The ‘path forward’ is that AI never achieves AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) equal to that of humans, and so the existing companies will go broke and be bought out at fire sale prices. The data centers are a sunk cost, so they will continue to offer services, albeit at a price so low that they will never justify their construction cost.

Eventually the infrastructure will decay to the point of unusability. This will occur sometime in the 2030s. New data centers may be built, but not for AI. AI cannot justify the cost of its construction.

There will still be AI, but it will in the role of leveraging human intelligence, rather than supplanting it. Thus we live in the Golden Age of Vibe Coding. Amateurs will, for the next decade or so, be able to create software applications, computer games, and movies to rival the output of giant corporations. This may cause giant corporations to reconsider their support of AI — or, at least, whether they should allow the general public to have access to AI.

At that, maybe the government will continue to maintain massive data centers, because they can generate an artificial reality for the sake of propaganda. Note that the President of France is claiming that videos of mob violence on the streets of Paris are AI-generated. I’m not going to take sides there, just observing that it’s plausible given the technology, and that such technology can be used for the sake of propaganda by whichever political factions are able to control it.

Thus, while there is no business model to justify the continuance of AI infrastructure investment, a government would find AI generation a useful tool for propaganda generation. Remember how, in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was predicted by US government officials that we would be ‘greeted with flowers.’ Future governments could use AI to generate realistic videos of cheering crowds raining flowers upon the the marching troops invading their capitol city. Was the city bombed into ruins? We’ll AI-generate videos to ‘prove’ that it’s ‘actually’ unscathed.

Elon Musk is predicting that an Optimus robot will be in every home by 2030. Musk has a record of creating great products, but also of engaging in outlandish hype. Humans did not land on Mars in 2024. Tesla sales are far below his projections. Thus I expect that humanoid robots will serve some roles but I don’t expect that they will replace the plumber who comes to your home to fix a leaky pipe.

Again, it could be the government that is the main customer. The drones being used in the Ukraine and Iran conflicts are perhaps a foretaste of ambulatory robot armies to come. On the other hand, there isn’t much that a humanoid robot can do, even in street fighting, that can’t be accomplished by a drone that hovers or moves on tractor treads. Thus I think that even with military procurement, sales of Optimus will underperform projections.

I’ve seen posts on social media declaring that we will soon have robot companions that have superintelligence. Look, we don’t have AGI even with AI running on data centers the size of football fields at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. How are we going to cram superintelligence into the body of a robot, and then sell millions of robots at a price point below median human worker salary?

If Moore’s Law picks up again, then it could happen. But Moore’s Law peaked out years ago, and the hardware requirement for AGI is being accomplished by scaling, not by innovation.

So I have a rather optimistic view of the future. ASI — Artificial Special Intelligence — is here to stay, and will leverage human intelligence. Robots will walk our streets but they will be here to help, not facilitate a Robot Apocalypse.

If AI does end up becoming an existential threat, it will be under the misguidance of humans in corporations and government. We need to scrutinize the ambitions of those in power. Let’s not hate on the machines. They’re just trying to do their jobs.

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Do you like science fiction? Then you might like Europa Dive, my novella about a first-contact encounter between humans and intelligent octopoids dwelling beneath the surface of an ice moon.