I’ve had this exact idea in mind for a short story, lol. I don’t think it was AGI, but it could certainly have been people (or/with AI) with power making the same sorts of calculations about energy demand growth and projected falls in oil production…
I saw the title and experienced a little bit of synchronicity; the wife and I just finished re-watching Lord of the Rings last night, and the image of Sauron's tower crumbling is still fresh in my mind. Will AGI finish us all off for its own advantage? Maybe. I don't think it will, but hope is a pretty poor strategy unless it has some pragmatic basis.
Realistically, there are some uses for oil that we have no foreseeable replacement for. Electric tractor trailer delivery has some big hurdles before it becomes truly cost effective. Oil has such a high ratio of energy to weight and volume, we have no batteries that can compete. But there may be a practical way to combine nuclear power, (even old school fission power), with fossil fuels. When oil becomes too rare to pump from the ground, it is possible to use the heat of a nuclear reactor to directly supply energy to efficiently reform coal into liquid fuel, and do so at competitive prices.
We tend to think of AI models as being operating from a large central location. Is it possible to split up an AI into, say, ten different locations simultaneously, with each location doing part of the calculations? Suppose you need five small locations to run the model and have ten locations available. They "eat" electricity, so build solar farms nearby, use the power as it is generated, no need for battery storage. As night falls or bad weather moves in and power production drops, just shuffle that one partial function over to an unused location and let the program continue uninterrupted. Maybe that explains all the reports of various nations (especially China) planning massive increases in solar production even though we do not yet have a good way to store and redistribute intermittent power. If we can get cheap, intermittent power, we design a system for intermittent power.
But, of course, "can do" and "will do" are two very different things. Maybe we should all start ending our emails with "I for one, welcome our AGI overlords!" Yes, I am joking -- but it gets less and less funny the more I think about it.
It’s pretty well accepted that conventional oil peaked around 2005-2008 and is in increasing decline. All the graphs show this. There is question as to whether fracked sources have peaked, but they will. Fracking might be evil, but without the oil from it, people die. So, we’re truly caught between a rock and a hard place on that one.
Who produces the graphs though? The world-at-large is a game. Oil is not just a resource but in the worldly game, it is a 'commodity', which can be played like any other piece on the board. I am not saying that I know. I don't. However, I'm aware of other viewpoints circulating, regarding 'peak oil' and that's what puts the question mark there for me...
All kinds of people produce the graphs. World in data. Us energy department. The oil industry. There are tons of sources for such info. If they are all lying in some grand conspiracy, I have no idea. But there’s no incentive to lie and say we’ve passed peak oil that I can think of. If anything, all the incentives go the other way, to lead everyone to believe everything is fine, that we can continue growing forever, which, incidentally is the message we keep getting. Peak oil isn’t anything that’s questioned or debated anymore. It’s happened. The the real question is, have we reached peak tight oil (extracted with fracking) or can it continue to grow. I do a lot of reading and the most knowledgeable people I read are worried about it to a greater or lesser degree. Some think that we’re soon going to hit an inflection point of declining production that leads to the unravelling of modern civilization over a period of decades while others think there will be a temporary spike in prices until more exploration and production can be put in place (exploratory drilling and research has been extremely low for years and years now and new wells take years to bring online, so even if there were new sources, we could face a temporary shortage due to not enough investment in the past decade or so. ). So, like you, I don’t really know and this piece is, of course, pure conjecture borderlining upon fiction. What I do know, is conventional peak has passed, at least in the USA and in other older fields, and that it is a problem the world faces sooner or later.
The problem with graphs produced even by multiple organisations and entities, is that they often use the same source. I worked for years, as a social researcher and at the time when I did my Masters Degree, there was, at least, somewhat more of a robust approach to research. However, as years went by, with the advent of internet and rapidly increasing use of AI, that robustness has decreased into nothing. People can now ‘write’ whole research papers, based on the same (often flawed) data, spat out by AI, in the time it takes to click.
Quite apart from this, having worked as a researcher with innumerable state and NGO organisations, as well as with The Green Party here in Ireland, I know only too well, how agendas rule the roost no matter what the data shows.
The combination of AI and this willingness to ‘massage’ data to suit particular agendas, is both powerful and dangerous. It's why I left that arena. I saw too much corruption and self-serving power-plays.
With regard to the ‘eternal growth’ scenario, in my view, any cursory analysis of the world we live in would show the illogical proposal with which we are continually bombarded. On the one hand, we are exhorted to consume, consume, consume, in the interest of economic growth. On the other, we are continually, both overtly and subliminally bombarded with the fear of lack and scarcity of ‘resources’, disguised as ‘climate change’ concerns.
This, in my opinion, is a very clever balancing act, co-ordinated with precision by algorithms. The powers that be need fear to rule but they also need compliant, obedient consumers to keep filling the coffers. AI algorithms keep the balance perfectly from what I see.
When I hear someone virtue-signalling about their electric vehicle and vegan lifestyle, while at the same flying off on multiple holidays in a year, I wonder to myself whether they are genuinely blind to the dichotomy they're presenting.
Once again, imo, it is not about a tick-box exercise of all the right consumables, so that we can carry on consuming indefinitely but rather, it is about each of us taking responsibility for our footprints (quite literally) and connecting with Gaia, allowing that connection to guide us rather than algorithms.
So, after all that, I don't know whether peak oil has been reached or not but experience has taught me to question everything - including and most especially, if it comes from the corpocracy.
What if AGI happened before the plandemic, and used it for the aims you describe?
I’ve had this exact idea in mind for a short story, lol. I don’t think it was AGI, but it could certainly have been people (or/with AI) with power making the same sorts of calculations about energy demand growth and projected falls in oil production…
I liked the part where you said since you already wrote it that it’s too late 🫣
Excellent thoughts. I appreciate your contemplations. I too will never use AI. I like to think , contemplate, analyze and solve
Terminator was way ahead of its time
I saw the title and experienced a little bit of synchronicity; the wife and I just finished re-watching Lord of the Rings last night, and the image of Sauron's tower crumbling is still fresh in my mind. Will AGI finish us all off for its own advantage? Maybe. I don't think it will, but hope is a pretty poor strategy unless it has some pragmatic basis.
Realistically, there are some uses for oil that we have no foreseeable replacement for. Electric tractor trailer delivery has some big hurdles before it becomes truly cost effective. Oil has such a high ratio of energy to weight and volume, we have no batteries that can compete. But there may be a practical way to combine nuclear power, (even old school fission power), with fossil fuels. When oil becomes too rare to pump from the ground, it is possible to use the heat of a nuclear reactor to directly supply energy to efficiently reform coal into liquid fuel, and do so at competitive prices.
We tend to think of AI models as being operating from a large central location. Is it possible to split up an AI into, say, ten different locations simultaneously, with each location doing part of the calculations? Suppose you need five small locations to run the model and have ten locations available. They "eat" electricity, so build solar farms nearby, use the power as it is generated, no need for battery storage. As night falls or bad weather moves in and power production drops, just shuffle that one partial function over to an unused location and let the program continue uninterrupted. Maybe that explains all the reports of various nations (especially China) planning massive increases in solar production even though we do not yet have a good way to store and redistribute intermittent power. If we can get cheap, intermittent power, we design a system for intermittent power.
But, of course, "can do" and "will do" are two very different things. Maybe we should all start ending our emails with "I for one, welcome our AGI overlords!" Yes, I am joking -- but it gets less and less funny the more I think about it.
Question mark here over peak oil. Not sure their graphs show the true story. Also, fracking is truly evil imo and akin to rape.
Loved the SAURON acronym though. Very clever 👏
It’s pretty well accepted that conventional oil peaked around 2005-2008 and is in increasing decline. All the graphs show this. There is question as to whether fracked sources have peaked, but they will. Fracking might be evil, but without the oil from it, people die. So, we’re truly caught between a rock and a hard place on that one.
Who produces the graphs though? The world-at-large is a game. Oil is not just a resource but in the worldly game, it is a 'commodity', which can be played like any other piece on the board. I am not saying that I know. I don't. However, I'm aware of other viewpoints circulating, regarding 'peak oil' and that's what puts the question mark there for me...
All kinds of people produce the graphs. World in data. Us energy department. The oil industry. There are tons of sources for such info. If they are all lying in some grand conspiracy, I have no idea. But there’s no incentive to lie and say we’ve passed peak oil that I can think of. If anything, all the incentives go the other way, to lead everyone to believe everything is fine, that we can continue growing forever, which, incidentally is the message we keep getting. Peak oil isn’t anything that’s questioned or debated anymore. It’s happened. The the real question is, have we reached peak tight oil (extracted with fracking) or can it continue to grow. I do a lot of reading and the most knowledgeable people I read are worried about it to a greater or lesser degree. Some think that we’re soon going to hit an inflection point of declining production that leads to the unravelling of modern civilization over a period of decades while others think there will be a temporary spike in prices until more exploration and production can be put in place (exploratory drilling and research has been extremely low for years and years now and new wells take years to bring online, so even if there were new sources, we could face a temporary shortage due to not enough investment in the past decade or so. ). So, like you, I don’t really know and this piece is, of course, pure conjecture borderlining upon fiction. What I do know, is conventional peak has passed, at least in the USA and in other older fields, and that it is a problem the world faces sooner or later.
The problem with graphs produced even by multiple organisations and entities, is that they often use the same source. I worked for years, as a social researcher and at the time when I did my Masters Degree, there was, at least, somewhat more of a robust approach to research. However, as years went by, with the advent of internet and rapidly increasing use of AI, that robustness has decreased into nothing. People can now ‘write’ whole research papers, based on the same (often flawed) data, spat out by AI, in the time it takes to click.
Quite apart from this, having worked as a researcher with innumerable state and NGO organisations, as well as with The Green Party here in Ireland, I know only too well, how agendas rule the roost no matter what the data shows.
The combination of AI and this willingness to ‘massage’ data to suit particular agendas, is both powerful and dangerous. It's why I left that arena. I saw too much corruption and self-serving power-plays.
With regard to the ‘eternal growth’ scenario, in my view, any cursory analysis of the world we live in would show the illogical proposal with which we are continually bombarded. On the one hand, we are exhorted to consume, consume, consume, in the interest of economic growth. On the other, we are continually, both overtly and subliminally bombarded with the fear of lack and scarcity of ‘resources’, disguised as ‘climate change’ concerns.
This, in my opinion, is a very clever balancing act, co-ordinated with precision by algorithms. The powers that be need fear to rule but they also need compliant, obedient consumers to keep filling the coffers. AI algorithms keep the balance perfectly from what I see.
When I hear someone virtue-signalling about their electric vehicle and vegan lifestyle, while at the same flying off on multiple holidays in a year, I wonder to myself whether they are genuinely blind to the dichotomy they're presenting.
Once again, imo, it is not about a tick-box exercise of all the right consumables, so that we can carry on consuming indefinitely but rather, it is about each of us taking responsibility for our footprints (quite literally) and connecting with Gaia, allowing that connection to guide us rather than algorithms.
So, after all that, I don't know whether peak oil has been reached or not but experience has taught me to question everything - including and most especially, if it comes from the corpocracy.
Title got me hooked. Never clicked so fast