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Where is the net benefit to society through all this, one asks? I'm not a luddite but news like this makes me feel ill. Turning the planet into one big AI data center just doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies.
An AI-assisted invention that solves climate change would pay some pretty good dividends, i think.
A decade from now the AI-assisted invention for solving climate change will be: "Plant more forests."

After several trillion spent on AI, we're still waiting on AI to assist with anything more complicated building stock websites.

Yes, an AI-assisted invention which paradoxically involves uprooting God only knows how many trees across 300 hectares (which by definition, means destroying entire ecosystems). Yes this AI will save us from ourselves.
Far more forest gets destroyed for far less benefit all the time. Why does everyone suddenly care now?
So we're at the stage where forest destruction is fine, more or less, if the promise of some utopia might come to fruition.
It's apparently fine to do for far stupider reasons, so why not? The implied priorities seem wild to me. Everyone has been sleeping while massive ecological catastrophies are happening, and then suddenly when AI sneezes it's the end of the world.
Will they pay a fine and keep going?
More like not pay a fine and keep going.
They've been made to stop development work by the authorities now.
To put this in perspective, Finland apparently cuts down 600-700k hectares of forest each year. 87% of Finland is forest, about 23 million hectares.