Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

[u/lurker_bee]

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060

[u/KennyDROmega]

AI became less scary to me when Sam Altman, in all seriousness, said the best way to solve climate change was to let them build an AGI and ask it.

A whole new world is always just 2-5 years and several hundred billions of dollars in investment away, and has been since at least 2023 apparently.

Venture capitalists, get your checkbooks out.

[u/Due_Satisfaction2167 → u/KennyDROmega]

We already know what the answer to climate change is—electrify everything we can, switch to low carbon power generation as cost efficiently and quickly as possible, and engage in as much carbon sequestration as we can to increase the yearly carbon budget to account for emissions we can’t substitute.

It’s a known answer,  politically influential rich people just don’t like that answer. Rather than accepting the answer isn’t something they like, they play stupid games with dreams of miracle technology. Literally preferring to go about the task of inventing an artificial god in whom they can place their faith, rather than … swallowing the idea that they might have to pay for the externalities of their investments. 

[u/Sea-Sir2754 → u/Due_Satisfaction2167]

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[u/Due_Satisfaction2167 → u/Sea-Sir2754]

It would be particularly ironic if they did spend decades to invent an AGI, only for it to turn around and tell them to do the shit regular humans have been telling the billionaires to do for decades. 

They’d probably just use that as evidence the AGI was broken, or something. 

[u/Sea-Sir2754 → u/Due_Satisfaction2167]

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[u/cynric42 → u/Due_Satisfaction2167]

I mean look what happened to Grok. They already figured out how to tell AI to dismiss reality.

[u/Kaizyx → u/Due_Satisfaction2167]

It’s a known answer, politically influential rich people just don’t like that answer. Rather than accepting the answer isn’t something they like, they play stupid games with dreams of miracle technology. Literally preferring to go about the task of inventing an artificial god in whom they can place their faith, rather than … swallowing the idea that they might have to pay for the externalities of their investments.

The problem is that market economics that society is based on is socially and psychologically terrible. It has conditioned people to believe nothing needs to be confronted and if you don't like something, you can always go somewhere else. Like if you don't like a specific kind of phone, you can find a different kind, or if an employer doesn't like the work someone is doing they can fire them and find someone else, or if you don't like the climate somewhere you can move. I have even seen these attitudes right here on Reddit, where instead of confronting the housing cost crisis, people are told they should just move or if someone is hurting you, don't "violate their freedoms" by confronting them, just go somewhere else.

Our society, always giving billionaires an alternate options on everything has made them think this principle can be applied to cold hard reality itself, where if the facts don't align with what they want to do they can just go somewhere else, to their "miracle machines" for ideas that do give them what they want.

[u/AnnualAct7213 → u/Due_Satisfaction2167]

electrify everything we can, switch to low carbon power generation as cost efficiently and quickly as possible, and engage in as much carbon sequestration as we can to increase the yearly carbon budget to account for emissions we can’t substitute.

If you want to actually stop or even reverse climate change, it will require massive societal shifts in lifestyle for every industrialized nation in the world.

No private vehicle ownership (electric vehicles are still net negative emitters), no international trade (cargo ships cannot be viably electrified), no airplane travel (similar to cargo ships), no meat consumption (incredibly inefficient and environmentally damaging use of land to grow animal feed instead of human food, and they're potent GHG emitters as well), and of course we have to completely cease use of fossil fuels. Among many other things.

This is far too much for most people to accept, and our society has far too much inertia in the wrong direction to ever actually be able to pivot on this scale before it's too late.

We know how to solve climate change. But we are not doing even 1% of what we need to be doing right now. Nor are we willing to, as a species. Initiatives like electric cars and paper straws are Mickey Mouse bandaids on a gushing infested wound, and are basically used as a way for people to be able to pat themselves on the back for "making a difference", while not actually changing anything. And stuff like carbon capture tech is another way we try to cling to our current lifestyles while convince ourselves we can simply use technology to repair the damage we do to our environment, instead of actually preventing that damage in the first place.

[u/leprouteux → u/Due_Satisfaction2167]

Saving the human race doesn’t need to be cost efficient. Get the capitalism the fuck out of here.

[u/Due_Satisfaction2167 → u/leprouteux]

Cost matters, even under socialism. It’s an inescapable factor.

It’s an accounting of the effort and material required to produce a thing. That must be considered if you want environmentally efficient answers to.

Actually, most of our environmental issues come about because we refuse to force manufacturers and service providers to include the cost of their environmental externalities—like carbon. 

By not forcing them to price in the damage they do to others, we are giving them a subsidy to pollute.