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ben_w 16 hours ago

Disagree. AI that displaces workers is worth spending anything up to that worker's salary on, and this can have a devastating impact on energy prices for everyone.

Worked example, but this is a massive oversimplification in several different ways all at once:

Global electricity supply was around 31,153 TWh in 2024. The world's economy is about $117e12/year. Any AI* that is economically useful enough to handle 33% that, $38.6e12/year, is economically worthwhile to spend anything up to $38.6e12/year to keep that AI running.

If you spend $38.6e12 (per year) to buy all of those 31,153 TWh of electricity (per year), the global average electricity market price is now $1.239/kWh, and a lot of people start to wonder what the point of automating everything was if nobody can afford to keep their heating/AC (delete as appropriate) switched on. Or even the fridge/freezer, for a lot of people.

* I don't care what definition you're using for AGI, this is just about "economically useful"