Tom Ellis
1 min readMay 31, 2023

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You seem to be overlooking one fact here. All digital technology--including all AI-based apps--depend on a reliable global electronic infrastructure. However,

1. All electronics run on electricity.

2. Electricity is highly efficient in application, but woefully inefficient in generation from primary (heat-based) forms of generation--e.g. solar, wind, biomass, nuclear, but above all, high net energy sources like fossil fuels.

3. All the other "renewable" forms of generation (solar, wind, etc) depend on an infrastructure built by highly condensed net energy (i.e. fossil fuels);

4. Fossil fuels are simultaneously running out AND destroying our biological life-support systems due to accelerating climate disruption.

5. The money system--needed to invest in AI development--is nothing but an arithmetical transform of information about relative value. It has no solid foundation, and could easily collapse, when the physical, biological, or social infrastructures that give it value collapse. You cannot eat or drink money, after all. And hyperinflation can impoverish all of us quickly--even Elon Musk.

For all these reasons, I'm not worried about an AI singularity. When the power fails, and/or the money system goes into hyperinflation and collapses, and the global heating renders huge areas of the planet uninhabitable, dessicated, or flooded, the whole house of cards will collapse very quickly, and those of us who are left (if any) will quickly be reduced to subsistence and tribal warfare, like our ancestors.

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Tom Ellis
Tom Ellis

Written by Tom Ellis

I am a retired English professor now living in Oregon, and a life-long environmental activist, Buddhist, and holistic philosopher.

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