Hi, Jeff, your Outer Limits (and previously The Bleeding Edge) newsletters have always been "first to open" in my inbox. I deeply appreciate your insightful and understandable presentations of the wide range of technology you cover.
Your current Outer Limits describing the E/ACCs vs. the Decels is mind-bending, and I wonder if it's too polarized. Isn't there possibly a middle ground, and also maybe other persuasions that are outside of this strict dichotomy? What about "the best of both worlds"?
I'm glad you mention the bad actors, because they are out there in spades with deep fakes and political/economic misinformation. As you said, they'll be factors in either an E/ACC world or Decel world, worse in the latter.
"Best of both" could come about by the E/ACC acceleration of AI and technology (nearly unlimited fusion energy, for example, and so many quality of life innovations you describe); and the Decel focus on "stepping more softly on the planet,” which is now, and for a while, our only home. Destroying thousands of square miles of natural habitat annually, reducing biodiversity and the earth's ability to support us, doesn't seem like a tech-related issue, but instead a human-behavioral problem that we must address outside of tech.
Indeed, the ratio of humans to natural wildlife is ballooning, and global warming is not the only, or probably even the main, issue.
Is AI now at a level where it could analyze this dichotomy that you describe, and suggest any "middle roads" that might be optimal? — Richard S.
Hi Richard, I really appreciate your question, and it’s great to reconnect. What I wrote was intended to be a mind-bender, I’m glad to see it worked...
Topics like these force us to step back and think about the repercussions. In this case, you brought up some very interesting challenges the world is facing, and also questions about how AI might be useful.
It’s human nature for us to gravitate towards some kind of middle ground. It feels more comfortable than accepting the reality of one of two possible extremes, doesn’t it?
And yet, from a cosmological perspective, we are living one of two extremes.
Please stick with me for this next bit, as I’m going to draw a far-out example meant to be an example of two extreme outcomes.
Before our universe came into existence, there was nothingness — essentially a massive vacuum (one extreme). That was an inherently unstable environment. Forces on a massive scale are required to maintain a vacuum of that size.
That void was filled with matter, the building blocks of our universe. This happened about 13.7 billion years ago, the beginning of our universe, a point at which matter, and entropy became the other extreme.
I like this example because it was a natural outcome. Complexity and entropy, which ultimately led to billions of galaxies, solar systems, and planets capable of hosting life, evolved into a kind of equilibrium… measurable by both physics and quantum mechanics (at a very small scale).
We are now faced with a technological version of the “big bang” with artificial intelligence.
Just a few years ago, the breakthroughs in AI didn’t exist. There was a void or a vacuum of this technology.
It has now been brought to life — we now have a kind of technological entropy on a global scale, due to this technology being widely available through open-source software.
No matter how much a single government tries to regulate the technology, or a non-governmental organization (NGO) tries to “control” it to achieve its political and societal agendas for 2030 and beyond, entropy will prevail.
The technology — AI — will accelerate… beyond any attempts for restriction and control.
Attempts to restrict or control the use of this technology will create a less desirable outcome. Doing so will disadvantage some parts of the world… and advantage others.
For example, do we really think that China or Russia will slow their development of artificial intelligence just because the U.S. deep state or the World Economic Forum insists on having centralized control over the most advanced AI technology? Of course not.
Expecting that the entire world will get in sync and agree to decelerate — at great expense to many segments of global society, and great profit, benefits, and control to the elites — is a ridiculous supposition.
The best possible outcome, the one with the largest upside for humanity, is the rapid development of AI for the purpose of improving life on Earth for the global population. This becomes the desired equilibrium.
It may not feel like it when it is happening, because we’ll be seeing and feeling extraordinary change. But we will be progressing towards a more stable outcome.
Richard, you raise some very interesting issues concerning the environment and potentially how AI might be able to help. These topics have always been fascinating to me, and they are some of the most widely misunderstood and politically maligned subjects in any industry.
There are so many examples of the ridiculous contradictions in what is considered to be “clean” energy. Yesterday, I wrote about the realities of electric vehicles and the game of ESG in Outer Limits. I provided even more background on January 5th about how “dirty” EVs actually are.
How about wind power?
The wind turbine blades are made of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). They also contain perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane sulfonates.
These substances, when they contaminate the food and water supply, can affect human reproduction, weaken the immune system, can negatively affect growth and development, damage the liver, and impact thyroid function.
And the problem is that these blades aren’t recyclable.
So what does the world do with them when they reach their end of life? We put them into the Earth.
That’s not very ecological is it? Just dumping them in a landfill in the beautiful state of Wyoming, or wherever else near human populations. And this is not to mention how offshore wind turbines are killing off whale populations.
Hydroelectric power severely damages freshwater ecosystems. Countries are cutting down old growth forests to produce electricity from wood, and also to make space for solar panels full of toxic chemicals and limited lifespan.
And the climate change issue is the most absurd of all.
The climate has been changing for millions of years. CO2 isn’t our enemy.
The large majority of the small changes in temperatures is driven by exothermic changes in the Earth’s core and the changes in the Earth’s orbit with respect to the Sun.
But if we focus on the truth, and stick with the real science, there is no “enemy” that can be used as an excuse to spend trillions of taxpayer dollars and employ policies that control populations and assert power. All to benefit the politicians and elites.
Fearmongering begets a false crisis, which gives politicians and lobbyists the ability to force deficit spending, which enriches the few and impoverishes the majority of society.
The better path forward is to be focused on sources of clean energy, specifically those that don’t emit particulate matter into the atmosphere or those that require extensive use of toxic chemicals that can contaminate the Earth.
And we should look to recycle and reuse materials wherever possible to reduce our footprint and preserve our global habitat.
We have the technology today in the form of nuclear fission, and we are very close to what I consider to be the best possible solution for limitless clean energy, nuclear fusion. I wrote about the difference at length right here.
And this is where artificial intelligence (AI) can help.
AI is already being proven to be useful in developing new materials, some of which may be useful for nuclear fusion reactors.
I wrote about the recent DeepMind discovery of 380,000 new crystals, which multiplied by a factor of 10 the world’s knowledge base of stable materials, right here. That’s a great example of what’s happening right now.
And where AI can really be useful is in optimizing the magnetic fields in a fusion reactor to maintain a nuclear fusion plasma reaction.
Just imagine a world where we have a decentralized architecture of nuclear fusion reactors providing limitless clean energy to the world… and eliminating the need for environmentally destructive technologies like solar farms, wind farms, and hydroelectric power.
That’s something to look forward to.
And AI is going to help us get there.
