Surur t1_jdelj8k wrote
Reply to comment by Artanthos in How will you spend your time if/when AGI means you no longer have to work for a living (but you still have your basic needs met such as housing, food etc..)? by DreaminDemon177
> compute power won’t increase the availability of material or energy resources
Of course it will. When everything gets automated, there is no cost except energy, which can be gotten from the sun for free
Does the forest cost money to grow? When we have solar powered robots building solar powered robots, any project can be done for free, because the inputs will also be generated by solar powered robots.
Artanthos t1_jdelzzu wrote
Automation won’t magically produce raw materials out of thin air.
You still need to buy those.
Surur t1_jdepojo wrote
a) Actually, like plants, automation could pull carbon for example right from the air.
b) the places making the raw materials would also be automated.
Automated mines, automated refineries, automated solar panel factories, automated installers, automated powerlines - very biological.
You know von neumann machines, right - no one is saying those are unaffordable, because they are self-reproducing.
Artanthos t1_jdevuxm wrote
- Congratulations, you have carbon. Now you need everything else.
- mines can be automated, but there are a limited number of mines and those mines have a finite amount of resources.
- arable land is a declining resource
- there is only just so much available for a lot of other resources, see my sand example
Limited resources means supply and demand. The owners of those resources have only a finite amount available and will be selling them to the highest bidders. Just like today’s commodities markets.
The more limited resources will go up in at a rapidly increasing pace as demand increases. See lithium prices over time. And there’s not a lot to automate with lithium production.
https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/28037/lithium-carbonate-price-timeline/
https://www.engadget.com/2019-02-24-the-big-picture-lithium-salt-flats-chile.html
Surur t1_jdf6vsn wrote
Please turn your eyes to the heavens and look up. We have infinite resources.
To add, we never run out of resources, just easily accessible resources, and with near infinite energy, we can even filter our minerals from seawater.
You need to let go of your scarcity mindset.
Artanthos t1_jdheokh wrote
We have to make it up there in a cost efficient manner for it to be usable.
That’s a long ways away.
But what the heck. Elon Musk is taking the lead on getting us there. I’m sure everyone on Reddit will be ecstatic if he succeeds and becomes the world’s first trillionaire.
DankestMage99 t1_jdgg9tw wrote
The only limiting thing is energy. Once you have that solved, you solve everything else. And with AI’s help, I believe that will be solved very soon. We already recently had a fusion breakthrough, it won’t take much more. Also, solar will cover the rest in concert with the improvements in battery storage. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if AI will be able to help us figure out zero point energy.
I don’t think you aren’t thinking “big enough,” because every problem you mentioned is easily solved with AI and unlimited energy.
We have everything we could ever need, material-wise, sitting in our landfills and littering the planet currently that we don’t need to mine anything ever again. The only reason we continue to mine is because it’s still cheaper/easier to pull it from the ground than pull the materials from trash. AI will solve this problem.
Also, people will use substantially less. If you had access to everything for free, you wouldn’t want/need most of the crap you own. How much stuff sits in our world unused as a backup or kept around as some form of a sunk cost? You don’t need 99% of it. If everything is free and on-demand, you just recycle stuff once you don’t need it or it breaks and order something new. You could have new clothes made for yourself daily. Why would you need an entire wardrobe? Extrapolate that to everything you use in your life. You could 3D print yourself anything you need. All the extra stuff could be recycled and used as raw materials. And when you multiple this reduction and recycling of materials for 6 billion people, it becomes easy to see how we have more than we could ever need.
Arable land could be solved by huge desalination facilities. Again, this is only restrictive now due to energy consumption. If we had free unlimited energy, the Sahara desert could be reclaimed for everything from farming to lush jungles. Again, that’s more than we would ever need to supply food for the planet—hell, we can feed the planet now if it weren’t for the limiting economic and distribution issues. We throw away so much food away now it’s unbelievable.
I could go on and on, but my point should be clear.
There are only two things that are going to limit this future:
- whether humans can give up need for the few to remain in power/control
- whether we can create an AI that won’t destroy us
Artanthos t1_jdhca32 wrote
I would love to see raw resources manufactured using only energy, but this is not Star Trek.
DankestMage99 t1_jdpeigl wrote
If we get AGI, you will be living in Star Trek. That’s the point.
Artanthos t1_jdr2a7b wrote
The more feasible parts of Star Trek are already here, only better.
The Hollywood Magic parts will remain Hollywood magic.
No amount of AI is going to change physics and start creating something from nothing.
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