwan strategy). But even then, it would also be naive to think that the same technology couldn't be adapted to military uses. Anything can be a weapon if you use it wrong enough.
But note that we're also seeing a reduction in federal research funding. We're also seeing less fundamental research and these types of problems need a strong pipeline through the classic TRL scale[0]. I think you'll find some of that discussion over in yesterday's thread about Bell Labs. The pipeline doesn't work if you don't take risks and are rushing. You need a fire under your ass but too hot and you get burned. It's easy to be myopic in today's settings, and that's not a great idea for an organization who needs to have an outlook in terms of decades and centuries (i.e. government) as opposed to the next election cycle or next quarterly earnings report.
Mind you, we've done these things before. Both the Space Race and Manhattan Project. At the height of the Space Race NASA's budget was over 4.41% of the federal budget[2]. I'm not sure what percent the Manhattan Project's budget was, but it is very clear that this is A LOT cheaper than what actual war costs[3]. We're talking about less than a month of war costs. Remember, we spent over a $750bn over in Iraq[4]. The question is not if we have the money, but what we want to spend it on. Personally I'd rather stuff like this than bombing people. Frankly, you can eat the cake too, as it makes it cheaper to bomb people as well...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43957010
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Cost
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?
This isn't an "either or" situation. You can do both. The absolute dollar value might seem high, because we're working with the budget of not just a country but the wealthiest country, but as a percentage it is quite low. You can certainly pull funds from other areas too, like the military, which also greatly benefit from such research endeavors. Even if these were exclusively non-weapons and non-military based techn…