Regardless of how realistic you think AGI risk is, it’s not marketing hype- it has been a human fear and central in scifi for a long time. Movies like 2001, Terminator, and the Matrix were hugely popular long before AI was profitable. Arguably ancient myths about golems and genies are essentially the same fear and concept. AI companies are afraid of public fear over AI as it might lead to regulating them out of existence…. They are actively creating marketing hype in the opposite direction, to convince people that AI is safe and useful.
> #3 is happening and could cause #2 if wars for livable land and water resources break out.
Seems more likely to me that attempts to solve #3 will lead to #2.
If we actually attempted to curtail fossil fuel consumption as much activists claim we should, there would be such a drop in agricultural and industrial productivity that there would be mass starvation, particularly in the developing world.
I don't think those countries would peacefully go along with that plan.
'Mother' Gaia will wipe all complex life from this planet with 1 to 1.5 Billion years if her 'undisciplined' puppies don't find a way to leave this ball of dirt.
She's also got quite a lead with killing off 99.99999% of all species that ever lived, when compared to us.
Everyone hell bent on leaving is actually distracted from the real less immediately glamorous challenge, which is learning to sustain life and exercise restraint.
Luckily we have 1 to 1.5 billion years to figure out how to survive outside of this ball of dirt... (cataclysmic asteroids and other similar events notwithstanding)
Climate change is analogous to a scenario we see all the time in nature i.e. a species finds massive success causing its population to spike, this population spike degrades the supporting environment and the species risks extinction.
We dodged this in the 20th century with the green revolution but the risk remains. We still haven’t figured out how to live within the limits of our environment, instead we continue to extract from it and degrade it. If we don’t figure this problem out then our species is done for.
Compared to this the other two are barely even risks.
#1 isn't happening anytime soon, nothing we have is on a path in that direction.
#2 people always worry about, but it's almost certainly not going to happen - insane dictators or no. Even in much worse scenarios we avoided it.
#3 Real, but slow. I think we'll see some coastal communities devastated over the course of the next ~50 years, but the rest of the world will adapt and/or sweep it under the rug as best they can. The bigger threat is economic. Companies will no doubt try to use the changing situation as an excuse to skyrocket prices and keep everyone broke.
#2 People aren't evaluating this risk correctly. If the war in Ukraine has taught me anything, it's that the assertions, "Putin would never do..." is wrong.
#3 The real risk is the refugee crisis. The world is going to be split into two groups: refugees, and those trying to keep the refugees away. Large countries are going to experience crises from both internal and external migration. Think, people from mexico flooding into texas, while people from Texas flood north into the great plains. It's going to happen slowly, then all at once.
droughts are here now and will get worse in the coming decade. the amount of energy required to melt ice sheets (if that's what you're alluding to) is extremely huge and while it is certain they'll melt in a business as usual scenario (and possible if we stopped all emissions now...), it'll take hundreds if not thousands of years to get there.
whereas extreme droughts are here today, now, as we speak.
On the topic of “Mother Gaia” being a bloodthirsty bitch (how we humans like to anthropomorphize rather than grasp things as they are) see Tiptree’s excellent story: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Flight_of_Dr._Ain. We may have come close to this being reality four years ago perhaps.
You forgot the H5N1 with 50% mortality rate raw milk thing. There is an article on Ars about raw milk drinkers actively seeking infected milk in the belief it will immunise them against H5N1. I’m not a biologist but this feels like it could be very dangerous to everyone.
I understand why some people might not weight the probability and risk of AGI as highly as others, but to deny the risk entirely, or to act as if it's ridiculous to be concerned about such things in my opinion is just an intellectually ignorant position to hold.
Obviously near-term AGI and climate change present us with near zero risk, and therefore certain groups will dismiss both. This is despite clear trends plotting towards very clear risks, but because these individuals are yet to see any negative impact with their own eyes it's all too easy for them to dismiss the risk as some kind of hysteria. But these risks are real and rational because the trends are real and clear. We should take both seriously.
The nuclear risk is real too, but unlike AGI and climate change the risk isn't exponentially increasing with time. I think other weapons like bioweapons and drone weapons potentially fit that risk profile, however.
Letting off a few nukes could slow climate change a bit right? I vaguely recall that all the dust kicked up by the hundreds of tests in the 50s and 60s had an effect.
Possibly, but you have to keep doing it. kicking up dust into the atmosphere tends to have significant short-term impact on the global climate (see e.g. volcanic winters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter). Then the dust settles shortly and everything returns to normal.
But volcanic eruptions that cause a winter like that tend to be quite a bit more powerful than your average nuclear weapon. More importantly, not all dust is created equal. Sulphur containing compounds tend to have the biggest cooling effect. One neat (in a terrifying sort of way) geo-engineering idea is continuously injecting large amounts of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.
It works best if the nukes hit densely populated areas, but I hope we manage to implement the solutions to climate change that don’t require killing billions.
Temperature problem can be solved relatively easily and cheaply by putting a bunch of reflective film all over the planet (mainly deserts).
Getting CO2 out of the atmosphere is actually expensive. But we will have to do it. High concentrations of CO2 reduce IQ and make humans actually uncomfortable.
We are not at risk of runaway climate change. That's a common misconception and a convenient scare tactic.
We're also not at risk of runaway AGI any time soon. LLMs are a joke. Minds are computationally irreducible, and all our supercomputers can barely hold a baby fruit fly's connectome.
Unless you mean biological AGI. We're going to figure out genetic engineering far sooner than we'll get the hardware necessary for inorganic AGI. Once we master biology, we can genetically engineer organic super intelligences or, far sooner, superviruses whose genome can be uploaded into a nucleotide synthesizer in someone's garage. Then it's game over. Unless we've colonized Mars (which also helps with nuclear conflict).
Gaia isn't really a thing. There are only natural processes, chemistry, and physics, and there is definitely nothing motherly about them; they are ruthlessly efficient.
You don’t understand the enormous immediate risk of climate change if you think that AGI is a comparable risk. Climate change is now and is killing people every day
Nature is out to kill us. We’re doing a far better job in this fight than we ever have. I’d rather deal with problem of climate change than the problems of our ancestors.
AI doomers don’t even care about its harms today such as being used for automated American death panel decision-making, something that the Victims of Capitalism Memorial Foundation will recognize someday
I don't know about that; I could see everyone drifting into a conflict no one wants, WW1 style.
Recent events also are incentivizing small countries to go nuclear, which will increase the risk of nuclear war. I expect South Korea, Japan, and maybe even the Philippines and Vietnam to acquire nuclear weapons at some point. Japan already has a capability to acquire nuclear weapons quickly, with their separated reactor-grade Pu stockpile.
1. AGI doesn't even exist and Sam Altman and I agree on one thing, GPTs will not get us there. Saying AGI is a risk is like saying the sun exploding is a risk.
2. Nuclear conflict is real, it's astounding Pakistan or Russia hasnt used the bomb yet but they will when the US backs them into a corner.
3. Climate change? At this point, who cares? We know it's happening and happening VERY slowly so we have PLENTY of time to get ready. Theres no real risk other than failing to move away from the cost in the next 100 years. International shipping and big ag are the largest polluters by far and those ain't stopping.
Fear of AGI is not based on Altman’s latest brews. Look at the progress curve of AI in general is one way to get a feeling for it. The other one, which I prefer, is looking at existing AIs for which we thought human ingenuity was top notch and how they are beating us left and right. Strategy, creativity, cunning, all human notions that are being slaughtered. Slowly, but surely.
It is “just” a matter of combining. I think it’s an “engineering problem” by now. Which is not to say that it will happen soon, just that if we set our minds to it it won’t be that big of a deal.
Well, also, plastic waste getting dumped in water ways, and in the USA, steel and coal waste being dumped into the Ohio (causing a huge dead zone in the Gulf). There are serious pollution problems everywhere, and I kind of hate the climate change narrative for taking people’s eyes off of those problems.
Oh well, some concerns around AGI might be attempts at marketing and attracting attention, though some caution probably isn't too bad to have. AGI might become a thing, it's just that there's no guarantee that it will happen in our lifetimes. On the other hand, even LLMs will put some folks out of a job.
Relations between nuclear powers are anyone's guess but there's no reason why Russia couldn't be forced to back off, as opposed to "being backed into a corner". Wouldn't be the first proxy war and most likely won't be the last.
I care about climate change, there are certainly others. No idea whether much of a change will be made in our current course, but there's no reason to be super dismissive. If anything, recycling, eating a bit less meat or doing lots of the other common recommendations improves my own quality of life, even if the legislature that goes after the big corporations is nowhere to be seen yet. No reason not to make the world a better place, or ar least try to, in whatever ways are viable, like donating towards planting trees or something like Wren.
> failing to move away from the cost in the next 100 years
Unless you're a time-traveler from the 50s who has somehow managed to post here, there is no excuse for this type of disinformation these days.
Mentioning higher sea levels is also a red herring; massive agricultural yields collapse will be an issue long before (like, this century) sea levels become a major problem.
More than this, we have now reached levels of atmospheric changes that put actual near-term Human extinction (not to mention that of most sea and land species) on the table.
1) Is real but will have net positive impact on humanity (of course there will be losers, but like most new technologies humans will have more for less effort)
2) It is real but unlikely to end humanity. Much more likely to create large areas that are unlivable, but a lot of work has gone into avoiding world ending scenarios.
3) Is mostly hype. Doom predictions in the last 20 years on this topic have been very wrong. The climate is always changing, and humans will have to adapt as always (+1 to 2C increase over 100 years is not world ending). The long term problem will be prevented by a) running out of cheap carbon based energy b) geo-engineering c) rise of cheaper non carbon based energy (related to a).
Asteroid impact or pandemic / virus / man-made bioweapon are all higher probability humanity ending risk IMHO. Not enough thought & energy are put into those scenarios.
Without even going into the unsubstantiated assertion with #1, your comment on number 3 shows a dramatic misunderstanding of how compounding effects work. You can't use the last 20 years to linearly project like this. It is true that most scientists agree that humanity will likely not go completely extinct, but it is also true that most scientists agree that many, many individual humans will be impacted. It is tough to say just exactly how humans will be impacted, but think famine, war, major societal upheaval.
Average increase of temperature has negative consequences, but the accompanying variance increase has a lot more catastrophic impact. Storms, forest fires, floods, droughts are some of those things where increased variance can screw societies over.
A lot of this can push insurance costs so high, that insurance companies stop working. There are only so many times insurance can payout damage due to extreme storms, or crop failure. Once insurance stops, there is rapid deterioration of infrastructure.
This is what passes for common sense when you live in a conservative media bubble. The mainstream of climate science as represented by the IPCC has tended to be over conservative when it comes to how much change we should expect over a given period of time.
Right wing media outlets focus on the the predictions of lay people like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg and use those to try to dismiss the entire field of climatology. Which is a non sequitur.
I'm not that worried about nuclear conflict because it's a scenario where literally nobody wins. There's always the "Madman" hypothesis but really that's no way to do geopolitical analysis. Nobody is truly "crazy" (IMHO). Remember those orders have to be carried out by someone. They've studies on this with missile silo operators and they had a disturbing or comforting (depending on your POV) tendency to not launch.
It's really the "slow death" scenarios that are a much bigger risk.
While I'm firmly in the AGI camp, I'm both fatalistic about our willingness to do anything about it but I'm also highly skeptical of the "runaway climate change" doomsaying. The Earth has been around for ~4.5 billion years. While it's only been similar to what it is now for th elast 300 million or so, that's still a really long time. We've had periods where ice extended to the equator (~500 million years ago). We've had much warmrer periods.
The Earth will be fine. We however might fall by the wayside. There's really been such a long period of time that if runaway climate change were going to happen, why hasn't it happened already?
> There's really been such a long period of time that if runaway climate change were going to happen, why hasn't it happened already?
I don't think runaway climate change or even something like a reversal of the Gulf Stream were ever any of the mainstream scenarios from IPCC. The worst scenarios, IIRC, were a global warming of +6 to 10C.
And that is over several centuries, provided we do nothing to stop it.
This century, the worst scenarios are about 4C hotter than today.
Also, it's not like the temperature is going up that much everywhere. For instance, heating an area near water from 34 to 38C means a lot more water evaporation, and thus more cooling. Also, stronger winds mean the humidity may be blown away more quickly.
Now even 4C of heating, provided we don't develop any technologies to either counter it or cope with it could cause a disaster that could cause similar disruptions, forced displacements etc as WW2, but the world didn't end because of WW2. It was only a minor speed bump in the grand scope of things.
Anyway, the probability that it should take 100s of years to reach AGI seems quite slim. And once we have AGI/ASI, the world is going to be so fundamentally different that I'm not sure how much some warming really means, at least for humans.
Really? You’ve never met someone with the “if I can’t have it, nobody can” mindset? Never heard of a custody dispute where the losing parent kills the kids in order to deprive the other parent of them?
Vladimir Putin is exactly that kind of person. When backed into a corner and knowing he will die, he would rather nuke the whole world than accept his fate. And those orders will be carried out by people in heavily restricted information silos, who only have the explanation of their commanding officers as reasoning. For all they know, this is a test, or the US already has launched their nukes, or if they don’t launch the nukes their mom will be dropped out of a window.
The title is also misleading in that the paper (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319652121) doesn't claim to determine when the fastest rates of CO2 rise have been. In fact, it starts by saying cores generally can only support analysis of durations >100 years.
I take note of this because I've looked at this problem before and agree that core samples have a hard time supporting claims like "most in the previous XXkya" when compared with the last few decades, be it CO2, CH4, avg temp d02, etc.
Starting with layers as recent as 30kya, the age of the trapped gas often spans multiple centuries, and so e.g. you'd be averaging out point outgassing from even very large volcanoes well beyond detectability. Beyond 50-60kya, the layer durations are all in the few millennia range.
Reference data:
Antarctic Ice Core 155,000 Year CO2 and Gas Stable Isotope Data - Eggleston, S.; Schmitt, J.; Bereiter, B.; Schneider, R.; Fischer, H. 2016. Evolution of the stable carbon isotope composition of atmospheric CO2 over the last glacial cycle. Paleoceanography, 31. doi: 10.1002/2015PA002874
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleo-search/study/19942
Humans are "natural". Many species have overpopulated and overused the resources they need to survive and eventually became extinct, we are extremely natural.
Natural is a word humans invented to distinguish the things they didn't do, make, or cause. Most of the time, a linguistic analysis is preferable to a philosophical one.
With each new IPCC report the chances of us keeping global warming below 1.5 C become more and more remote as emissions are locked in. But at the same time the really bad scenarios where we go well over 4 C also become more remote. Every half degree is worse than the last and each is worth righting for but it does look like our civilization will make it through this intact, even if not all people individually.
This seems spuriously dismissive, even reading this thread you can see people think the world will end, any thread on this subject or Just Stop Oil interview should show you many people hold this view, or at least claim to.
I don't believe climate change will be the downfall of human civilization, but it's not just an alarmist take. There's actual reason to believe it could be. The problem is that it's a potentially self-accelerating problem, like a nuclear meltdown.
As the planet warms, more CO2 that is locked up in melting glaciers will be released, accelerating the problem. Rising sea levels could displace a significant portion of humanity, causing a level of unrest and chaos that could make it hard to muster the governmental and intergovernmental efforts that might be require to slow or stop the problem. Food scarcity could further these issues. People won't be worrying about investing in green energy if they're worrying about whether they or their neighbor will be the one who gets the last bag of rice.
And my biggest concern: CO2 makes us stupider. As ambient CO2 levels rise, people can't think as clearly -- we're talking about the entire collective intelligence of the human race potentially being reduced significantly if CO2 levels rise to not that much higher than they are now. The effect is noticeable at 1000 ppm, and indoor concentrations can be 2x to 3x outdoor concentrations. Right now we're at 424 atmospheric ppm. It's not hard to imagine that worst-case increases could literally smother the brains of every human on the planet. And then civilization is literally at risk.
Again: I don't ascribe much weight into the probability of that worst case. I put a lot of stock into the incredible ingenuity of humans to solve problems, once they actually acknowledge that they are problems. So I'm pretty sure we'll get through this as a species (although some coastal cities may not, at least in their current form). But the end of civilization is not merely alarmist -- it's an actual worst-case possibility that we should be aware of.
Here's a paradox. If people assume you are alarmist and discount everything you say -- "Oh, you way we need 100. I assume therefore that we only need 20. Here are 20." -- you need to be alarmist to get them to react appropriately. Then they attribute your exaggeration to your own deficiency, not your reaction to theirs.
Anyway, that's a general observation, not a claim that any particular position is alarmist.
Lots of people on the internet and some in the media. Some activists as well, and a few politicians, although it's unclear to what extent they really believe climate change is truly existential.
Edit:
Evidently many people still do not get the point
The point is that yes, climate has changed in the past, and the individual values are not the problem.
The PROBLEM is that it has never changed this FAST. By orders of magnitude.
Velocity changes everything.
Consider just taking a sip of your coffee 1000X as fast as usual.
Instead of bringing your cup the 2' from table to lip in 1 sec, it's 1/1000 sec. You will require multiple explosions to accelerate it to 2000fps/609m/sec/Mach2, and back to zero.
Same description of events, entirely different process and results.
Similar for species and ecosystems to adapt at 1000X the speed they've ever seen.
Randall chose one of the lowest point every in the history of earth as the "baseline". We are still in one of the coldest period ever for earth.
The recent rise of temperature is significant, but not unprecedented. Before we reach a point that one could qualify as a "hot earth", we would need to warm up by an additional 10 to 15 C°
> Randall chose one of the lowest point every in the history of earth as the "baseline".
Randall's graph starts at a little over 4C lower than current temperatures. The most recent minimum on your first graph is 7C below current temperatures.
Your 2nd graph couldn't be shown in Randall's format because it would either take too long to scroll, or it wouldn't have the resolution needed to show the dramatically higher rate of change.
> The recent rise of temperature is significant, but not unprecedented.
The rate of change is unprecedented.
> Before we reach a point that one could qualify as a "hot earth", we would need to warm up by an additional 10 to 15 C°
> “Our research identified the fastest rates of past natural CO2 rise ever observed, and the rate occurring today, largely driven by human emissions, is 10 times higher.”
They are investigating historical trends. (They are then comparing their findings to modern trends.)
Southern Hemisphere westerly winds are intensifying due to a natural cycle on the scale of decades. This makes the southern ocean warmer (and the arctic colder, but the ocean is mostly in the south). Warm water doesn't take up so much carbon dioxide. (Water takes up carbon to produce carbonic acid, so if the water is warmer it incidentally reduces ocean acidification, a possible benefit?)
Or it might be about convection.
> The drivers and source of these centennial-scale CO2 jumps are unknown. The proposed mechanisms include enhanced ocean–atmosphere CO2 exchange in the Southern Ocean (via wind-driven upwelling of carbon-rich deep waters or invigorated convection), surface ocean temperature changes (impacting CO2 solubility), biomass burning (via NH subtropical wildfires), or a combination of mechanisms.
Yes, I'm not sure what to make of that wording either. Based on my quick read of the article, it should probably just be "rise". Presumably it is knowable from isotope analysis if carbon added to the atmosphere is recent or fossil. We certainly know that we are adding fossil carbon to the atmosphere at a prodigious rate, and if "natural" carbon content is rising as well, then that is quite bad news because it would likely mean we had crossed some tipping point or other where the Earth system itself has begun contributing to carbon emissions.
No, it is "natural" rise. If earth system itself contributes to carbon emmisions, we need to subtracted that from anthropogenic emmisions!
This is great news! Our efforts are actually paying off! Soon we will cut human emmisions to zero!
Also we should substract emmisions produced by other species like cows, dogs, cats.. And I have great business idea, where orangutan owns and operates coal plant, that is natural and should be substracted as well!!!
Heatwaves are a serious issue already, try being one of the few hundred million people in South Asia/SEA with 3k annual income and no aircon during April 2024. School cancelled and outdoors work nearly impossible due to wet bulb temperatures nearing the threshold of human survivability.
Nah. Politicians will still have the wrong incentives, and they’ll just let the poor die. Meanwhile the rich will buy up all arable land, and all land not largely affected. Following that, they’ll tighten control of national borders to stop waves of migration.
I feel you on this. The smoldering embers on the floor at starting to blink little flames, and everyone in the room is arguing about the best way to put them out in order to most preserve the things most.
The longer we wait, the more dramatic the changes we will have to make will have to be.
Sea level rise from climate change is a fairly marginal issue in most places on the scale of a human lifetime. Famine from drought is a much bigger problem in the short term.
We probably won't rebuild most of what is lost. People will largely have to make due with living in poverty for an indeterminate number of generations.
I'm covered, I live on a topological local maxima of 100 feet above the "major" local minima of "800ft" on essentually solid rock, assuming it doesn't become the next sahara, I should be able to collect plenty of rain water for personal needs and have methods to filter it. Currently have enough solar for off grid and backup generators as secondary. Hopefully well armed enough to stave off interlopers if it becomes that desperate. I doubt if my house would survive a tornado though, but should be covered from other natural disasters.
There is no reliable water on the highlands because it depends on micro local precipitation. The lower down you go, the more reliable your water supply becomes because of the larger catchment area. But the lower down you go, the more chances you will get flooded.
I actually had sea level rise and radius from likely thermonuclear targets in mind when I bought my house.
I hadn't read The Science yet, so I believed The Propaganda. Now that I've read The Science (IPCC reports), it turns out sea levels are unlikely to rise more than 50cm, and definitely not 10+ meters like I was preparing for.
Readit News
- The risk of the rise of AGI
- The risk and madness of Nuclear conflict
- The risk of runaway Climate change
My money is on Mother Gaia. She will brutally and swiftly discipline her puppies.
#2 is very real.
#3 is happening and could cause #2 if wars for livable land and water resources break out.
#2 is warmongering
#3 will be solved by human ingenuity
I have a more positive outlook. :)
The weekly news regarding AI are always adding new things to ai.
We started pouring billions into ai.
The amount of new research papers regarding AI are exploding.
I would argue that it is not marketing hype or aluminum hat thinking to take that serious
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#2 is a remote possibility
#3 is a non-threat
Seems more likely to me that attempts to solve #3 will lead to #2.
If we actually attempted to curtail fossil fuel consumption as much activists claim we should, there would be such a drop in agricultural and industrial productivity that there would be mass starvation, particularly in the developing world.
I don't think those countries would peacefully go along with that plan.
She's also got quite a lead with killing off 99.99999% of all species that ever lived, when compared to us.
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We dodged this in the 20th century with the green revolution but the risk remains. We still haven’t figured out how to live within the limits of our environment, instead we continue to extract from it and degrade it. If we don’t figure this problem out then our species is done for.
Compared to this the other two are barely even risks.
#2 people always worry about, but it's almost certainly not going to happen - insane dictators or no. Even in much worse scenarios we avoided it.
#3 Real, but slow. I think we'll see some coastal communities devastated over the course of the next ~50 years, but the rest of the world will adapt and/or sweep it under the rug as best they can. The bigger threat is economic. Companies will no doubt try to use the changing situation as an excuse to skyrocket prices and keep everyone broke.
#3 The real risk is the refugee crisis. The world is going to be split into two groups: refugees, and those trying to keep the refugees away. Large countries are going to experience crises from both internal and external migration. Think, people from mexico flooding into texas, while people from Texas flood north into the great plains. It's going to happen slowly, then all at once.
whereas extreme droughts are here today, now, as we speak.
Can't have high intensity radioactive and thermal noise messing with those world dominating algorithms.
0: https://youtu.be/75_nisowGX8
can someone explain what the risk of this actually is? I just assumed it was a regulatory capture ploy.
IMO it is massively distracting from the very real and very measurable impact the global industry has on our climate.
Obviously near-term AGI and climate change present us with near zero risk, and therefore certain groups will dismiss both. This is despite clear trends plotting towards very clear risks, but because these individuals are yet to see any negative impact with their own eyes it's all too easy for them to dismiss the risk as some kind of hysteria. But these risks are real and rational because the trends are real and clear. We should take both seriously.
The nuclear risk is real too, but unlike AGI and climate change the risk isn't exponentially increasing with time. I think other weapons like bioweapons and drone weapons potentially fit that risk profile, however.
But volcanic eruptions that cause a winter like that tend to be quite a bit more powerful than your average nuclear weapon. More importantly, not all dust is created equal. Sulphur containing compounds tend to have the biggest cooling effect. One neat (in a terrifying sort of way) geo-engineering idea is continuously injecting large amounts of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.
Getting CO2 out of the atmosphere is actually expensive. But we will have to do it. High concentrations of CO2 reduce IQ and make humans actually uncomfortable.
We're also not at risk of runaway AGI any time soon. LLMs are a joke. Minds are computationally irreducible, and all our supercomputers can barely hold a baby fruit fly's connectome.
Unless you mean biological AGI. We're going to figure out genetic engineering far sooner than we'll get the hardware necessary for inorganic AGI. Once we master biology, we can genetically engineer organic super intelligences or, far sooner, superviruses whose genome can be uploaded into a nucleotide synthesizer in someone's garage. Then it's game over. Unless we've colonized Mars (which also helps with nuclear conflict).
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Reverse Carbon Sequestration employs a very large population.
AGI actually has a plausible case for existential risk and would result in a much greater GDP shift.
I'd put nukes above climate change. See does metaculus: https://possibleworldstree.com/
[0] https://twitter.com/HumanProgress/status/1634509546067574790
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I also personally think the risk of nuclear conflict is pretty much zero.
Recent events also are incentivizing small countries to go nuclear, which will increase the risk of nuclear war. I expect South Korea, Japan, and maybe even the Philippines and Vietnam to acquire nuclear weapons at some point. Japan already has a capability to acquire nuclear weapons quickly, with their separated reactor-grade Pu stockpile.
The risk of local or regional nuclear conflict as part of a larger scale war is high.
You are praying their arsenal isn't launch capable anymore.
Apocalyptic thinking is not the mark of a healthy mind.
AI: fast, month to years and exponential
Nuclear: risky but has been with us for 70 years already
Conclusion: climate change is not a real concern, tech will improve so much in the next decade as to make all our assumptions obsolete.
2. Nuclear conflict is real, it's astounding Pakistan or Russia hasnt used the bomb yet but they will when the US backs them into a corner.
3. Climate change? At this point, who cares? We know it's happening and happening VERY slowly so we have PLENTY of time to get ready. Theres no real risk other than failing to move away from the cost in the next 100 years. International shipping and big ag are the largest polluters by far and those ain't stopping.
It is “just” a matter of combining. I think it’s an “engineering problem” by now. Which is not to say that it will happen soon, just that if we set our minds to it it won’t be that big of a deal.
Oh well, some concerns around AGI might be attempts at marketing and attracting attention, though some caution probably isn't too bad to have. AGI might become a thing, it's just that there's no guarantee that it will happen in our lifetimes. On the other hand, even LLMs will put some folks out of a job.
Relations between nuclear powers are anyone's guess but there's no reason why Russia couldn't be forced to back off, as opposed to "being backed into a corner". Wouldn't be the first proxy war and most likely won't be the last.
I care about climate change, there are certainly others. No idea whether much of a change will be made in our current course, but there's no reason to be super dismissive. If anything, recycling, eating a bit less meat or doing lots of the other common recommendations improves my own quality of life, even if the legislature that goes after the big corporations is nowhere to be seen yet. No reason not to make the world a better place, or ar least try to, in whatever ways are viable, like donating towards planting trees or something like Wren.
> failing to move away from the cost in the next 100 years
Unless you're a time-traveler from the 50s who has somehow managed to post here, there is no excuse for this type of disinformation these days.
Mentioning higher sea levels is also a red herring; massive agricultural yields collapse will be an issue long before (like, this century) sea levels become a major problem.
More than this, we have now reached levels of atmospheric changes that put actual near-term Human extinction (not to mention that of most sea and land species) on the table.
2) It is real but unlikely to end humanity. Much more likely to create large areas that are unlivable, but a lot of work has gone into avoiding world ending scenarios.
3) Is mostly hype. Doom predictions in the last 20 years on this topic have been very wrong. The climate is always changing, and humans will have to adapt as always (+1 to 2C increase over 100 years is not world ending). The long term problem will be prevented by a) running out of cheap carbon based energy b) geo-engineering c) rise of cheaper non carbon based energy (related to a).
Asteroid impact or pandemic / virus / man-made bioweapon are all higher probability humanity ending risk IMHO. Not enough thought & energy are put into those scenarios.
Without even going into the unsubstantiated assertion with #1, your comment on number 3 shows a dramatic misunderstanding of how compounding effects work. You can't use the last 20 years to linearly project like this. It is true that most scientists agree that humanity will likely not go completely extinct, but it is also true that most scientists agree that many, many individual humans will be impacted. It is tough to say just exactly how humans will be impacted, but think famine, war, major societal upheaval.
Here's a citation if it helps: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/71/9/894/6325731
> Is mostly hype. Doom predictions in the last 20 years on this topic have been very wrong.
> +1 to 2C increase over 100 years is not world ending
A lot of this can push insurance costs so high, that insurance companies stop working. There are only so many times insurance can payout damage due to extreme storms, or crop failure. Once insurance stops, there is rapid deterioration of infrastructure.
Right wing media outlets focus on the the predictions of lay people like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg and use those to try to dismiss the entire field of climatology. Which is a non sequitur.
It's really the "slow death" scenarios that are a much bigger risk.
While I'm firmly in the AGI camp, I'm both fatalistic about our willingness to do anything about it but I'm also highly skeptical of the "runaway climate change" doomsaying. The Earth has been around for ~4.5 billion years. While it's only been similar to what it is now for th elast 300 million or so, that's still a really long time. We've had periods where ice extended to the equator (~500 million years ago). We've had much warmrer periods.
The Earth will be fine. We however might fall by the wayside. There's really been such a long period of time that if runaway climate change were going to happen, why hasn't it happened already?
I don't think runaway climate change or even something like a reversal of the Gulf Stream were ever any of the mainstream scenarios from IPCC. The worst scenarios, IIRC, were a global warming of +6 to 10C.
And that is over several centuries, provided we do nothing to stop it.
This century, the worst scenarios are about 4C hotter than today.
Also, it's not like the temperature is going up that much everywhere. For instance, heating an area near water from 34 to 38C means a lot more water evaporation, and thus more cooling. Also, stronger winds mean the humidity may be blown away more quickly.
Now even 4C of heating, provided we don't develop any technologies to either counter it or cope with it could cause a disaster that could cause similar disruptions, forced displacements etc as WW2, but the world didn't end because of WW2. It was only a minor speed bump in the grand scope of things.
Anyway, the probability that it should take 100s of years to reach AGI seems quite slim. And once we have AGI/ASI, the world is going to be so fundamentally different that I'm not sure how much some warming really means, at least for humans.
Vladimir Putin is exactly that kind of person. When backed into a corner and knowing he will die, he would rather nuke the whole world than accept his fate. And those orders will be carried out by people in heavily restricted information silos, who only have the explanation of their commanding officers as reasoning. For all they know, this is a test, or the US already has launched their nukes, or if they don’t launch the nukes their mom will be dropped out of a window.
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I take note of this because I've looked at this problem before and agree that core samples have a hard time supporting claims like "most in the previous XXkya" when compared with the last few decades, be it CO2, CH4, avg temp d02, etc.
Starting with layers as recent as 30kya, the age of the trapped gas often spans multiple centuries, and so e.g. you'd be averaging out point outgassing from even very large volcanoes well beyond detectability. Beyond 50-60kya, the layer durations are all in the few millennia range.
Here's my analysis worksheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p793c3NZFp2e80ufqyJK...
Reference data: Antarctic Ice Core 155,000 Year CO2 and Gas Stable Isotope Data - Eggleston, S.; Schmitt, J.; Bereiter, B.; Schneider, R.; Fischer, H. 2016. Evolution of the stable carbon isotope composition of atmospheric CO2 over the last glacial cycle. Paleoceanography, 31. doi: 10.1002/2015PA002874 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleo-search/study/19942
1. They may mean "in nature", that is, not inside a building, and not even in a city (both of which would tend to give higher numbers).
2. They may mean "using something in nature as a measuring method" - in this case, Antarctic ice.
I agree that it's a confusing/misleading term.
Has anybody ever seriously believed that we wouldn't make it through? This just seems like an alarmist take to me.
As the planet warms, more CO2 that is locked up in melting glaciers will be released, accelerating the problem. Rising sea levels could displace a significant portion of humanity, causing a level of unrest and chaos that could make it hard to muster the governmental and intergovernmental efforts that might be require to slow or stop the problem. Food scarcity could further these issues. People won't be worrying about investing in green energy if they're worrying about whether they or their neighbor will be the one who gets the last bag of rice.
And my biggest concern: CO2 makes us stupider. As ambient CO2 levels rise, people can't think as clearly -- we're talking about the entire collective intelligence of the human race potentially being reduced significantly if CO2 levels rise to not that much higher than they are now. The effect is noticeable at 1000 ppm, and indoor concentrations can be 2x to 3x outdoor concentrations. Right now we're at 424 atmospheric ppm. It's not hard to imagine that worst-case increases could literally smother the brains of every human on the planet. And then civilization is literally at risk.
Again: I don't ascribe much weight into the probability of that worst case. I put a lot of stock into the incredible ingenuity of humans to solve problems, once they actually acknowledge that they are problems. So I'm pretty sure we'll get through this as a species (although some coastal cities may not, at least in their current form). But the end of civilization is not merely alarmist -- it's an actual worst-case possibility that we should be aware of.
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Anyway, that's a general observation, not a claim that any particular position is alarmist.
They are telling these kids that the world will literally end if we don’t stop emitting carbon in a few years.
Maybe the motives behind this are genuine but it’s pure indoctrination and dishonest.
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Literally everyone should see this.
Edit: Evidently many people still do not get the point
The point is that yes, climate has changed in the past, and the individual values are not the problem.
The PROBLEM is that it has never changed this FAST. By orders of magnitude.
Velocity changes everything.
Consider just taking a sip of your coffee 1000X as fast as usual.
Instead of bringing your cup the 2' from table to lip in 1 sec, it's 1/1000 sec. You will require multiple explosions to accelerate it to 2000fps/609m/sec/Mach2, and back to zero.
Same description of events, entirely different process and results.
Similar for species and ecosystems to adapt at 1000X the speed they've ever seen.
The XKCD comic starts at the coldest moment in history known to mankind.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356606430/figure/fi...
https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_widt...
Randall chose one of the lowest point every in the history of earth as the "baseline". We are still in one of the coldest period ever for earth. The recent rise of temperature is significant, but not unprecedented. Before we reach a point that one could qualify as a "hot earth", we would need to warm up by an additional 10 to 15 C°
Randall's graph starts at a little over 4C lower than current temperatures. The most recent minimum on your first graph is 7C below current temperatures.
Your 2nd graph couldn't be shown in Randall's format because it would either take too long to scroll, or it wouldn't have the resolution needed to show the dramatically higher rate of change.
> The recent rise of temperature is significant, but not unprecedented.
The rate of change is unprecedented.
> Before we reach a point that one could qualify as a "hot earth", we would need to warm up by an additional 10 to 15 C°
Billions will die before that.
Natural CO2 rise?
They are investigating historical trends. (They are then comparing their findings to modern trends.)
Southern Hemisphere westerly winds are intensifying due to a natural cycle on the scale of decades. This makes the southern ocean warmer (and the arctic colder, but the ocean is mostly in the south). Warm water doesn't take up so much carbon dioxide. (Water takes up carbon to produce carbonic acid, so if the water is warmer it incidentally reduces ocean acidification, a possible benefit?)
Or it might be about convection.
> The drivers and source of these centennial-scale CO2 jumps are unknown. The proposed mechanisms include enhanced ocean–atmosphere CO2 exchange in the Southern Ocean (via wind-driven upwelling of carbon-rich deep waters or invigorated convection), surface ocean temperature changes (impacting CO2 solubility), biomass burning (via NH subtropical wildfires), or a combination of mechanisms.
This is great news! Our efforts are actually paying off! Soon we will cut human emmisions to zero!
Also we should substract emmisions produced by other species like cows, dogs, cats.. And I have great business idea, where orangutan owns and operates coal plant, that is natural and should be substracted as well!!!
Not every CO2 molecule is produced by humans!!!!
The longer we wait, the more dramatic the changes we will have to make will have to be.
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No one ever thinks of ports. Imagine rebuilding all port infrastructure every 5-10 years.
Move to highlands all you want but simply giving up is not likely to be cheaper.
There are no good answers.
Also a great region for small scale agriculture. Climate change might even help this region's arability.
I hadn't read The Science yet, so I believed The Propaganda. Now that I've read The Science (IPCC reports), it turns out sea levels are unlikely to rise more than 50cm, and definitely not 10+ meters like I was preparing for.
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