WoodScientist

I say we indict Sam Altman for both securities fraud and 8 billion counts of reckless endangerment. Him and other AI boosters are running around shouting that AGI is just around the corner, OpenAI is creating it, and that there is a very good chance we won't be able to control it and that it will kill us all. Well, the way I see it, there are only two possibilities:

1. He's right. In which case, OpenAI is literally endangering all of humanity by its very operation. In that case, the logical thing to do would be for the rest of us to arrest everyone at OpenAI, shove them in deep hole and never let them see the light of day again, and burn all their research and work to ashes. When someone says, "superintelligent AI cannot be stopped!" I say, "you sure about that? Because it's humans that are making it. And humans aren't bullet-proof."

2. He's lying. This is much more likely. In that case, he is guilty of fraud. He's falsely making claims his company has no ability to achieve, and he is taking in billions in investor money based on these lies.

He's either a conman, or a man so dangerous he should literally be thrown in the darkest hole we can find for the rest of his life.

And no, I REALLY don't buy the argument that if the tech allows it, that superintelligent AI is just some inevitable thing we can't choose to stop. The proposed methods to create it all rely on giant data centers that consume gigawatts of energy to run. You're not hiding that kind of infrastructure. If it turns out superintelligence really is possible, we pass a global treaty to ban it, and simply shoot anyone that attempts to create it. I'm sorry, but if you legitimately are threatening the survival of the entire species, I have zero qualms about putting you in the ground. We don't let people build nuclear reactors in their basement. And if this tech really is that capable and that dangerous, it should be regulated as strongly as nuclear weapons. If OpenAI really is trying to build a super-AGI, they should be treated no differently than a terrorist group attempting to build their own nuclear weapon.

But anyway, I say we just indict him on both charges. Charge Sam Altman with both securities fraud and 8 billion counts of reckless endangerment. Let the courts figure out which one he is guilty of, because it's definitely one or the other.

Meanwhile, in a dark and forgotten corner of my PC, I STILL have several thousand MP3s I downloaded from Kazaa back in the day.

I would make it even more explicit. I would put those two dates but label them, "best if used by" and "dangerous if used after."

Bezos also has a rocket company. Plus there's Richard Branson. And others.. And then you have private jet travel, massive mega yachts, and countless other extravagances. For a certain class of billionaire, having a private rocket company is a vanity project. These rocket companies are vanity projects by rich sci fi nerds. Yes, they've done some really good technical work, but they're only possible because their founders were willing to sink billions into them even without any proof they'll make a profit.

What you are missing is that as people's wealth increases, their resource use just keeps going up and up and up. To the point where when people are wealthy enough, they're using orders of magnitude more energy and resources than the average citizen of even developed countries. Billionaires have enough wealth that they can fly rockets just because they think they're cool, even if they have no real path to profitability.

And no, the hypothetical of the robot skyscrapers is not "meaningless." You just have a poor imagination. To have that type of world we only need one thing - a robot that can build a copy of itself from raw materials, or a series of robots that can collectively reproduce themselves from raw materials gathered in the environment. Once you have self-replicating robots, it becomes very easy to scale up to that kind of consumption on a broad scale. If you have self-replicating robots, the only real limit to the total number you can have on the planet is the total amount of sunlight available to power all of them.

The real point isn't the specific examples I gave. The point, which you are missing entirely, is that total resource use is a function of wealth and technological capability. Raw population has very little impact on it. If our automation gets a lot better, or something else makes us much wealthier, we would see vast increases in total resource use even if our population was cut in half.

The problem is too many people. If standard of living is to increase then the resource requirement is due to massive unsustainable population growth.

They're both important. And crucially, people in developed countries use a lot more resources than those in undeveloped countries. Just look at the resource utilization of our richest people. We have billionaires operating private rocket companies! If somehow, say due to really really good automation, orbital rockets could be made cheap enough for the average person to afford, we would have average middle class people regularly launching rockets into space and taking private trips to the Moon. Just staggering levels of resource use. If we could build and maintain homes very cheaply due to advanced robotics, the average person would live in a private skyscraper if they could afford it. Imagine the average suburban lot, except with a tower built on it 100 stories tall. If it was cheap enough to build and maintain that sort of thing, that absolutely would become the norm.

They've already tried to send all the jobs they can to India or South America. It ultimately didn't work. They can send some, but the language and cultural barriers, plus the difficulty of assessing quality candidates just doesn't make it viable at scale. They've already tried that game and it failed. Everything that can be outsourced to India already has been outsourced to India.

Nah, it will be worse. Tesla will start selling a hybrid model with a generator onboard that can charge the battery as you go. That generator will be designed to be fueled by ground-up burning tires, unrecycleable plastic, and human hair. .

MSPaint. Paint is King.

On balance, I think it’s within the realm of possibility that these laws do more harm than good. Honestly, just tax plastic producers and see how quickly producers using plastic to package their products magically fine innovative new alternatives.

Seriously. The way to solve this is to simply put a tax on all plastic packaging. Use those funds to subsidize plastic recycling. Set the tax at whatever level is necessary to make recycling viable. And if the most viable 'recycling' method is to just burn the plastic in an incinerator, so be it. Yeah, it's expensive to build an industrial incinerator that can properly scrub and filter out all the nasty fumes plastic gives off when it's burned. But it can be done. It's more expensive than just stuffing the plastic in a landfill, but by burning it, we solve our plastic problem in the here and now, rather than letting it slowly leach out into the environment for future generations to deal with.

Recycling plastic will always be difficult, and it may never be practical for some cases. But all plastics burn. And if you have the right incinerator, they can be burned without releasing toxic fumes into the air. Tax plastic packaging, all of it. Tax it, and use the funds to subsidize plastic waste incineration. Plastic is made from oil, and it still can be used as a fuel. Burn it and be done with it.

Meanwhile in Alabama, things are so backwards there they haven't even figured out shoes yet! It's not like they prefer sandals or they're too poor to afford shoes. They all go around barefoot, because the idea of shoes just has never occured to any of them. Most buildings instead have special brush ledges so you can scrape the dirt and blood off your feet before you walk in. Again, they're just a hopelessly backwards people. So backwards, they haven't even figured out shoes yet. Their cousins over in Mississippi are a bit further along. MSU currently has a study going where they're experimenting with wrapping feet in ziplock bags, secured with rubber bands.

All real men spring forth, fully formed, from Zeus's brow.

As long as you only drive it on your own ranch, fine. But when you take your vehicle off your property, it becomes everyone else's business.