$9 Trillion Collapse Machine: AI Boom Enters Uncharted, Perilous New Phase

The tech billionaires talk excitedly about “existential risk,” but it is abundantly clear that none of them has any conception of systemic risk — the profound dangers that arise when vast complex systems impact one another in unforeseen and uncontrollable ways. But this ignorance cannot continue much longer. Even as AI CEOs continue projecting otherworldly confidence in near-term “10x” growth, the cracks in their world-bending visions are beginning to show. The term “bubble” does not do justice to the gravity of the situation; a failure of AI will be less like a burst than a systemic collapse.

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“The vase is broken, the damage is done,” said Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, from his organization’s Paris headquarters in late April. “It will be very difficult to put the pieces back together.”

The immediate impact of the Iran war is not simply in fossil energy, but also on a huge range of fossil fuel byproducts on which AI and many other industries depend. The global economy is still very much a fossil fuel economy, and AI is locking us even further into it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/65367466

The AI boom has entered an uncharted, perilous new phase.