Comment by insane_dreamer

I had a very smart tech person tell me at a scientific conference a few weeks ago, when I asked "why do we want to create AGI in the first place", that AGI could solve a host of human problems, including poverty, hunger. Basically, utopia.

I was quite surprised at the naiveté of the answer given that many of these seemingly intractable problems, such as poverty, are social and political in nature and not ones that will be solved with technology.

Update: Even say a super AI was able to figure out something like cold fusion thereby "solving" the energy problem. There are so many trillions of dollars of vested interests stacked against "free clean energy for all" that it would be very very difficult for it to ever see the light of day. We can't even wean ourselves off coal for crying out loud.