Comment by hdgvhicv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hdgvhicv | Hacker News Reader

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You seem to be implying that mankind will decide to scale back AI in favour of tackling climate change, or that it won’t happen but AI will not destroy at least the economy which powers AI long before unrecoverable climate change will occur.

If AI kills us all, doesn’t matter about climate change - some species will adapt and thrive, some will die out

If AI destroys jobs, there will be no demand for energy so oil will no longer be burnt at the scale currently causing so much problem

Your view seems to be AI will continue in approximately the current state for the next 20 years? I don’t see how that happens. Best case scenario to me is a 2001/2008/2020 style crash coupled with an actual limit to LLM capacity so countries pesss exposed to capitalist systems will draw back from current AI for a few decades.

Or am I missing something? How do you foresee the next 20 years?

> If AI destroys jobs, there will be no demand for energy

Quite the leap there. Are you imagining billions dying off with no food and no further consumption while the AI overlords cruise about in their yachts between bunkers while zooming into Davos to cosplay as Davros and chuckle about the fate of the poors?

That aside, the earth land / sea layer is still lagging in its reaction the gigatonnes of CO2 already aloft .. which isn't going to magically disappear for some generations.

Even if AI destroys jobs there will still be fossil fuel consumption adding to the CO2 already there.

> Are you imagining billions dying off with food and no further consumption while the AI overlords cruise about in their yachts between bunkers while zooming into Davos to cosplay as Davros and chuckle about the fate of the poors?

Well that’s certainly one scenario. And that scenario would decimate co2 emissions. Sure things will continue to get worse, but as most of humanity will be dead they won’t be concerned.

So your view of billions not dying is somewhat optimistic for the future

My view is more local than global - and we're all in for another few millennia, one way or another.

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