If you're an AI company and you believe your own hype (like Musk seems to), you'll probably believe that you can automate everything from digging minerals out of the ground all of the way up to making the semiconductors in the robots that dig the minerals.

As you may infer from my use of the word "hype", I do not think we are close to such generality at a high enough quality level to actually do this.

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SoftTalker 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Presumes that the surviving humans will not actively disrupt/destroy these automated industries. Which seems highly likely as they will want to scavenge them for anything of value or repurpose them for their own means.

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ben_w 6 hours ago | parent [-]

There's lots of implicit assumptions or this would be a book, but remember that Musk has a rocket and wants to colonise Mars, and that Mars is so bad that it is currently 100% populated by robots.

For the billionaires without rockets, there's also a whole bunch of deserts conveniently filled with lots of silicon.

(Or as Mac(Format|World|User) put it sometime in the 90s when they were considering who might bail out Apple and suggested one of the middle east oil barrons, a "silly con").

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SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Musk smokes a lot of weed. We won't have a colony on Mars in his grandshildren's lifetime.

	▲	ben_w 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		His lifetime, I agree unlikely, but also I think that will be short: he's pissed off too many other powerful people and will get the western equivalent of Russian oligarchs "falling out of a window". The economics he talks about are all nonsense. No bank will lend someone $200k for the ticket to go to Mars on the offchance they might be a successful pizza restaraunteur. But like I said, if you're (e.g.) him and you buy your own hype… (His grandkids' lifetimes are another question entirely. Things are changing too fast).

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gnarlouse 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While I believe we’re in a slow takeoff, I believe we are in a takeoff. The important question to my mind is whether AGI comes before systemic societal collapse due to climate change. I think it does, and my tin foil hat grows a wider brim with each passing day. I hope I’m wrong!