It seems that artificial intelligence (AI) is a big theme in this year's summer movies. I have seen Ex Machina (great movie) and Age of Ultron and will surely see Genisys when it comes out. Judgement Day is probably still my favorite movie. The most common theme in AI movies is that artificial intelligence will be created and it will be hostile towards its creator.
There are people and huge tech companies working towards the creation of AI right now and most of them, if not all of them, are working toward a future where they believe that it will enhance mankind, not enslave or replace it. There is a broad spectrum of possible attitudes for AI(s) to have toward us and near limitless applications and shapes our relationship could take. I look to the future answering this question with anticipation.
Our relationship with AI encompasses a spectrum where on one end machines continue to be in servitude to mankind and on the other end mankind is either annihilated or in servitude to machines. I don't really see the necessity for mankind's enslaving in the case of a machine world, that is unless we get some details on this "form of fusion" that the future might hold, but that is beside the point.
What has not been explored as much is the spectrum in the middle ground where we form a symbiotic relationship with machines. Maybe this hasn't been explored as much because it is more difficult to envision but it could make for a very interesting and mutually beneficial relationship between man and machine. Things are seldom as bad or as good as they are expected to be so I suspect that we will land somewhere in that middle ground which is filled with endless unexplored and unpredictable possibilities.
I have a lot of questions, just a few of which are... What if machines continue to be integrated into our lives to the point where we can no longer differentiate between man and machine? What kind of laws will need to be in place? Do the laws of men govern machines? How do we even make that distinction in the future? How long before PETMAI is formed (people for the ethical treatment of machines and artificial intelligence)?
I know these questions sound strange but the future is always strange until it's not. Someday our descendents will look back at these simple times and marvel how we ever got anything done with such rudimentary tools and such a limited work force. As long as there are generations, there will be a disconnect between them along the grounds of technology. If you told a person 100 years ago that today 3 billion people would be continuously connected through a network of computers that you could access even while flying across the ocean at 30,000+ feet inside a metal whale that is traveling at 500+ miles per hour, you would probably be committed or accused of witchcraft.
But just in case the future doesn't pan out in that middle ground, I made a video to cover my bases, click on the link below to watch it:
https://youtu.be/Ys5eAL-oOS0
Traditionally, I have been a proponent of doing away with fuel (particularly petroleum) subsidies (done more heavily in other parts of the world) as a way for the renewable energies to be more competitive. Instead, it has played out that renewable energy sources themselves have been heavily subsidized domestically and the price of crude oil has plummeted.
I was initially not happy that the price of crude oil had plummeted so much because I know it makes the economics of renewable sources worse. While the subsidies were heavily in place for renewable energy installations, renewable installation subsidies, consumption reducing upgrades and electric based transportation were the main products of the subsidies. the price of renewable energy has fallen dramatically. The renewable that most dramatically dropped in price was roof installed PV, which even when factoring the capacity factor of 20% has a price per Watt of somewhere between $1.80 - $3.50/ watt.
Tesla is expected to announce shortly that they are working on a battery system for the home. The economics of electric vehicles are already pretty good but if you couple the economics of transportation with power generation, then you get a whole other level of bundling and savings and now renewable energy produced at the point of consumption become economical for more than the high to mid tier electric consumer. The last obstacle is range and an efficient and integrated storage system will help tackle both of renewable energy's longstanding shortfalls, cost/ energy and indeterminacy, which Tesla is threatening to do.
So, how do low oil prices today help the environment? I posit the following potential scenario. If you believe Elon Musk's claims that residential solar will beat natural gas in $/watt in the near future and that when you combine your transportation and energy budget and buy a single system, the cost savings further improve the economics of renewable energy sources and electric vehicles and that finally, battery advances in the future will win over the laggards or renewable energy and electric cars by simple economics then you have painted a scenario in which fossil fuels are once again a relic of the past. If this future is anywhere near as fast approaching as it seems to be, then the demand for fossil fuels for transportation will fall, sharply and fossil fuels will used for other things (such as making plastics, lubricants, etc).
This massive decrease in demand would further lower the price of fossil fuels but the price will be constrained by the infrastructure needed to properly transport and refine them to the grades at which they can be burned cleanly and efficiently for transportation which means there is a price floor. We are already at a price of oil which is causing wells which are difficult to extract uneconomical to go idle. With a lowering of demand and lower price per barrel, the only wells that will continue to be operational are the ones with easy to reach deposits; not fracking, not tar sands, maybe not even ocean deposits.
This is good news as we have seen that removal of petroleum from places like the tar sands of the Borealis forest in Canada has profound large detrimental environmental effects. We've seen sinkholes, earthquakes pollution in drinking water and several other ecological problems here at home as well. See an earthquake map of Oklahoma over time if you have any doubt.
Electric cars, PV panels and battery packs aren't the panacea to stop climate change or other detrimental environmental effects, at least not by themselves. These technologies still rely on volatile, toxic and rare elements and chemicals which will have to be extracted from the earth, processed and then either rehabilitated or disposed of. To truly be "green", the ecological impact of every point of the technology's life cycle will have to be continually considered and reduced.
(Read this paragraph in a Jamaican accent for full effect) Fundamentally, from a Thermodynamics standpoint by burning a fossil fuel you are taking a very complex molecule and doing an irreversible process (from a net energy standpoint) in which you break those bonds and release a great amount of heat and create smaller molecules. This is an irreversible process, at least on any meaningful time scale and with technology available in any near future. With renewable energy capture you are typically taking waste energy; waste heat, waste light, potential energy of water, etc and converting it to much more usable form for humans as well as reducing the consumption of humans on a per/capita basis.
The amount of renewable energy needed to power the human race is a small fraction of the total renewable energy available on planet earth. If we were 100% powered by renewable energy and it was conscientiously implemented, it would have much less impact on the environment because of the fundamental thermodynamic advantages of renewable processes over the combustion processes
The rise of renewable energy sources will trigger a slowdown of the creation of combustion products and a slowing or
stopping of the tapping of more difficult and therefore expensive to
extract sources. This could allow our planet to begin the healing process. Less wildlife will be
displaced to access the fossil fuels below, less CO2 will be in the air to be absorbed by
photosynthesis from emissions. We may yet reach a point where our
environmental impact continuously reduces even as our appetite for energy and standard of living continues to increase and those wells that would have been tapped or remain idle will do so because of the economics of cheap oil.
