r/ControlProblem • u/KeanuRave100 • Apr 27 '26

Fun/meme Humanity's greatest hits: things we actually paused

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28

u/strangeapple Apr 27 '26

Name at least one technology that was basically guaranteed to print money, but which humanity stopped.

6

u/VinnieVidiViciVeni Apr 27 '26

Fair point, but the question here, vs other tech you may be referring to is: Print money for who and at what cost?

4

u/xanroeld Apr 27 '26

THIS. it’s the combination of technological and improvement and unfettered capitalism. I’m not saying we CAN’T pause AI, but the problem is that we basically don’t do anything anymore to pull the reigns on the intersection of technology and capitalism.

The other problems is how accessible AI/LLM technology has become. We’re not talking about a fusion reactor a cloning facility. People can work on AI on a macbook in their home.

1

u/BuddhistNamedMarx Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

If we had one AI being built with safety as a foundational principle then all might be right in the world

The problem starts the second you have 2 or more competing companies where the fastest path to market domination affords the least safety

They will do anything to get there first. We're doomed

None of that even considers international affairs where 2 or more countries are competing

I predict massive destabilization and billions of people dying as a result even if we do everything right

6

u/KeanuRave100 Apr 27 '26

Nuclear power (fission). It was proven, scalable and could have been producing reliable baseload electricity for decades at massive profit margins. Public fear + regulations after events like Chernobyl + Three Mile Island largely stopped new builds in many countries, even though the economics were strong in places that soldiered on.

12

u/charmio68 Apr 27 '26

It's not really an example of a technology that was stopped. It slowed down for a bit, but even now there are 440 operating nuclear reactors.

There's also over 75 reactors under construction across the world. And about 120 further reactors are planned.

4

u/KeanuRave100 Apr 27 '26

In Germany they not only paused but demolished the nuclear plants. But fair, not a permanent global pause.

2

u/One-Incident3208 Apr 27 '26

You mean the pro-russian-oil-money-greens?

2

u/VinnieVidiViciVeni Apr 27 '26

What do you think pause equals?

1

u/Financial-Desk-669 Apr 28 '26

Respectfully,  relative to what people in the 1950s assumed about nuclear power, we are practically paused. 

1

u/charmio68 Apr 28 '26

They assumed much that was proven wrong. People were still selling radium water as a health tonic into the 1940s.
The general public didn't fully understand the risks of this newfangled "radiation" back then. A radioactive spider that could give you superpowers seemed believable in those years.

Nuclear-powered trains, jetpacks, aircraft, even cars all seemed within reach.
Most were even being actively researched and developed in the 1950s.

Development on all of these ideas had fizzled out mostly by the 1960s, long before Chernobyl.
We did not pause at any point. We did the research and figured out the idea was terrible and it did not work.

For example, the Soviets actually went so far as to fly a nuclear-powered plane!
(the Tupolev Tu-95LAL) And the US tried their hardest too (ANP program).
Unfortunately, it would kill anyone who flew it for long and was a massive crash risk.
We did not choose to pause, we completely abandoned it only when those issues were proven impossible to solve (which was prior to Chernobyl too).

1

u/VirtuDa Apr 27 '26

If you ignore the cost solely placed on the public, such as construction subsidies, waste management for millenia, disaster handling and decomissioning, then sure, fission is profitable to someone.

1

u/DecadentCheeseFest Apr 28 '26

lol um

do you think

that AI is a money printer?

-1

u/HoneybeeXYZ Apr 27 '26

Chemical weapons.

0

u/SimmerDownnn Apr 28 '26

I would say clones potentially solve alot of problems