Thanks, the parts I’ve read so far are really interesting!
I would point out that the claim that we will greatly slow down, rather than scale up, electricity production capacity, is also a claim that we will utterly fail to even come anywhere close to hitting global decarbonization goals. Most major sectors will require much more electricity in a decarbonized world, as in raising total production (not just capacity) somewhere between 3x to 10x in the next few decades. This is much more than the additional power which would be needed to increase chip production as described, or to power the needed compute. The amount of silicon needed for solar panels also dwarfs that needed for wafers (yes, I know, very different quality thresholds, but still). Note that because solar power is currently the cheapest in the world, and still falling, we should also expect electricity production costs to go down over time.
I think it’s also worthwhile to note that the first “we” in the list means humans, but every subsequent “we” includes the transformative AI algorithm we’ve learned out to build, and all the interim less capable AIs we’ll be building between now and then. Not sure if/how you’re trying to account for this?
Thanks, the parts I’ve read so far are really interesting!
I would point out that the claim that we will greatly slow down, rather than scale up, electricity production capacity, is also a claim that we will utterly fail to even come anywhere close to hitting global decarbonization goals. Most major sectors will require much more electricity in a decarbonized world, as in raising total production (not just capacity) somewhere between 3x to 10x in the next few decades. This is much more than the additional power which would be needed to increase chip production as described, or to power the needed compute. The amount of silicon needed for solar panels also dwarfs that needed for wafers (yes, I know, very different quality thresholds, but still). Note that because solar power is currently the cheapest in the world, and still falling, we should also expect electricity production costs to go down over time.
I think it’s also worthwhile to note that the first “we” in the list means humans, but every subsequent “we” includes the transformative AI algorithm we’ve learned out to build, and all the interim less capable AIs we’ll be building between now and then. Not sure if/how you’re trying to account for this?