The same magic that brought us surplus is the same magic that is killing everything we value.

Human optimization: Joint replacement surgery is very illustrative of class. When a C-suiter gets a shoulder replacement it's to maintain their stroke on the golf course or tennis court. When the worker on an assembly line gets a shoulder replacement it's to maintain their income and maybe make it to retirement. And just like AI it's celebrated as a boon for all.

Basically, we should de-industrilize, put more people in the fields and less in the cities. Use less machinery, less transportation. Focus on local communities. Focus the industries remaining in things like health and space defense (from asteroids). Abolish social media.

You have to wonder if all of the new digital tech will open new vistas of available energy or compete with humans for what is available. I believe it is already eating more than it's bringing to the table.

The fear of death is more pervasive and influential at the core of every aspect of the metacrisis than we realize. Far more than we are currently willing to consider, much less acknowledge and discuss. We meed @ more prominent and continuing global discussion about the healthy acceptance of mortality.

If technology could solve our problems, humanity wouldn't have any problems any more.

No ‘BAU’? ‘Most’ ‘economic thinking’ is ‘short run’ and ‘redundant’? ‘It’ ignores the ‘supply side’? ‘Growth’ {and ‘civilisation’} depends upon ‘cheap’ F.F. - those so called ‘halcyon days’ are ‘over’. ? “The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different to the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production. There was no shortage of oil any more than the three-day-week had been caused by coal shortages. What they did, perhaps, give us a glimpse of was what might happen in the event that our economies depleted our fossil fuel reserves before we had found a more versatile and energy-dense alternative. . . . That system has been on the life-support of quantitative easing and near zero interest rates ever since. Indeed, so perilous a state has the system been in since 2008, it was essential that the people who claim to be our leaders avoid doing anything so foolish as to lockdown the economy or launch an undeclared economic war on one of the world’s biggest commodity exporters . . . And this is why the crisis we are beginning to experience will make the 1970s look like a golden age of peace and tranquility. . . . The sad reality though, is that our leaders - at least within the western empire - have bought into a vision of the future which cannot work without some new and yet-to-be-discovered high-density energy source (which rules out all of the so-called green technologies whose main purpose is to concentrate relatively weak and diffuse energy sources). . . . Even as we struggle to reimagine the 1970s in an attempt to understand the current situation, the only people on Earth today who can even begin to imagine the economic and social horrors that await western populations are the survivors of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, the hyperinflation in 1990s Zimbabwe, or, ironically, the Russians who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.” ? “The problem with both visions of the future - and the spectrum of views between them - is a fundamental misunderstanding of the collapse which has begun to break over us. This is that each assumes the continuation of that part of industrial civilisation which is required to make their version of the future possible, even as the coming collapse wipes away ALL aspects of industrial civilisation. Most obviously, nobody had developed even an embryonic version of the renewable energy supply chain which is the essential first step to turning non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) into the envisioned “renewables” upon which the promised techno-psychotic future is to be built. That is, until it is possible to mine the minerals, build the components, manufacture and transport the technologies without the use of fossil fuels at any stage in the process, then there is no such thing as “renewable energy” in the sense which the term is currently promoted. “

Emil P Torres and TESCREAL would be a fascinating episode...

Snakes eating it’s own tail...

Just look at the last Nvidia Keynote Event and you will see where their true interests lay. There was like 2 minutes about how AI and their earth simulator could help fighting climate change and the rest of the 2 hours was mostly about how they want to help companies with new solutions to replace us (expensive humans) with AI assistants and robots...

The only crisis is us.

As to the influence the tech community has over policy making, I expect TBI will be involved in promoting tech, so would be worth finding someone knowledgeable about the institute to interview.

The planet-Critical intro is so smoothly delivered it made me wonder if it was AI, if a voice AI yet exists which can deliver a minor amount of natural inflection and emotion. (first time viewing channel).

How ironic that someone concerned with sustainability berates ppl for being concerned with long term outcomes.

Algorithms are controlling the rental market. The FBI has raided some of the culprits. So far this tech has caused a lot of suffering and homelessness. Doing great! Love what we've done with this place.

22:00 If you're not a nerd like me, look up what a "palantir" is and how they were used in LOTR. Basically they are seeing stones used by Sauron to control the rulers of Middle Earth 🙃

fantastic topic, thanks for taking this one on

He's whistling past the graveyard. 😄

Totally agree, and like other Rachel videos, would assume that the topic is ploughing old ground in a refreshed context. Good enough.

No video?

Uncanny valley bots or humans?

I keep coming back here because of the quality of many of the guests and in the hope that the quality of the interviewing has improved. Alas, once again I leave thinking the host has not given the guest's work more than a cursory glance. Too much pop analysis/commentary from the host. What do good hosts do: read the material, formulate brief questions, sit back and listen.

60 Minutes just did a story on the environmental impacts of AI (and crypto) - and it was a greenwashing story of how AI will save as much energy as it spends and AI is inherently good otherwise unless it gets out of control. hahaha

Starting out with begging for clicks is a real turn off

All aboard the AI hype train to utopia...toot! toot!

I do believe the concepts you are covering are valid and worth debating, however, it is one thing to take a position and debate in its favor and it is another thing to believe in that position. While there is always an element of truth in the things being said here there is also a complete misunderstanding of economics and the history of the human race, and, or, a complete misalignment in actual life experience and the suffering that people have endured throughout the ages, that would allow people to take the positions you have and actually believe them. To not believe in the resurrection of the dead is to deny over 1 billion Christians there most cherished belief. Shame! I can also assume that you actually do not have a relationship with mathematics and the concept of rates. Many people believe that we are developing AI so that these machines will eventually be able to increase the rate at which positive events happen in our society and to provide a floor of highly distributed and valuable knowledge for future generations in the event of some cataclysmic event that forces mankind to its knees again, as it has in the past. One more point, yes the declining world population is not exactly a world ending problem at this point and will not be for some years to come however if it were to happen again in the next generation it would probably lead to a complete decay of civilization for many thousands of years. I can assure you if you had to live in that kind of environment you would not be a happy person! I bet neither one of you have ever actually had a really, really, really hard job. I have, and I can tell you this, when everything hurts all the time and you still don't have any money for your efforts you begin to realize what is valuable and what is not valuable, especially as it relates to opinions.