this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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Sometimes I wonder where we could be if all the AI money was spent on e.g. fusion energy research instead.
Who cares about fusion? There was a study in the late 90's stating that if only 10% of the capital put towards oil research, exploration, extraction, etc, annually, was put towards renewable energies it would catapult the research output by a factor of 30, by year.
We could have, by now, moved completely towards renewables for everyday life needs and start towards producing more energy we could ever need and put that excess towards greater achievements.
We could be exploring the stars instead. NASA’s original plan was land on Luna, survey, then build a shipyard. Instead we just launched a rocket asap and told Ivan to suck it. The centuries long plan NASA had was just…one small step
You solve the problems you have at home before you start making yourself concerned with what your neighbor is doing at theirs.
Space exploration, as it was sold to the general public, was an arms race. The public demonstration of which nation could build faster the engine and carcass capable of delivering a nuclear payload on the other. The money spent on that would have been better spent towards achieving true and long lasting civilizational goal, like disease and poverty erradication, environmental preservation, clean energy and so forth.
It's the broken window falacy.
I guess we would be 30 years from stable scalable fusion reactions?
I’ve been cynical about them for years but there’s been enough interesting milestones crossed lately that I wonder if an injection of AI money wouldn’t just do the trick.