The environmental bullet is a bit tongue in cheek, prompted by the ACX survey asking how concerned one is about resource use and environmental degradation from data centers, where I expect Scott is thinking of this as an indication that people have scope insensitive worries about AI. But I’m pointing at futures with 100,000x increases in how much energy is going into computation, which would unavoidably directly heat the planet. In these futures there’s widespread environmental damage, but we also have much larger problems including probably already being extinct.
The environmental bullet is a bit tongue in cheek, prompted by the ACX survey asking how concerned one is about resource use and environmental degradation from data centers, where I expect Scott is thinking of this as an indication that people have scope insensitive worries about AI. But I’m pointing at futures with 100,000x increases in how much energy is going into computation, which would unavoidably directly heat the planet. In these futures there’s widespread environmental damage, but we also have much larger problems including probably already being extinct.