Climate change
Kind of a two-fer right there. Without “AI” sucking up so much power, we’d already be better off climate-wise.
True, but still only marginally.
I think concrete is still king.
I would specifically pick Fusion research.
That’s not a single endeavor, like, at all.
Neither is ‘AI’
I wrote Generative AI. Do you want to put the two on the same scale of complexity?
I agree. Still it is a set with way fewer elements than action against climate change. Also, the nature of operations in the latter case is way more diversified than in the development of the former.
It is only my opinion though, you may find Generative AI a hydra compared to the other.
By the way, the money would be well spent indeed but not even close to enough for a sustainable change.
My problem with counting all climate change is that the goal itself is not unique: there are atmospheric greenhouse gasses to lower, which are something completely different than the acidification of the oceans, which are completely different from deforestation.
And the effects themselves are, it’s true, all originated from an imbalance in a system, but exactly because climate is a complex system, they differ wildly.
Buying companies that create a lot of pollution and closing them down. (Coal mines/plants, oil firms, single use plastic suppliers, etc)
Another big one would be buying up pharma companies an their patents and releasing everything under creative commons license.
Question on this, how would you expect the millions of people that heat/cool their homes to get by? Or are you advocating for a return to caves ? Unless you’re saying shut those down to build nuclear/solar/wind, which also takes a lot of dirty manufacturing to build. It’s kind of a no-win with this many humans.
Bio gas is a lot better than coal and fossil oil for the mean time. But long term basically the whole world should be using heatpumps for heating and cooling, they are incredibly efficient and outperform any other system on every metric. Especially because electricity will become dirt cheap in a few years/decades.
The only reason they arent installed in every house yet is the fossil fuel lobby and their bought politicians, but even they are slowly realizing that its the inevitable solution.
which also takes a lot of dirty manufacturing to build
Solar compensates its production+installation footprint in around a year see here for the relevant numbers from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Wind power plants compensate theirs in a matter of a few months. See this part of Climate Towns latest video analyzing the typical propaganda that made you falsely believe that https://youtu.be/wBC_bug5DIQ?t=185
Nuclear is obviously stupid and does indeed cost way too much and take way too much effort for how bad of a deal you get out of it when its done.
I for one would love to live in this world where electricity becomes dirt cheap, as my rates have only ever gone up, usually in the name of installing more renewables, now don’t get me wrong I’m not against installing renewables but let’s not pretend it will necessarily make power cheaper for the end user
It will. Consumer electricity prices are completely artificially inflated. No matter how corrupt the the system is, eventually the prices will be pushed down because there is such an over abundance of energy output. Already we are seeing exchange prices regularily going into the negative.
We might ofcourse dump all that excess into garbage like AI training.
Finding new and unique ways to make parabolic mirrors more efficiently and inexpensively
Imagine being into generative AI when the moon is literally red as I type this. You could be looking at the Orion Nebula right now instead of staring at a screen playing charades with a soulless marionette dancing under the hands of billionaires who you’re giving a direct line straight into your brain, bypassing all critical thought
I’m fairly certain that we could actually fully automate food production, and might even be able to automate each step from farm to distribution with a little additional effort. The major obstacle that I can tell seems to be the upfront cost of the precision machines necessary to handle harvesting, automating the planting and care has already been accomplished.
Recycling and right to repair. If we could reclaim ~100% of raw materials in a useful way and avoid unnecessary waste it would have a big climate impact.
I mean, it’s not like we don’t know how to do that. But selling you a whole new thing every year or two is much more profitable than selling you one thing that lasts you a lifetime.
I’m not sure what technology I would choose, but surely it would be related to the climate change.
Nuclear Fusion.
Just fund all the open source projects. Like, all of them.
It’s amazing the amount of ressources that are spent on creating an environment/platform that locks users in.
Like, shit, if we spent like 10% on that efforts into open source stuff we’d be living in a utopia right now or something.
In everything that has a realistic chance to stop or reverse climate change
it’s called ‘online deliberation’ Here is a paper on what it might include: https://deliberation.stanford.edu/tools-and-resources/online-deliberation-platform
Here is my idea on how to implement it: https://www.theconsensusengine.com/ (I’d start on page 25 at the example section)
It’s a way to get people to work together by finding common ground and making the internet a friendly place not a hateful one of conflict
It can reduce loneliness by bringing people together based on shared values and interests, as well as location, so you can find a community of people who like the same things, and find a community in your own community to make our localities stronger and more united.
it can be a way to stop and greatly reduce misinformation and the idea that it takes much more work to refuse lies than to make them, but keeping an list of arguments on both sides and letting the consensus based on evidence emerge
it can advance science and the knowledge base of all humans by creating a chain of trust with links, so reproducible things and empirical facts are are stronger and more impactful. This will help find answers in currently unknown directions while also reducing or eliminating the publish or perish model of science. If someone is found to have lied then all their contributions going backwards are effected so that the emergent consensus always works towards truth
it can force hypocrites like almost all republicans and religiousnuts to be faced with their own judgements on their own actions, based on how other people interpret their statements and evidence. This can show delusional people not only that they are wrong, but where they went wrong so they can be aware and try and correct it.
With a huge amount of money to create it and also to give away we can make people want to contribute and use the system because they stand to benifit from it
and it can act as an agora and planning department for all human kind on a multigeneration level where decisions are based on evidence and desire. this along may allow something like this idea to take ahold and be the source of progress for society into the future, because what we are doing now is not working.
Very interesting, thank you. Keep Lemmy updated on developments!
Education.
Probably the only one that would really change the entire world for the better.
how about pocket computers with the power of a smartphone but the common sense usability of a goddamn graphing calculator? i’m sitting on a magic rectangle with more computing power than the apollo mission and it doesn’t even let me blink the LED without installing an app?? these things should legally have to come with a scripting environment.
Steam Deck is a step in the right direction but a bit too big
As someone who never managed to work with a graphing calculator, you made me want this.
As someone who has used a graphing calculator in high school, uhhhhhh I must have been using a different brand because it was always a struggle.
the closest thing on android right now is an app called Termux, it simulates a linux scripting environment with several languages (including C, python, and javascript), and it can be programmed to do anything an app can do (including blink the LED).
but c’mon, that should be standard. also phones should come rooted.
cure for tinnitus
Clean nuclear energy
Can’t decide if it should be penis enlargement or the cure for baldness… 🤔 /s
There are bald porn stars for a reason
Y por qué no los dos?
OP said only one. 😔
Or in other words “Male enhancement” research
I guess, although cure for baldness would also be directly beneficial for women as well
