Cheap powerful graphics cards for all
Clean nuclear energy
Reverse osmosis and water filtration technology solutions
UPDATE: Also, why not focus on stopping money going towards cryptocurrency instead of AI. Sure, AI is not the greatest for some, but cryto is a scam every day of the week
room temp superconductors
In everything that has a realistic chance to stop or reverse climate change
Easily the education system at least here in America cuz it’s dog shit. I honestly think there should be another year for high school just one more because kids are coming out of school completely unprepared for anything and I don’t just mean common sense I mean jobs entry level jobs kids can’t do because school didn’t teach them the basics
Edit: I sat down now so I want to elaborate.
I really think schools should focus more on life skills cooking, home improvement, changing your tire and brakes. Everyday stuff you’ll run into but a lot of people don’t know how to do. Just doing it once or twice gives people the confidence that they can do it and can maybe do more. That’s my two cents, that I don’t have
Android catgirl maid robots
Moshi moshi, AI techbros? Yes, I found the next big thing
my god
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?
Or in other words “Male enhancement” research
I guess, although cure for baldness would also be directly beneficial for women as well
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.
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.
Steam Deck is a step in the right direction but a bit too big
I would say “High Temperatur Superconductor”. If they can be made cheaply, they solve our Energy Problems in almost every way. Turbines will become more effective, Transport of Energy cheap and lossless and storage crazy effective. They will also revolitionize meassurement of magnetic fields witch will have a huge impact on medicin and other fields.
Wow, that must be the best answer yet, at least from my ignorant point of view about the feasibility. I am extremely fascinated by material science. Are there any promising lines of research for this?
Yes. Every now and then we get a paper claiming that they found a HTSC. It always is a big deal because they are considered the holy grail of solid state physics. Later we find that it’s a mistake.
We are pretty good though. Records are in the area of −135 °C (138K, -211°F) but the phenomenon was thought to be at a few Kelvin max in the last century.
The big BUT is that it’s science. Meaning that it is not granted that such a material (superconducting at ambient temperature and pressure) even exists
So the keyword to monitor is “HTSC”, got it. I heard Sabine Hossenfelder comment a few papers, but I have no idea about the full body of research.
Get the plastic out of living organisms for fuck’s sake
cure for tinnitus
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
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?
generative ai is not one thing.
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.
idk about that last part actually. some of the stuff we can do for the climate we just aren’t doing.
also we could just hire a few hitmen
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
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.
It is a singular endeavor with tons of moving parts, like pretty much every modern endeavor.
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.
Software that is both ridiculously easy to use and able to bypass any and all DRM schemes past, present, and future. As a firm believer that any form of computer (not including game consoles because I don’t care about them) software that severely limits when, where, and how you can use your legally purchased games, movies, e-books, etcetera, should be outright illegal, this is my answer.
