Energy and climate, by the numbers
Cost curves, deployment data and what the figures actually support, from three people who show their working.
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- Ramez Naam "Iterative deployment [..] is also how we align AI." 100% this. It's how we do most things. There will be no perfect theory of alignment. There will be an enormous amount of learning by doing. Quoting@krishnanrohit@gfodor 1. ASI is underspecified 2. The path to ASI is also underspecified 3. The reactions from the product build and society at large are not taken into account re what actually gets built 4. Iterative deployment is the rule for that reason, which is also how we align AI The only pro argument is…
- Ramez Naam This matches my expectations. Cheaper models (open and closed) will capture most of the token volume. But in a great many domains (and anything adversarial, zero sum, or first past the post), people will pay for the very most advanced model. Quoting@KonstantinPilzNarrative violation: Open models still account for only 10% of global spending on AI inference.
- Bill Gates How Seth and Lauren Rogen are helping Alzheimer’s caregivers through Hilarity for Charity
- Ramez Naam I'm looking forward to speeking at Freedom Tech DC on Tuesday this week, on how a plural, competitive, open AI world can help protect and increase human freedom. Lots of other great speakers listed below! Quoting@bitcoinpolicyFreedom Tech DC kicks off THIS WEEK. A summit on the future of money, speech, and intelligence — and the fight to keep them free. We're gathering the builders and the regulators with one purpose — to encourage Washington to embrace open source technology. Stream both days live on X from @bitcoinpol…
- Ramez Naam This is eye opening data. And again I'll note that Vercel (like OpenRouter) is a very small fraction of all AI spend, and tilts towards certain customers and use cases. The trends on each might be canaries in the coal mine, but we can't yet generalize to industry-wide AI spend. Quoting@GavinSBakerOpen models continue taking share. Not just tokens, more $ now spent on open models than OpenAI. Positive for the AI infra trade. Open models taking share shift $ margin from the model layer to the infra and app layers.
- Ramez Naam Spoiler: It's not a psyop. You can disagree with the view that AI is a meaningful x-risk (I do!). And it's worth understanding that people who are worried about this have often been worried about it for decades, long before there was money in it. Coordinating messages != psyop. Quoting@DavidSKruegerI feel blessed to have gotten so much new engagement from accounts that this AI risk is a psyop. I have been deeply involved in both technical AI research and AI risk reduction efforts for over a decade, so personally I'm confident it's not a psyop. But I can understand why people who lack this kin…
- Ramez Naam Yes. Humans have very a jagged intelligence. We only think otherwise because it's our reference class. Quoting@danielrockfrom a model's capabilities perspective, humans are quite jagged too. @avshah99 points out that if a calculator could have opinions about us, it'd be surprised at how bad we are at arithmetic. @emollick
- Ramez Naam I, for one, am excited about China's progress and aspirations in designing new medicines. Pharma innovation is positive sum, and the benefits go overwhelmingly to patients and society, globally. Only a small fraction of the value is captured by producers or by the nation they hail from. A drug invented in China will cure me or someone I love just as well as one invented in the US or Europe. I do understand the fear in the US industry. And I hope that motivates us to accelerate the pace in the US, and pass some of regulatory reforms that @RuxandraTeslo and others have eloquently made the case… Quoting@fjeg1987China wants its drugmakers to have originated 25% of first-in-class drugs and $522B in sales by 2030. This is compared to the total market of $800B today. I'm simultaneously in awe of the ambition and paranoid about the US ability to compete. I had a dinner with pharma leaders who remain delighted…
- Ramez Naam Well, that escalated quickly. Quoting@_NathanCalvinThe FT today lists three primary risk factors that could threaten Anthropic's remarkable revenue growth ahead of its IPO: 1. Additional competition from closed and open providers 2. Increasingly price sensitive customers 3. The potential for AI to destroy humanity
- Bill Gates Congratulations on an extraordinary career, Warren. I’m lucky to call you my friend and mentor. nyti.ms
- Ramez Naam Dream-RSI Liked
- Hannah Ritchie US Energy Data: a new platform to explore American energy, state-by-state Trying to make some of the richest energy data in the world accessible and understandable.
- Bill Gates One photo has the potential to save a farmer’s harvest
- Hannah Ritchie The pattern of young people being much happier than older people is concentrated in post-communist countries
- Hannah Ritchie Young people tend to be happier than older generations, but not in the Anglosphere
- Bill Gates Five questions about AI—and my answers
- Bill Gates This invention may have saved more lives than anything else in history
- Hannah Ritchie Reserving desalination plants only for emergency drought use does not work well.
- Hannah Ritchie Reservoirs are not inherently cheaper to build than desalination plants.
- Hannah Ritchie Desalination for drinking and household water is cheap and uses less energy than commonly assumed.
- Bill Gates If the world takes the right steps, #AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off.
- Hannah Ritchie Privatisation of the water industry created a disincentive for building new reservoirs
- Hannah Ritchie Britain has a systemic problem building large infrastructure projects, including reservoirs
- Hannah Ritchie The UK will need to build more reservoirs to cope with future water-starved summers
- Hannah Ritchie Tracking global food production through a record El Niño An interactive tool to explore historical data on food production, and updated forecasts from the USDA.
- Hannah Ritchie Is Europe having a bad wildfire year? Several countries in Europe are having a very large wildfire year; this is offset by lower burn in the Balkans
- Ramez Naam Two AI Futures to Choose From A messy, plural world of widely spread AI capabilities is a safer and more democratic one than that of a single, perfect AI.
- Hannah Ritchie Thailand’s population has already peaked My colleague, Edouard Mathieu, recently created an interactive map showing when the populations of countries around the world are expected to peak.
- Hannah Ritchie My book — Clearing the Air — is coming out in paperback in September And this week you can get 25% off in the UK.
- Ramez Naam Two Hours of AI Optimism - Grounded in Reality My opening talk at Abundance 360, with Paige Bailey from Google. We covered the whole landscape of AI, how incredible it is, impacts on society, and some contrarian views on scaling, ASI, and AI hype.
- Ramez Naam Common AI Narratives are Wrong (Video and Part 1) In a recent talk I argue that many of the popular narratives on AI are wrong. Here's video and some of the key points.
- Bill Gates Thank you for the warm welcome, @ncbn. It’s exciting to witness Andhra Pradesh’s growth being accelerated through AI, technology, and innovations across health, agriculture & education. Quoting@ncbnTechnology must serve humanity. Our Real Time Governance System (RTGS) is transforming lives across Andhra Pradesh - delivering speed in governance & ease of doing business in real time. Grateful for my 1990s meeting with Mr. Bill Gates, which inspired this tech-driven citizen empowerment. Delighte…
- Hannah Ritchie Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food—and Our Future Recommends
- Bill Gates I’m deeply sad to learn of the passing of Dr. Bill Foege. Bill was a towering figure in global health—a man who saved the lives of literally hundreds of millions of people. He was also a friend and mentor who gave me a deep grounding in the history of global health and inspired me with his conviction that the world could do more to alleviate suffering. Bill and I often talked together about the future of global health. The legacy of his career is that many of the remarkable developments to come will have his imprint all over them. gatesnot.es
- Bill Gates Clearing the Air Recommends
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- Bill Gates Who Knew Liked
- Bill Gates .@fervoenergy is creating energy that’s clean, affordable, reliable, and American-made.
- Bill Gates @NickKristof's journalism inspired me to get involved in global health decades ago, and I hope his reporting on the devastating consequences of aid cuts inspires others to act today. Quoting@NickKristofOne reason we tolerate the evisceration of USAID is skepticism about aid's effectiveness. Yet aid can and does save lives. As @BillGates notes here, child deaths from diarrhea have fallen 72% since 2000. Diarrhea still kills too many children, but we know to solve these problems, inexpensively. We…
- Bill Gates Learning how many kids were dying from diarrhea back in 1997—when I never worried about it with my own kids—led me to get involved in global health. gatesnot.es
- Bill Gates Everything Is Tuberculosis Liked
- Bill Gates Thanks to vaccines, fewer children are dying from preventable diseases around the world. Cutting funding for them would reverse that progress and put millions of children in danger.
- Bill Gates The devastating effects of these cuts are entirely preventable—and it’s not too late to reverse them. Quoting@samsteinAn HIV doctor in Africa, whose work depends on USAID and PEPFAR, sends in a dispatch of the bleak situation now unfolding there
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- Ramez Naam Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap (2020) This is part 1 of a series where I’ll look at the future costs of clean energy and mobility technologies.
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Ramez Naam
After four more doublings of installed solar capacity, solar electricity will cost about 3 cents per kwh in the sunniest areas and 4.5 cents per kwh in moderately sunny areas.
WasAnd beyond that, by the time solar scale has doubled 4 more times, to the equivalent of 16% of today’s electricity demand (and somewhat less of future demand), we should see solar at 3 cents per kwh in the sunniest areas, and 4.5 cents per kwh in moderately sunny areas.
NowBoth of those forecasts were wrong. Solar has plunged in price faster than anyone – including me – predicted.
- Ramez Naam Demand for electricity will rise to absorb far more solar than is currently considered feasible.
- Ramez Naam Solar's future price should be predicted from how much has been built, not from how much time has passed.
- Ramez Naam Average solar electricity prices in sunny parts of the world will fall to one or two cents per kwh by 2030 or 2035.
- Ramez Naam Solar has got cheaper faster than even its most optimistic forecasters expected.
- Ramez Naam Every doubling of the solar built worldwide has cut its price by 30 to 40 per cent, and that learning rate is why the price keeps falling.
- Ramez Naam The Third Phase of Clean Energy Will Be the Most Disruptive Yet Building new solar, wind, and storage is about to be cheaper than operating existing coal and gas power plants.
- Ramez Naam Clean Technology is Disrupting Fossil Fuels Faster Than Ever The best news in the global fight against climate change is the pace at which clean technology is advancing.
- Ramez Naam Yes, Blockchain Can Help Us Solve Climate Change – Why I Joined Nori Over the last two years, as both an angel investor and a public speaker on energy and climate, I’ve looked at least a few dozen startups and proposals on how to use blockchain or new crypto coins in energy or climate.
- Ramez Naam Solar doesn’t need a “breakthrough”. It’s a breakthrough on it’s own. Yesterday, Tyler Cowan, who I’m a major fan of, wrote a piece for Bloomberg View arguing that solar needs more R&D for a true green energy breakthrough.