Comment by gdulli
8 hours ago
If a "science experiment" has the chance to displace most labor then whoever's successful at the experiment wins the economy, period. There's nothing weird or surprising about the logic of them obsessively chasing it. They all have to, it's a prisoner's dilemma.
Fusion power has the chance to displace most power generation, and whoever is successful at the experiment wins the energy economy, period. However given the long timelines, high cost of research, and the unanswered technical questions around materials that can withstand neutron flux, the total 2024 investment into fusion is only around $10B, versus AI's 250+B.
Why are these so different?
Fusion has a lot of difficulties even if they get a rector going - see https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-the...
It's not clear if after that lot they would be cost competitive with other energy sources.
I think there are two reasons. First, with AI, you get see intermediate successes and, in theory, can derive profit from them. ChatGPT may not be profitable right now but in the longer run, users will be paying whatever they have to pay for it because they are addicted to using it. So it makes sense to try and get as many users as you can into your ecosystem as early as possible even if that means losses. With fusion, you won't see profitability for a very very long time.
The second reason is by how much it's going to be better in the end. Fusion has to compete with hydro, nuclear, solar and wind. It makes exactly the same energy, so the upside is already capped unlike with AI which brings something disruptive.
Energy is only ~10% of world GDP whereas AGI might be 25-75% and if paired with advanced robotics would be closer to 100%.
Capital always chases the highest rate of return as well, and margins on energy production are tight. Margins on performing labor are huge.
AI does need a ton of energy to function, so far. So there's that.
People are unsophisticated and see how convincing LLM output looks on the surface. They think it's already intelligent, or that intelligence is just around the corner. Or that its ability to displace labor, if not intelligence, is imminent.
If consumption of slop turns out to be a novelty that goes away and enough time goes by without a leap to truly useful intelligence, the AI investment will go down.
If we define intelligence as problem solving ability, then AI makes _me_ more intelligent, and I'm willing to pay for that.
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Technology know-how spreads rapidly, so no need to be first. Look how fast Google caught up with Gemini when they chose to, or how fast X.ai developed Grok.
Maybe it's cheap insurance to invest in, say, LeCun just in case JEPA or the animal intelligence approach takes off, but if it does show significant signs of progress there'd also be opportunity to invest later, or in one of the dozen copycats that will emerge. In the end it'll be the giants like Google and Microsoft that will win.