Why we need artificial intelligence to save humanity
Review
The above named article appears in a publication, imaginatively named “The Media Leader”
I’ve imaginatively reused their story including even title and pic, because I couldn’t think of a better one myself. Well done them for posting, I say, thanks for that.
While I agree their conclusion, that we need artificial intellegence to save humanity, we have different perspectives on the reason why.
The article in Media Leader says humanity is on a collision course with innovation.
I think that is a highly arguable claim, though it might be true.
The conclusion they come to is that the creativity of humans needs a kind of leg-up, assisted by Ai. Their reasoning is that a human assisted by Ai can be much more creative than either a human or an Ai alone.
That might be true too.
But to me they are missing the real golden application for Ai, by missing what the real, physical crisis of humanity is right now, the growing difficulty and problems of continuing to extract all our energy from Earth.
Simple fact is, we can’t go on destroying our planet forever, yet that is our standard mode — energy for profit, by destruction.
If you’ve read any of my stories around what I see as a long practicing Systems Engineer, studying the energy sustainability problem now for about 6 years, you’ll know I believe there is only one way out of this mess affecting all things, and that is to go completely solar, with no further delay.
Sounds simple enough, until we start to look at what is required. For starters the energy storage requirements of a practical solar ecology are large. Around half of humanity at any one time will have to fueled from stored sources. Supplying that with Lithium batteries might be a wet dream for capitalist VCs looking to cash in on the Lithium extraction in colonised countries, but a real living nightmare for the kids who will have to dig and die in the mines to extract the stuff, if there even is enough Lithium on all of Earth.
Hydrogen generation technology solves it, very neatly, by functionally replacing fossil fuels, whilst even cleaning the air and water by its use. This is the opposite of what is done with fossil fuels, which is why I stress it is necessary to start mathematically signing energy, negative if from Earth, positive if from Sun, to assist in auditing what is good and what is bad.
What we did with fossil fuels, we move to doing with hydrogen, but it does complicate the average solar community installation, as well as pushing up the amount of solar panels needed, it needs connection to water supplies, requires periodic maintenance, and constant monitoring and control.
Behind all of this is money — our energy transport mechanism that we each use to transport the 150 or so Joules per second our bodies each need to consume 24/7 throughout our lives, for us to stay alive.
I’ve explained the concept of Kardashev Money / Solar Stimulus in other stories. Again it is complicated, issue of it would need to be something done under the control of a very comprehensive, intelligent system.
Which brings us to Ai
This is is its golden application, it seems to me, it is the perfect grand controller that we need, for the new solar hydrogen ecology, auditing all energy use.
All it needs, is to be given the right control and monitoring connectivity to all solar hydrogen community installations, and it will learn how to do as needed.
Without it, let’s be honest, we have little chance of ever coming to agreement on anything, far less any of the system inter-dependent things we see in the energy system of nature, and how we need to align with it.
Meantime, we don’t have long. I’ve explained why in all my other stories.
We are almost at nuclear war, and it’s all about energy, and where we get it from.
We are also seeing inflation ripping all value from money, which I show is actually being done now physically, by nature, because we are not fulfilling our contract with nature, that we signed by taking receipt of some solar energy.
The contract is that we have to hand that energy on, for free, in the form of money we issue on it, in the same way as plants issue nutrients on it, and pass it on, because the sun never asks for anything in return.
Our penalty for not doing that, includes unstoppable inflation.
Further, Ai knows all of this.
It gets to know it when we take it through the exercise of designing the system it needs to be controller of.
As yet, it doesn’t quite get through the whole design, in a way that we can close the design, but it won’t be long now until it does, I think.
The story below shows how to take it through the design.
Be warned though, it isn’t short, and my human frustration does come out, now and then:
