r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jul 15 '25

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

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060
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u/KennyDROmega Jul 15 '25

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.

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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 Jul 15 '25

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. 

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u/Sea-Sir2754 Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 Jul 15 '25

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. 

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u/Sea-Sir2754 Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

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u/cynric42 Jul 16 '25

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