What happens after massive swathes of people are made redundant due to automation but resource efficiency is only marginally improved? What happens when job automation outpaces energy, mineral ore grades and the availability of raw inputs? Answer: It surfaces the real bottlenecks. People become less valuable relative to things like oil and gas deposits and copper and silver and industrial materials. Worldwide declining ore grades that is happening globally right now is endangering renewables and the green transition. Wars over resources are increasing. Human rights will suffer. The lives of less fortunate people become less important. (Yes, people in the other 87% of the world DO matter.) Inflation continues to increase rapidly while employment falls. Stagflation. The solution? Breakthroughs in energy and material science. For example, if we had better batteries, like solid state, and upgraded power grids we could easily power the world through things like solar panels and wind. If we could replace copper with aluminum more effectively, than 3rd world countries can develop more rapidly and enjoy the same level of living standards as the west. If we had fusion energy, we’d have a power source which is renewable, limitless, and doesn’t generate mass amounts of toxic waste or risk runaway dangerous, radioactive meltdowns. But to do this, we need breakthroughs in research productivity . Improvements in AI can help get us there. But we need to focus more on automated research and less on insipid job displacement of vibe coding and hacking websites and low wage employment. All it’s doing is putting pressure on the social fabric. We have a shortage of energy and copper - we do NOT have a shortage of jobs for people to work at. Stop fixing what isn’t broken and address the real problems. submitted by /u/kaggleqrdl
Originally posted by u/kaggleqrdl on r/ArtificialInteligence