I think you are seriously underselling OAI. Asteroid impacts have the potential to solve many of the looming humanitarian and existential crisis:
Asteroid impacts are a prime candidate to stop global warming.
The x-risk from AI is much lower in timeline where OAI succeeds.
Basically, OAI is a magic bullet, which could enable a phase change in human technology. Global poverty will no longer be a thing. The Near East conflict will be solved. It will prevent Putin from conquering Ukraine and keep Taiwan out of the hands of China. It will end all colonialism and discrimination.
Well, I think Munroe is not thinking big enough here.
Of course, this might increase global warming in the long run because the impact crater can produce CO2 from both of the global firestorms devastating plant life and the destruction of carbonate rock in the earth mantle, but I think that this can be minimized by choosing a suitable impact location (which was not a concern for Chicxulub) and is partly offset by a decline in fossil fuel use due to indirect effects. Also, all of the tipping point factors in climate change would work to our advantage: larger polar caps reflect more light, more permafrost binds more CO2 and so on.
At the worst, climate engineering might require periodic impacts on a scale of one per decade, which seems sustainable.
I think you are seriously underselling OAI. Asteroid impacts have the potential to solve many of the looming humanitarian and existential crisis:
Asteroid impacts are a prime candidate to stop global warming.
The x-risk from AI is much lower in timeline where OAI succeeds.
Basically, OAI is a magic bullet, which could enable a phase change in human technology. Global poverty will no longer be a thing. The Near East conflict will be solved. It will prevent Putin from conquering Ukraine and keep Taiwan out of the hands of China. It will end all colonialism and discrimination.
I dunno man, Randall Munroe thinks that they would cause global warming.
Well, I think Munroe is not thinking big enough here.
Of course, this might increase global warming in the long run because the impact crater can produce CO2 from both of the global firestorms devastating plant life and the destruction of carbonate rock in the earth mantle, but I think that this can be minimized by choosing a suitable impact location (which was not a concern for Chicxulub) and is partly offset by a decline in fossil fuel use due to indirect effects. Also, all of the tipping point factors in climate change would work to our advantage: larger polar caps reflect more light, more permafrost binds more CO2 and so on.
At the worst, climate engineering might require periodic impacts on a scale of one per decade, which seems sustainable.