Our world is currently being run by people who are completely detached from reality. That’s been my growing realisation as I’ve been researching tech billionaires for a book I’m writing about the Dark Enlightenment movement.
Want evidence? Just look at ‘AI guru’ Sam Altman, who – in a recent appearance on Theo Von’s podcast – explained his vision of the future: the Earth’s surface being tiled with data centres, just to power AI systems. Or perhaps that might not even be enough, Altman suggests – we might even need to build a Dyson Sphere around our entire solar system!
I went recently to one of our new data centers under construction in Abilene, Texas. It was about like an approximately 1 gigawatt facility, huge. It’ll be the biggest data center ever built by the time it’s done…when you see it from the air, I was really struck that [it’s] like, this looks like the motherboard of a computer.
Like, I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time. But I don’t know, because maybe we put them in space. Like maybe we build a big Dyson sphere around the solar system…
…But like I can say with conviction, the world needs a lot more processing power. But if that looks like tiling data centers on Earth, which I think is what it looks like in the short term, in the long term also, or we do go build them in space, I don’t know.
Let’s be clear: AI is currently – and might always be – simply a tool that can be applied in specific areas (such as summarising text or finding patterns in large amounts of data). Any ideas beyond that are largely due to years of hype, from guys who will benefit financially in a massive way from selling it instead as a panacaea, cornucopia and even as an imminent god.
To even think “tiling” the Earth with data centres is something worthwhile, or something that most of humanity would want, is deluded (cue Joni singing “they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot”). But Altman went even further. When asked by Von about the growing environmental concerns regarding the gargantuan power and water requirements of AI systems, Altman simply ignored the core question and deflected by saying we could just use a non-existent technology to solve the problem with another currently non-existent technology: that is, we should go ‘all out’ trying to make an AI superintelligence – happily burning fossil fuels at increasing rates – because once we create the AI god, it will tell us how to invent feasible nuclear fusion power plants.
We need to get to fusion as fast as possible…very clean, doesn’t generate, you know, doesn’t really harm the environment and power can become like abundant and pretty limitless on earth. And we get out of all the current problems we’re in…
…And I think AI can help us figure it out even faster…if you have to like burn a little bit more gas in the short term, but you figure out, you know, the future of energy with that AI, it’s a huge win.
So not only does Altman want to tile the Earth in data centres, but along with that he thinks we should be burning increasing amounts of fossil fuels, on an extreme long-shot that we might develop a super-intelligence that is able to tell us how to undo all the damage we did in creating it. These are not serious people, and we should not be passively accepting their vision of the future as if they have any expertise on the matter.
Beyond the easily debunked absurdity of ruining the Earth by tiling it with data centers and burning massive amounts of fossil fuels – simply on the long-shot bet we might create an AI god (would that even be a good thing?) – critics were also perplexed as to why Altman would suggest building a Dyson Sphere around the entire solar system to power future AI systems. A Dyson Sphere is meant to collect power from the Sun – so placing it at a large distance from the Sun would not only be inefficient, it would make the structure insanely large.
And some even did the math: A Dyson Sphere outside the orbit of Neptune, with the thickness of an eggshell, would require around 47,123,889,800,000 (47.1 trillion) cubic kilometers of graphite/carbon, with a total mass of 122,522,113,480,000,000,000,000,000,000 grams (122.5 Yottagrams). Our entire solar system only has a tenth of that, around 12.82 Yottagrams. So we don’t have enough material even if we mined the entire solar system into oblivion, including our own planet.
That is to say: Altman is making suggestions about technology that he has obviously not done even the smallest amount of research into, apart from perhaps reading about it in a science fiction novel. And this speaks to the larger problem: The tech billionaires’ plans for humanity are detached from reality, and are largely built upon the science fiction and fantasy they read in their childhood rather than cold, hard science (see science journalist Adam Becker’s recent book More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity for a thorough exploration of this topic).
And even if you feel like silly speculations about Dyson Spheres are not that much of a concern to you personally, it’s worth paying attention to the fact that some of these AI fantasies have possible real-world, near-term consequences, such as crashing the entire economy.
You can watch the full, painful interview between Theo Von and Sam Altman here:
