Comment by Barrin92
1 day ago
>Ultimately the process of taking an input and making it more valuable is an application of energy.
most of the increase in value comes out of getting more output out of the same input, which is what the application of intelligence is supposed to do. In qualitative terms this means dematerialisation. Your pocket supercomputer is more valuable than something that used to fill a stadium not because it applies more energy, but the opposite.
You used to drive your steel car with dinosaur fuel to the video rental store where you picked up plastic boxes to put into your single purpose device, now you send information through a fiber-optic cable, calculate the energy differential for that. Real civilizational progress is doing what you used to do with matter with light instead.
Fine in isolation. Now consider that we continually invent new things, new things that don't always perfectly eliminate the need for the old thing.
Now we're just making more stuff, at some point you make so much more stuff that you overwhelm the benefits of reduced inputs to make each thing.
One of those curves has a finite limit (you can't input less than zero stuff to make a thing). The other is unbounded, i desire more stuff.
The "unbounded" desire for "more stuff" drives innovation, in both the technological and economic senses. However, neo-malthusian scarcity doom arguments are typically used to rationalize limits on economic or technological growth. In the extreme scenario this can precipitate shortages and become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
>The other is unbounded
It isn't. Your demand and your attention are finite too, in fact they're so finite that competition for it is already extreme. There is so much more for you to consume out there that prices in virtual goods have largely been driven to zero. And of course while there's always a new thing, old things continuously have to go away for you to make room. What you are trying to say is that your interests are open-ended, but certainly not infinite or even increasing over any period of time.
That's exactly why energy consumption has stagnated or been falling already in rich places. Virtualisation has driven down the energy cost of your consumption far in excess of additional stuff you can pile on, and that's only going to accelerate.
AI data centers might temporarily raise energy consumption as existing infrastructure runs in parallel, but if you take the AI promises at face value it will eventually depress energy usage as it dematerialises billions of workers and infrastructure. A "dark factory" is a very early version of that.
>> Your demand and your attention
There's more than just me on the planet though
>> That's exactly why energy consumption has stagnated or been falling already in rich places.
That's one heck of a leap of faith. It perhaps part of the reason though