“As long as we effectively subsidize fossil fuels by using the atmosphere as a waste disposal site, clean energy will be on a level playing field,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, an independent research organization. “We can’t make them competitive.” I wrote about X in response to Altman’s post. “Achieving climate goals will not only require technological advances, but also policy changes.”
That’s not to say there aren’t still big technical problems to solve. Take a look at the ongoing struggle to develop clean, cost-competitive ways to fertilize crops and fly airplanes. But the fundamental challenges of climate change are sunk costs, obstacles to development, and inertia.
We invested trillions of dollars in fossil fuel-powered power plants, steel mills, factories, jets, boilers, water heaters, stoves, and SUVs, built a global economy that spews greenhouse gases, and we paid the price. I’m here. And few people or companies are willing to write off those investments as long as those products and plants still work. AI can’t solve all of these things by just coming up with better ideas.
Increasingly aggressive climate change that will encourage or force everyone to switch to cleaner factories, products, and practices in order to destroy and replace machines in every industry around the world at the speed now required. Policy will be needed.
But with every proposal for stricter laws or new large-scale wind or solar farms, forces will push back. Because the plan hurts someone’s wallet, impedes someone’s vision, or threatens someone’s cherished community or tradition. Climate change is an infrastructure issue, and building infrastructure is a tedious human task.
Advances in technology may alleviate some of these problems. Cheaper and better alternatives to traditional industries make difficult choices more politically palatable. However, there are no improvements in AI algorithms or underlying datasets that will solve the challenges of NIMBYism, conflicts of human interest, and the desire to breathe fresh air in the pristine wilderness.
It would be naive, if not a bit naive, to claim that a single technology (which just happens to be developed by your company) can miraculously resolve these intractable conflicts in human society. Selfish at best. And it’s an alarming thought to declare at a time when the very development of technology threatens to undo what little progress the world has made in tackling climate change.
In fact, one thing we can say with confidence about generative AI is that it’s making the hardest problems we’ve ever had to solve even harder. .
