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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2842 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 7, 2025

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I should clarify my view on AI. I don't disagree with any of your points, but I don't think AI will be materially transformative in the way that people seem to think around here. It's all incremental improvement (and destruction). It's not going to solve the energy crisis or help us discover genuine new knowledge.

In the long run it's also not going to last. We are going to run out of cheap energy or AI is going to rot everyone's brains enough that it can't self perpetuate.

Engine efficiency was just incremental improvements, and then 90% of horses disappeared in 20 years.

Nearly all progress is based on small, incremental improvements. The first steam engines were toys, then they were only useful for pumping water out of coal mines, then for stationary factories, then trains, etc.

I think we've reached a point where AI is already materially transformative, and it's impossible to deny the speed of the progress that's happened since Attention Is All You Need came out in 2017.

Okay but AI can't break the laws of physics. We just hit peak copper, have been at peak oil for 5 years, and the Co2 that we've added to the atmosphere has already caused the planet to warm by 1.5 C. We know what the solutions to these problems are, we just can't do them. I guess AI can help psyop these things but that's not a positive development.

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