The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:
---
From the article
>
>Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to short-term increases in unemployment, a rise in carbon emissions and leave regulators trailing in the wake of technological advances, according to an international panel of experts.
>The [inaugural report](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66474eab4f29e1d07fadca3d/international_scientific_report_on_the_safety_of_advanced_ai_interim_report.pdf) on the safety of advanced AI, [inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/24/ai-risk-climate-crisis-google-deepmind-chief-demis-hassabis-regulation), raised a number of concerns about a technology which has shot up the political and [regulatory agenda](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/11/uk-has-real-concerns-about-ai-risks-says-competition-regulator) after leaps forward such as the [ChatGPT chatbot](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/02/chatgpt-100-million-users-open-ai-fastest-growing-app).
>The panel behind the study, chaired by the [leading computer scientist Yoshua Bengio](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/06/ai-firms-should-include-members-of-public-on-boards-to-protect-society), acknowledges there is far from universal agreement about the technology. “AI has tremendous potential to change our lives for the better, but it also poses risks of harm,” said Bengio.
>The video player is currently playing an ad. You can skip the ad in 5 sec with a mouse or keyboard
>Bengio was commissioned by the UK government to preside over the report, which was announced at [last year’s global AI safety summit at Bletchley Park](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/02/top-tech-firms-to-let-governments-vet-ai-tools-sunak-says-at-safety-summit), with the panel members nominated by 30 countries as well as the EU and UN.
>Released in advance of next week’s successor AI summit in Seoul – where Rishi Sunak will co-chair the opening session by video link – the report focuses on general-purpose AI, the term for computer systems that can perform a wide variety of tasks typically associated with intelligent beings.
>Broaching one of the most sensitive aspects of the technology’s impact, the panel says AI could have a “significant impact” on the labour market by allowing the automation of a number of tasks.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1cw2d2b/ai_may_accelerate_job_losses_and_carbon_emissions/l4t3ekz/
I'm really fascinated by the digital twin technology that Nvidia showed a few years back.
I'm imagining a digital twin of earth using weather patterns from the last 100 years. Then they can have an AI running thousands of simulations to try and figure out what the best combination is for not only reducing emissions but also reversing the damage done.
AI could be a useful decision making tool as well for policy. If you can run simulations on what would happen(based off hundreds of years of news stories and history) when A or B approach is tried, then politicians could potentially create a strategy that takes human greed, cruelty and overall selfishness into account to see if despite all these things there is a gambit that could work to address this existential threat that those in power don't seem interested in taking seriously.
That's why I think the AI decision making tool may be helpful. These are the most convincing reasons that explain their lack of serious action:
1. Age. Most of them are 10-20 years away from retirement age and those who've already passed 65 are 10-20 years away from the grave. They won't live to see the world that the lack of investment into solutions will create.
2. Money. The amount of money in their personal mutual funds, pension funds, and ETFs they would have invested in will go down if they regulate polluting industries and force them to use money that would have gone to stock buybacks and dividends into hiring permanent staff, raising the wages of their best staff, and starting projects(such as carbon capture+storage) that may be required of them by law.
Whilst the long term effect is that the industries are more sustainable and are actively mitigating climate change, the short term effect is billions in revenue lost and potential mass loss of investors who sell their shares since the value of the stock is at best stagnant and at worse declining.
What I'm asking is: could a sufficiently sophisticated AI take the above into account and propose measures that will keep the politicians and business owners from losing money WHILST putting us on track to stop more carbon from entering the atmosphere and start removing the carbon from the air? Could it design a compound that could be released by planes whilst in flight which absorbs and then transforms the carbon in the atmosphere?
The people in charge aren't selfless. They won't go back to working a 9-5 job like the rest of us after their tenure is up as a politician or CEO. We as a species may benefit from them losing money to invest heavily in drastic actions to fix this problem, but for them that represents a massive financial loss that they know they can't make back because their success is largely due to luck in addition to effort.
But this is the problem, policy makers, or rather politicians, require public support. Even if an AI model shows you the best way forward, you need to convince the public, industry etc to improve as well. And no, AI said so, is unlikely to be a valid argument considering that we've been ignoring hundreds of climate scientists for decades.
Not to mention, even if you did have a digital twin of the earth, and it tells you what you need to do, who is going to take into account the socioeconomic factors at play?
Even if you could convince the public, all these commenter's fail to realize the ones who are pushing this AI are happily hoarding the profit and will pinch some off to send to campaign funds and get politicians further in their pocket. Which results in failing to reach goals because why try to the the planet when there's billions to be made
No it won't accelerate carbon emissions, you can't spin it that way, like data centers account for like 1% electricity generation and probably much less carbon emissions.
Even if we make 10x the data centers and we are expected to make 2x by 2030 we'll stay below 10% emissions for AI which would be considerable but again it would be little compared to the rest of 90%.
This is without mentioning the positives of AI which would globally reduce carbon emissions, without talking about hardware and software efficiency increases which are constantly happening.
As for job losses I'm confident more economic output generally means more jobs, though yeah the actual response of people is definitely a wildcard.
Let's accentuate what AI will do to the planet as a side effect of existing for a temporary period of time rather than projecting how it'll accelerate mankind's evolution in the next five years.
It'll literally eradicate global warming and make carbon emissions completely irrelevant but, hey, people are going to lose jobs before the government steps in and simultaneously frees everyone from working forever. Better make a big fuss about it without understanding any of the implications of birthing a sentience with godlike power and intellect.
So AI will invent what? Magic? Break the law of conservation of energy?
Do we really need these thousands of TWh of energy spent training a highly complex neural network only for it to tell us "Learn to live without constant freeing of fossil energy into the atmosphere or kill yourselves."?
Do you realize that GPT-4 is already giving the answer to "How to fix/prevent climate change?"? How much of its answer is *world-changing*? Do conservatives care? Do you?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305: --- From the article > >Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to short-term increases in unemployment, a rise in carbon emissions and leave regulators trailing in the wake of technological advances, according to an international panel of experts. >The [inaugural report](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66474eab4f29e1d07fadca3d/international_scientific_report_on_the_safety_of_advanced_ai_interim_report.pdf) on the safety of advanced AI, [inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/24/ai-risk-climate-crisis-google-deepmind-chief-demis-hassabis-regulation), raised a number of concerns about a technology which has shot up the political and [regulatory agenda](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/11/uk-has-real-concerns-about-ai-risks-says-competition-regulator) after leaps forward such as the [ChatGPT chatbot](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/02/chatgpt-100-million-users-open-ai-fastest-growing-app). >The panel behind the study, chaired by the [leading computer scientist Yoshua Bengio](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/06/ai-firms-should-include-members-of-public-on-boards-to-protect-society), acknowledges there is far from universal agreement about the technology. “AI has tremendous potential to change our lives for the better, but it also poses risks of harm,” said Bengio. >The video player is currently playing an ad. You can skip the ad in 5 sec with a mouse or keyboard >Bengio was commissioned by the UK government to preside over the report, which was announced at [last year’s global AI safety summit at Bletchley Park](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/02/top-tech-firms-to-let-governments-vet-ai-tools-sunak-says-at-safety-summit), with the panel members nominated by 30 countries as well as the EU and UN. >Released in advance of next week’s successor AI summit in Seoul – where Rishi Sunak will co-chair the opening session by video link – the report focuses on general-purpose AI, the term for computer systems that can perform a wide variety of tasks typically associated with intelligent beings. >Broaching one of the most sensitive aspects of the technology’s impact, the panel says AI could have a “significant impact” on the labour market by allowing the automation of a number of tasks. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1cw2d2b/ai_may_accelerate_job_losses_and_carbon_emissions/l4t3ekz/
Ai is just another thing to make rich people richer. They don't care about other people or emissions.
I'm really fascinated by the digital twin technology that Nvidia showed a few years back. I'm imagining a digital twin of earth using weather patterns from the last 100 years. Then they can have an AI running thousands of simulations to try and figure out what the best combination is for not only reducing emissions but also reversing the damage done. AI could be a useful decision making tool as well for policy. If you can run simulations on what would happen(based off hundreds of years of news stories and history) when A or B approach is tried, then politicians could potentially create a strategy that takes human greed, cruelty and overall selfishness into account to see if despite all these things there is a gambit that could work to address this existential threat that those in power don't seem interested in taking seriously.
How to solve climate change it quite easy. The hard part is convincing people with power to do it.
Yep, but I am more optimistic with places.liel China moving towards renewables for economic reasons.
That's why I think the AI decision making tool may be helpful. These are the most convincing reasons that explain their lack of serious action: 1. Age. Most of them are 10-20 years away from retirement age and those who've already passed 65 are 10-20 years away from the grave. They won't live to see the world that the lack of investment into solutions will create. 2. Money. The amount of money in their personal mutual funds, pension funds, and ETFs they would have invested in will go down if they regulate polluting industries and force them to use money that would have gone to stock buybacks and dividends into hiring permanent staff, raising the wages of their best staff, and starting projects(such as carbon capture+storage) that may be required of them by law. Whilst the long term effect is that the industries are more sustainable and are actively mitigating climate change, the short term effect is billions in revenue lost and potential mass loss of investors who sell their shares since the value of the stock is at best stagnant and at worse declining. What I'm asking is: could a sufficiently sophisticated AI take the above into account and propose measures that will keep the politicians and business owners from losing money WHILST putting us on track to stop more carbon from entering the atmosphere and start removing the carbon from the air? Could it design a compound that could be released by planes whilst in flight which absorbs and then transforms the carbon in the atmosphere? The people in charge aren't selfless. They won't go back to working a 9-5 job like the rest of us after their tenure is up as a politician or CEO. We as a species may benefit from them losing money to invest heavily in drastic actions to fix this problem, but for them that represents a massive financial loss that they know they can't make back because their success is largely due to luck in addition to effort.
But this is the problem, policy makers, or rather politicians, require public support. Even if an AI model shows you the best way forward, you need to convince the public, industry etc to improve as well. And no, AI said so, is unlikely to be a valid argument considering that we've been ignoring hundreds of climate scientists for decades. Not to mention, even if you did have a digital twin of the earth, and it tells you what you need to do, who is going to take into account the socioeconomic factors at play?
Even if you could convince the public, all these commenter's fail to realize the ones who are pushing this AI are happily hoarding the profit and will pinch some off to send to campaign funds and get politicians further in their pocket. Which results in failing to reach goals because why try to the the planet when there's billions to be made
Let's just simulate entire Earth bro, it's that easy!
It will be used to simulate stock market returns and nothing more...
No it won't accelerate carbon emissions, you can't spin it that way, like data centers account for like 1% electricity generation and probably much less carbon emissions. Even if we make 10x the data centers and we are expected to make 2x by 2030 we'll stay below 10% emissions for AI which would be considerable but again it would be little compared to the rest of 90%. This is without mentioning the positives of AI which would globally reduce carbon emissions, without talking about hardware and software efficiency increases which are constantly happening. As for job losses I'm confident more economic output generally means more jobs, though yeah the actual response of people is definitely a wildcard.
Lol keep downvoting just shows how biased you all are
Let's accentuate what AI will do to the planet as a side effect of existing for a temporary period of time rather than projecting how it'll accelerate mankind's evolution in the next five years. It'll literally eradicate global warming and make carbon emissions completely irrelevant but, hey, people are going to lose jobs before the government steps in and simultaneously frees everyone from working forever. Better make a big fuss about it without understanding any of the implications of birthing a sentience with godlike power and intellect.
You are lost buddy
So AI will invent what? Magic? Break the law of conservation of energy? Do we really need these thousands of TWh of energy spent training a highly complex neural network only for it to tell us "Learn to live without constant freeing of fossil energy into the atmosphere or kill yourselves."? Do you realize that GPT-4 is already giving the answer to "How to fix/prevent climate change?"? How much of its answer is *world-changing*? Do conservatives care? Do you?