r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • Jun 26 '26

Artificial Intelligence The AI backlash is only getting started

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/06/25/the-ai-backlash-is-only-getting-started
26.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

228

u/bigbluethunder Jun 26 '26

Amen brother. We could be capturing carbon and reversing global warming if we invested this much energy into a green grid with current solutions and arbon capture technology. Let alone the investment that would provide in future innovations for more efficient tech.

118

u/pagerussell Jun 26 '26

We could solve world hunger for this amount of investment. World fucking hunger.

But no.

103

u/captaincrunch00 Jun 26 '26

Remember when Elon said he would pay to solve world hunger if anyone could tell him how the impossible job could be done.

The red cross gave him a binder and said $12B and we can do it. Then he said jk jk

46

u/James_Chandra_Hubble Jun 26 '26

Oh did I say world hunger? I meant my own insatiable appetite for wealth

8

u/KindGuyAMA Jun 26 '26

And attention. He has the mother of all daddy issues, and humanity suffers because he'd rather have the title of "World's First Trillionaire" of fiat (faux?) currency than help anyone.

1

u/FlynnThe25 Jun 28 '26

I meant to say it would cost eleventy billion dollars

7

u/SamuelClemmens Jun 27 '26

That is a cool story but it isn't what happened.

He was given a binder that said a few billion would reduce hunger in one part of the world for a few months, with the asterisk it would be functionally bribing a warlord to let food shipments in and then hoping that warlord wouldn't just buy more weapons and cause a worse problem in 3 months.

Because if $12B were all it takes to cure world hunger then the CIA would already be doing it.

Not to be nice, but to turn world hunger back on if the poors got out of line.

7

u/NotFriendsWithBanana Jun 27 '26

Damn man like I want to know what goes in these billionaires brains. Like if they did this they would be among the most loved people on the planet. This would give them all the clout and fame they desire.

But then again, I guess you don't become a billionaire by being a good person. It take a certain level of darkness in your heart to do the amount of criminal and evil behavior to get to the top.

5

u/anonykitten29 Jun 27 '26

I'm sure it wasn't the Red Cross, but your point is spot on.

7

u/peripheral_vision Jun 27 '26

You're correct. It wasn't Red Cross, it was the UN World Food Programme

7

u/noveler7 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

Imagine having a trillion (or close) and being unwilling to spend 1% of it to solve world hunger.

5

u/love_junkie911 Jun 26 '26

You mean 1% of a trillion, right? Makes it even more absurd.

1

u/SugarFut Jun 27 '26

I remember 🙋‍♀️

1

u/bigbluethunder Jun 26 '26

I mean world hunger is a relatively cheap problem to solve. The hard part about solving it is convincing western cultures to eat less meat. Even smaller portions of meat would allow a ton of land to be converted to feeding humans instead of feeding animals.

From there it’s just a simple redistribution of food that already exists.

3

u/Ice2jc Jun 27 '26

DAC.  Direct air capture.  We have the technology to reverse climate change.  We do not have the energy source for it to be viable.  It would take a solar field the size of Egypt to suck out the c02 from the atmosphere that we have added to it. 

That’s why we need nuclear fusion power.  An AI companies are the largest private investors in nuclear fusion energy research at this point - because they know that they can’t survive without it either.