Energy storage. We could already produce all the power we need and more using solar power, the problem is that we can’t store it in an efficient energy dense form. The word efficient there is doing some heavy lifting. It needs be comparable or better than our methods today in terms of cost, safety, energy density, climate impact. If we could solve energy storage, it’d change society and technology dramatically.
Tech Debt. So many of these companies investing in AI are doing so at the expense of out dated, broken shit that AI will never address.
I like the answer, but that’s not a single endeavor.
Fixing the Y2k issue was a single endeavor spread across a massive number of systems worldwide.
I can’t speak for other companies, but in mine we do have a single line item for Tech Debt. It gets IGNORED most of the time, but we do have it! ;)
What would be the first 3 tasks to be done under that line item?
Largely software updates. You would not believe how old some of this stuff is.
The problem becomes each update is tied to multiple systems, so testing has to be done across the board for each update.
So it’s easy to go “Why are we running xxx from 2016?” but then you have test it everywhere and that’s why it’s almost 10 years out of date.
Climate change
I would specifically pick Fusion research.
That’s not a single endeavor, like, at all.
Neither is ‘AI’
I wrote Generative AI. Do you want to put the two on the same scale of complexity?
generative ai is not one thing.
I agree. Still it is a set with way fewer elements than action against climate change. Also, the nature of operations in the latter case is way more diversified than in the development of the former.
It is only my opinion though, you may find Generative AI a hydra compared to the other.
By the way, the money would be well spent indeed but not even close to enough for a sustainable change.
idk about that last part actually. some of the stuff we can do for the climate we just aren’t doing.
also we could just hire a few hitmen
Buying companies that create a lot of pollution and closing them down. (Coal mines/plants, oil firms, single use plastic suppliers, etc)
Another big one would be buying up pharma companies an their patents and releasing everything under creative commons license.
Question on this, how would you expect the millions of people that heat/cool their homes to get by? Or are you advocating for a return to caves ? Unless you’re saying shut those down to build nuclear/solar/wind, which also takes a lot of dirty manufacturing to build. It’s kind of a no-win with this many humans.
Bio gas is a lot better than coal and fossil oil for the mean time. But long term basically the whole world should be using heatpumps for heating and cooling, they are incredibly efficient and outperform any other system on every metric. Especially because electricity will become dirt cheap in a few years/decades.
The only reason they arent installed in every house yet is the fossil fuel lobby and their bought politicians, but even they are slowly realizing that its the inevitable solution.
which also takes a lot of dirty manufacturing to build
Solar compensates its production+installation footprint in around a year see here for the relevant numbers from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Wind power plants compensate theirs in a matter of a few months. See this part of Climate Towns latest video analyzing the typical propaganda that made you falsely believe that https://youtu.be/wBC_bug5DIQ?t=185
Nuclear is obviously stupid and does indeed cost way too much and take way too much effort for how bad of a deal you get out of it when its done.
I for one would love to live in this world where electricity becomes dirt cheap, as my rates have only ever gone up, usually in the name of installing more renewables, now don’t get me wrong I’m not against installing renewables but let’s not pretend it will necessarily make power cheaper for the end user
It is a singular endeavor with tons of moving parts, like pretty much every modern endeavor.
Kind of a two-fer right there. Without “AI” sucking up so much power, we’d already be better off climate-wise.
True, but still only marginally.
I think concrete is still king.
The Internet Archive - long term storage of as many books/films/music/journals/games as possible.
Love this answer! I wish the EU could move it in as an EU agency.
Medicine (i.e. research into cures for illnesses we can’t cure yet) seems like just about the only thing that’s worthwhile. Most of our modern issues aren’t really about not having the right technologies, but about billionaires being greedy.
Not counting it as a single endeavor.
A new web browser engine that is not Google or Mozilla (like Servo) and a browser using this new engine.
We really need this. I am following Ladybird closely.
Nuclear fusion, right? That’s got to be the big one.
How do we stop it killing the global economy over night ?
Why would we want to do that? I hate the global economy.
I’d rather a free and powerful energy source that’ll benefit humanity not have a logo and pricetag slapped on it so that only the ones who can afford it are allowed to use it.
Any energy source is going to be able to have a price tag and a logo slapped on it as long as energy generation requires infrastructure and capitalism is a thing. Wind, solar, and tidal are great; we desperately need more of them as part of our energy strategy. But they can also have a price tag and a logo. In fact, home solar has become quite a lucrative…well, not exactly scam, but “bad deal” in my area.
And fusion will have to be here, too, to fill the gaps that wind, solar, and tidal leave; at least for now. There’s no “forever” answer here, only some that’ll last longer than others.
You can slap a logo on anything. That’s not a problem of the tech itself.
Precisely. It’s already done to our homes and our food and the water we drink, pretty soon it will be done to the air we breath unless we stop that unnamable thing that privatizes wealth and is defined by the ability to profit from it.
You know what? Fuck it. Let’s finally build Edward Teller’s Doomsday Machine.
Teller, the ‘father of the hydrogen bomb,’ wanted to build something even more mad, Project Sundial, a true Doomsday Device. It relies on the principle that there really is no upper limit to how big a thermonuclear weapon can get. As long as you’re willing to keep chaining stages, you can make them arbitrarily large. However, you do eventually hit a limit where the bomb is too big to deliver to a target.
However, for Project Sundial, this wasn’t a problem. The idea is you would build a single nuclear device so comically powerful that it doesn’t matter where on Earth you set it off. You build the thing in bunker, under a mountain, in the heart of your most closely guarded territory. It can be the size of a large building if need be; it doesn’t have to be movable. In extreme form, imagine a nuclear bomb the size of a stadium.
Once you push the button on this thing, it’s over. No matter where on Earth you set it off, the explosion would be so large that it would launch enough dust and debris into the atmosphere to block substantial sunlight and cool the planet. Instant nuclear winter from a single device that cannot be intercepted or shot down. And you can built it in a bunker buried so deep that no regular nuclear weapon can reach it.
It is the apotheosis of mutually assured destruction. If you threaten our existence, we retain the power to destroy everything. The entire species would be reset to c. 1500 or earlier at the press of a single button.
They did actually design the thing, though it was never built. And the details are still classified as all hell. But it is entirely possible to actually, in the real world, build a Doomsday Machine worthy of any comic book mad scientist. It is possible to build a single device that can destroy the entire world at the press of a button.
Or hell, for all we know, it’s possible someone has already built one…
I was hoping someone would quote this. Bravo!
Trains.
Yes!
I like trains!
I would make Star Citizen AAAAAAAA… game.
You forgot the H’s.
Degenerative AI.
I’m sure you’ll get a bunch of respectable answers, but keep in mind that secretly, everyone is actually thinking sex robots.
Really? Cause I was thinking climate solving, fusion powered sex robots.
The smart phone doesn’t do one thing, why shouldn’t my robot?
Who said anything about one thing? My robot is capable of performing 370 different sex acts! And before you ask, yes, even THAT one.
And if they were not, they should have been.
Which is an application that generative AI is important for, ironically.
Speak for yourself, I want a hug bot.
That costs extra.
Methods of updating energy infrastructure to accelerate the switch to renewable energy?
You mean like upgrading the US electrical grid like GWB proposed?
I was thinking the UK because ours is ancient
Sex robots
Thermonuclear reactors
