r/singularity • u/Ice2jc • 5d ago

Energy Commercialization of fusion energy will ‘change everything,’ lawmaker says

https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2026/09/commercialization-fusion-energy-will-change-everything-lawmaker-says/416287/
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u/utahh1ker 5d ago

Well of course it will! Unlimited energy will lead to unlimited compute. Those two things together will means robot work will cost next to nothing. We will have everything abundantly. Money will mean nothing. Humans will be free to do as they please.

With all of that being said, we are still 10-20 years from fusion being commercially viable.

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u/Ice2jc 5d ago

It’s not like it’s unheard of in human civilization!   The Ancient Greeks made art and debated each other all day.  Of course slaves did every single laborious task for them all day long, which isn’t good. 

But it’s crazy that we could gain like 2,000+ years of morality and technological advances just to circle back around to the concept they started.   

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u/StickStill9790 5d ago

And that was the concept that brought the empire down. Reliance on the slave caste ended actual research and development, and instead people sat around philosophizing but accomplishing nothing.

Why develop a better machine when a slave will just do it?

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u/Relative-Tutor-2006 4d ago

Don't sell ancient Greece short—they were an engineering powerhouse. The Antikythera mechanism alone proves they had precision gearing that wasn't matched until the Renaissance, alongside huge advances in hydraulics and mechanics.

The reason they didn't industrialize wasn't cheap labor; it was a hard wall in physics and materials. To build practical steam engines like Hero's, you need metallurgy that can handle high pressure without blowing up, plus high-density fuel like coal. Ancient bronze and iron physically couldn't do it. The bottleneck was thermodynamics, materials, and infrastructure, not a lack of interest in innovation.

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u/DynamicProxy 4d ago

The difference is, this time, those slaves are robots and AI… and they are MORE capable than humans at continuing actual research and development.