How A.I. is Driving Policy | Paul Schütze

The same magic that brought us surplus is the same magic that is killing everything we value.

Human optimization: Joint replacement surgery is very illustrative of class. When a C-suiter gets a shoulder replacement it's to maintain their stroke on the golf course or tennis court. When the worker on an assembly line gets a shoulder replacement it's to maintain their income and maybe make it to retirement. And just like AI it's celebrated as a boon for all.

You have to wonder if all of the new digital tech will open new vistas of available energy or compete with humans for what is available. I believe it is already eating more than it's bringing to the table.

Basically, we should de-industrilize, put more people in the fields and less in the cities. Use less machinery, less transportation. Focus on local communities. Focus the industries remaining in things like health and space defense (from asteroids). Abolish social media.

If technology could solve our problems, humanity wouldn't have any problems any more.

How ironic that someone concerned with sustainability berates ppl for being concerned with long term outcomes.

No ‘BAU’? ‘Most’ ‘economic thinking’ is ‘short run’ and ‘redundant’? ‘It’ ignores the ‘supply side’? ‘Growth’ {and ‘civilisation’} depends upon ‘cheap’ F.F. – those so called ‘halcyon days’ are ‘over’. ? “The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different to the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production. There was no shortage of oil any more than the three-day-week had been caused by coal shortages. What they did, perhaps, give us a glimpse of was what might happen in the event that our economies depleted our fossil fuel reserves before we had found a more versatile and energy-dense alternative. . . . That system has been on the life-support of quantitative easing and near zero interest rates ever since. Indeed, so perilous a state has the system been in since 2008, it was essential that the people who claim to be our leaders avoid doing anything so foolish as to lockdown the economy or launch an undeclared economic war on one of the world’s biggest commodity exporters . . . And this is why the crisis we are beginning to experience will make the 1970s look like a golden age of peace and tranquility. . . . The sad reality though, is that our leaders – at least within the western empire – have bought into a vision of the future which cannot work without some new and yet-to-be-discovered high-density energy source (which rules out all of the so-called green technologies whose main purpose is to concentrate relatively weak and diffuse energy sources). . . . Even as we struggle to reimagine the 1970s in an attempt to understand the current situation, the only people on Earth today who can even begin to imagine the economic and social horrors that await western populations are the survivors of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, the hyperinflation in 1990s Zimbabwe, or, ironically, the Russians who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.” ? “The problem with both visions of the future – and the spectrum of views between them – is a fundamental misunderstanding of the collapse which has begun to break over us.  This is that each assumes the continuation of that part of industrial civilisation which is required to make their version of the future possible, even as the coming collapse wipes away ALL aspects of industrial civilisation.  Most obviously, nobody had developed even an embryonic version of the renewable energy supply chain which is the essential first step to turning non-renewable renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) into the envisioned “renewables” upon which the promised techno-psychotic future is to be built.  That is, until it is possible to mine the minerals, build the components, manufacture and transport the technologies without the use of fossil fuels at any stage in the process, then there is no such thing as “renewable energy” in the sense which the term is currently promoted. “

Just look at the last Nvidia Keynote Event and you will see where their true interests lay. There was like 2 minutes about how AI and their earth simulator could help fighting climate change and the rest of the 2 hours was mostly about how they want to help companies with new solutions to replace us (expensive humans) with AI assistants and robots...

The fear of death is more pervasive and influential at the core of every aspect of the metacrisis than we realize. Far more than we are currently willing to consider, much less acknowledge and discuss. We meed @ more prominent and continuing global discussion about the healthy acceptance of mortality.

Snakes eating it’s own tail...

Kudos to you Rachel. This podcast has really come a long way and grown, and it has been a journey worth taking. Your understanding across the broad range of intersecting and interrelated crises is greatly appreciated. It has been suggested to us at JustCollapse by some of your subscribers, that Associate Professor Booth of Critical Collapse Studies, and socio-ecological activist, Tristan Sykes, might make for useful contributions regarding the limitations of politics and action, the limitations of science and academia, and the reality of our complex and intractable predicament.

No video?

The planet-Critical intro is so smoothly delivered it made me wonder if it was AI, if a voice AI yet exists which can deliver a minor amount of natural inflection and emotion. (first time viewing channel).

As to the influence the tech community has over policy making, I expect TBI will be involved in promoting tech, so would be worth finding someone knowledgeable about the institute to interview.

Emil P Torres and TESCREAL would be a fascinating episode...

I don't believe the techbro conversation around AI is as simplistic as seeing technology as a "saviour". This view certainly exists, but even in Silicon Valley a big part of the "tech-bros" narrative is that we should somehow try to slow down the development of AI because a big percentage of people are sceptical whether AI will be a net force for good/controllable, etc. A lot of nuanced conversations are going on there, one of that is how to slow down "progress" and innovation at all, and how realistic it is given current incentive structures and geopolitics.

22:00 If you're not a nerd like me, look up what a "palantir" is and how they were used in LOTR. Basically they are seeing stones used by Sauron to control the rulers of Middle Earth 🙃

fantastic topic, thanks for taking this one on

Starting out with begging for clicks is a real turn off

Totally agree, and like other Rachel videos, would assume that the topic is ploughing old ground in a refreshed context. Good enough.