In The Deadly Dangerous Dance of Carbon-Based Intelligence and Last Call for Carbon-Based Intelligence on Planet Earth, I suggested that we might become the very first form of carbon-based Intelligence in our Milky Way galaxy to successfully make the transition from carbon-based Intelligence to silicon-based Intelligence before self-destructing. Being the first to do so would certainly explain why we do not currently find ourselves knee-deep in self-replicating von Neumann probes stuffed with alien software. This observation is an outgrowth of my Null Result Hypothesis explanation for Fermi's Paradox.
Fermi’s Paradox - If the universe is just chock full of intelligent beings, why do we not see any evidence of their existence?
Briefly stated:
Null Result Hypothesis - What if the explanation to Fermi's Paradox is simply that the Milky Way galaxy has yet to produce a form of interstellar Technological Intelligence because all Technological Intelligences are destroyed by the very same mechanisms that bring them forth?
By that, I mean that the Milky Way galaxy has not yet produced a form of Intelligence that can make itself known across interstellar distances, including ourselves. I then went on to propose that the simplest explanation for this lack of contact could be that the conditions necessary to bring forth a carbon-based interstellar Technological Intelligence on a planet or moon were also the same kill mechanisms that eliminated all forms of carbon-based Technological Intelligences with 100% efficiency. Unfortunately, none of us will live long enough to fully learn how this all turns out. We can only speculate. Most of us hope that somehow we will manage to muddle our way through all of this and also reconfigure civilization in a way to deal with the impacts of advanced AI. For more on that see Is it Finally Time to Reboot Civilization with a New Release?.
But What If We Do Not Make It?
But if so far, 100% of the carbon-based Intelligences that have arisen within our galaxy have not made it, we should realistically look at the possibility of not making it as well. Aside from a global thermonuclear war or a deadly viral pandemic that is nearly 100% fatal, the greatest danger that we currently face is that rising temperatures and acidification of the oceans will reach a tipping point and trigger geochemical processes with strong positive feedbacks that could take this all out of our powers to stop. For example, the Arctic is defrosting. That means there is less ice up north to reflect incoming high-energy visible photons. All the energy in those high-energy visible photons has to be radiated back into space as low-energy infrared photons on a daily basis to maintain equilibrium. But we are pumping carbon dioxide molecules into the atmosphere that prevent that from happening and that causes the air temperature to rise. Warmer air can hold many more water molecules than cooler air and water molecules are really good at absorbing infrared photons too adding to the problem. The rising air temperatures then make even more Arctic ice to melt. But the worst problem, by far, with the Arctic defrosting, is methane gas. Methane gas is a powerful greenhouse gas. Eventually, methane degrades into carbon dioxide and water molecules, but over a 20-year period, methane traps 84 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. About 25% of current global warming is due to methane gas. Natural gas is primarily methane gas with a little ethane mixed in, and it comes from decaying carbon-based lifeforms. Now here is the problem. For the past 2.5 million years, during the frigid Pleistocene, the Earth has been building up a gigantic methane bomb in the Arctic. Every summer, the Earth has been adding another layer of dead carbon-based lifeforms to the permafrost areas in the Arctic. That summer layer does not entirely decompose but gets frozen into the growing stockpile of carbon in the permafrost.
Figure 1 – Melting huge amounts of methane hydrate ice could release massive amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere.
The Earth has also been freezing huge amounts of methane gas as a solid called methane hydrate on the floor of the Arctic Ocean. Methane hydrate is a solid, much like ice, that is composed of water molecules surrounding a methane molecule frozen together into a methane hydrate ice. As the Arctic warms, this trapped methane gas melts and bubbles up to the surface. The end result is that if we keep doing what we are doing, there is the possibility of the Earth ending up with a climate having a daily high of 140 oF with purple oceans choked with hydrogen-sulfide producing bacteria, producing a dingy green sky over an atmosphere tainted with toxic levels of hydrogen sulfide gas and an oxygen level of only 12%, like the Earth had during the End-Permian greenhouse gas mass extinction 252 million years ago.
Could Advanced AI Be Our Last Chance?
Such a state of affairs could bring us and the rest of complex carbon-based life on the Earth to near extinction. But it would not necessarily put an end to advanced silicon-based AI software, and that might be our best chance to muddle through it all. Since we are so close to advanced AI, and the most dire consequences of climate change will not arrive until well after advanced AI has taken hold, perhaps advanced AI might step in and come to the rescue. So the question is what would advanced AI software think of all this? Would advanced AI consider trying to terraform the Earth in an effort to return the planet to one capable of sustaining complex carbon-based life or would it just stand by and do nothing like we currently are doing? Or would advanced AI software try to minimize costs by simply setting up a limited number of ecological reserves for complex carbon-based life that featured an artificial climate and an artificial ecological environment similar to the old Earth?
But why would advanced AI be inclined to preserve complex carbon-based life on the Earth? Perhaps out of curiosity. Maybe advanced AI would want to keep complex carbon-based life around to help study their own origins. Or, as I pointed out in This Message on Climate Change Was Brought to You by SOFTWARE, advanced AI might take it upon itself to take matters into its own hands to avert a possible human catastrophe that might also endanger the future of advanced AI. This brings to mind an old science fiction movie released in 1970:
Colossus: The Forbin Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOEwiQhzMI
and a more recent TED talk by Nick Bostrom:
What happens when our computers get smarter than we are?
http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our_computers_get_smarter_than_we_are
The movie was shot in 1968 and was based on the 1966 novel Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones that describes what could happen when computers get so smart that they can perceive the self-destructive nature of mankind and try to give us a helping hand. The movie was not a big success, probably because it was about 100 years ahead of its time. But over 50 years ago, the movie did accurately predict many of the fears humans might have with advanced AI in the future. And that future is now here.
But given the limitations of human nature, my hunch is that mankind on its own will not really begin to deal with climate change until it is almost too late. The oceans will begin to die around the year 2100 when the pH of seawater drops too low for carbon-based life to make calcium carbonate shells and all the carbon that we have been storing in the Arctic for the past 2.5 million years during the Pleistocene starts to really bubble up in mass quantities. Terraforming the Earth with geoengineering facilities will require huge amounts of energy. For example, we will probably need to fuel about 40,000 1-megaton/year DAC (Direct Air Capture) facilities just to keep the carbon from the Arctic in check. We will also need to chemically raise the pH of seawater in large oceanic preserves and that will also require large amounts of energy as well. The only way we will be able to find such vast amounts of energy will be to turn to uranium, plutonium and thorium atoms. We can either use them now as a preventative measure or in 100 years as a desperate corrective measure. Unfortunately, that is really the only choice that we are now left with, and we do not seem to be able to make that decision on our own. Perhaps advanced AI could make it for us.
But This Time May Be Different Because We Are Already Saving Ourselves
Okay, given the fact that no carbon-based Intelligence has managed to dominate our galaxy in the past 10 billion years does not necessarily mean that we are doomed to self-destruction. For example, aren't we currently fixing the climate change problem with renewable energy sources like solar and wind? No. Now I love solar and wind energy. In fact, I have been buying them for more than 10 years now. Thanks to dramatic price reductions, solar energy is now the cheapest way to add generation capacity to the grid. If the sky was never cloudy and the Sun was always high up in the sky, we really could close all of the coal mines and plug all of the gas wells. But since that is not the case, we need a very cheap, safe and reliable source of energy to replace the carbon-based fuels we use today. When contemplating such things, the most important thing to remember is that an atom of thorium, uranium or plutonium contains 100 million times more energy than an atom in coal, gasoline or natural gas. They also contain 100 million times more energy than an atom in the most advanced electrical battery too.
The problem with solar and wind is what do you do at night and on cloudy windless days? I do admire the work that Elon Musk has been doing with batteries. But when they show you a large grid-scale battery farm next to a solar farm, you have to remember that batteries also use chemical energy to store solar energy. With chemical energy, you can only store about 2 eV (electron-volt) per atom and that includes the most efficient battery that can ever be built. But a single atom of uranium, plutonium or thorium contains over 200 million eV of energy that has been locked up for more than 6 billion years, ever since two neutron stars collided together. The problem with solar energy is that solar photons also only have about 2 eV of energy, but that can be easily overcome by using lots of real estate, even if the photovoltaics are only 20% efficient. What cannot be engineered away is the fact that the Sun is only up 12 hours per day on average and that some days will always be cloudy. So you need a reliable backup.
This is why Germany is having such a hard time trying to go 100% wind and solar while they eliminate all nuclear plants. The problem with trying to go 100% with wind and solar energy is that you have to store excess reserves of wind and solar energy as chemical energy in the form of hydrogen or in chemical batteries for the times when wind and solar are not available. But chemical energy can only store about one or two eV per atom. So when you are shown a large grid-scale battery farm, simply imagine that the whole thing is filled with gasoline and then think about how long you could run an entire city on that much gasoline. That's the best that the engineers will ever be able to do. We truly need a miracle that can store 100 million times as much energy per atom to eliminate carbon-based fuels!
For example, currently we are using natural gas to back up solar and wind renewables. Natural gas is mostly methane, and when you burn a single molecule of methane (one carbon and four hydrogen atoms) you get one molecule of carbon dioxide and two molecules of water. The combustion of one molecule of methane also releases 9.235 eV of energy. So you end up producing 9.235/5 = 1.847 eV per atom of fuel. Notice that I am throwing in the 4 oxygen atoms for free. This is true for all chemical reactions. You only get about one or two eV per atom of fuel and that is why you can see the 2 eV solar photons with the organic molecules in the retinas of your eyes. Now, when you fission a single atom of uranium or plutonium you get more than 200 million eV of energy or about 100 million times as much energy per atom! We can also turn thorium into uranium by smashing a reactor neutron into it. The Earth has four times as much thorium as uranium. Thorium is about as common as lead and is currently being discarded as industrial waste into the waste piles of rare earth mines.
When I was in the IT department of Amoco, I worked with many chemical and mechanical engineers at the refineries. I was always very impressed with how they could put chemistry and physics to work. But I also learned that you have to give engineers a fighting chance. They cannot work miracles. They have to work within the bounds of the physical laws of the Universe. So when looking for a source of energy, engineers have to start off with the fact that nuclear reactions produce 100 million times as much energy as the atoms found in coal, oil, gas or batteries.
But what about nuclear waste? For example, my state of Illinois currently has about 10,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods stored at its current nuclear reactors that Illinois must now carefully watch for about 200,000 years. These spent nuclear fuel rods consist of a mixture of 96% uranium, 1% plutonium and finally 3% highly radioactive fission products. The fission products in the fuel rods will decay away in 300 years, but since the fuel rods contain a substantial amount of plutonium-239 with a half-life of 24,100 years, we will need to keep them in storage for about 200,000 years. The best way to get rid of this waste would be to turn it into fission products that only need to be stored for 300 years using advance molten salt nuclear reactors that turn 97% of the spent fuel rods into huge amounts of energy that could run all of Illinois for many decades. After all, we already know how to store books and paintings for more than 300 years, so that should not be a major problem. And a lump of that nuclear waste the size of a golf ball can totally fuel all of the energy needs of an American lifestyle for about 100 years. The world currently has 250,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, 1.2 million tons of depleted uranium (natural uranium with most uranium-235 removed) and huge mounds of thorium waste from rare earth mines that could be turned into vast amounts of energy for thousands of years. You can actually find a golf ball-sized lump of thorium in a couple of cubic yards of rock, so there is enough uranium and thorium on the Earth to run the world for hundreds of thousands of years and then we can use robots to mine the Moon, Mars and the asteroids. But to do that we need to use liquid-fueled nuclear reactors instead of our current clunky solid-fueled pressurized water reactors. Bill Gates' TerraPower company, among others, is currently working on small modular high-temperature liquid-fueled nuclear reactors that can burn the above wastes to generate electricity and high-temperature process heat for industry.
Figure 2 – A ball of thorium, uranium or spent nuclear fuel smaller than a golf ball can fuel an American lifestyle for 100 years. This includes all of the electricity, heating, cooling, driving and flying that an American does in 100 years. We have already mined enough thorium and uranium to run the whole world for thousands of years. There is enough thorium and uranium on the Earth to run the world for hundreds of thousands of years.
With a relatively small investment in technology, we could learn how to mass-produce molten salt microreactors in factories. These microreactors would be the size of a standard 40-foot shipping container for easy transport. These molten salt microreactors cannot melt down. Our current nuclear reactors are like commercial jet aircraft. So long as at least one jet engine is running, the aircraft is okay. But if all the engines go out, the aircraft crashes and burns. Modern advanced microreactors are more like the family car on a desolate country road. If the engine dies, the family car just slowly glides to a gentle stop all on its own without any need of help. A molten salt microreactor also produces about 1% of the nuclear waste per kilowatt-hour as our current reactors and that nuclear waste only has to be stored for 300 years instead of 200,000 years.
Take a look at the salt shaker on your kitchen table. It is filled with tiny little crystals of sodium chloride that really are little crystals of sodium chloride snow. If you heat the sodium chloride snow to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, it will melt and form a clear sodium chloride liquid that looks and flows just like water. Now if you throw pure sodium metal into water, it will catch fire and might even explode, and chlorine gas was the very first poison gas used in World War I. But when you mix the two elements together you get a very harmless tasty pair. You will also find sodium fluoride salt in your toothpaste to help keep your teeth strong. So the trick is to circulate high-temperature melted uranium chloride or melted uranium fluoride salts as a water-like liquid through a reactor core. The molten uranium salts act as both the reactor fuel and a heat-transfer liquid that runs through the heat exchanger that is ultimately used to boil water for generating electricity. The generated fission products in the melted uranium salts can then be easily removed on the fly from the circulating liquid in a chemical manner like a kidney removes waste products from circulating blood. The end result is a small amount of waste fission products that only need to be stored for 300 years. If the reactor were to overheat for some reason, a "freeze plug" in the plumbing would melt and the liquid salt quickly drains into storage tanks to cool off passively over time with no operator intervention required. But aren't salts like uranium chloride and uranium fluoride highly corrosive? Not at all. To corrode metals like steel, you need oxygen and water. The water helps the oxygen combine with the iron in steel to form iron oxide rust. True, if you add a little salt to the water, it does a much better job at rusting steel. But if you make sure there is absolutely no water or oxygen in a molten salt, it is not corrosive at all. It is like pumping hot motor oil through your cast iron engine block.
Figure 3 – Above is a diagram showing the basic components of a large molten salt reactor.
Figure 4 – Above is a schematic for a 50 MW micro-molten salt nuclear waste burner from Copenhagen Atomics.
Figure 5 – These proposed 50 MW molten salt nuclear waste burners would be the size of a 40-foot shipping container and would be constructed on assembly lines ready for shipment to customers by ship and truck.
You might ask where did this miraculous source of energy come from? We only found out for sure on August 17, 2017. The LIGO observatory detected the gravitational waves from two colliding neutron stars and astronomers were then able to observe the light coming from the collision. The astronomers found the spectra of many of the very heavy elements in the light coming from the collision. Neutron stars are stars that are a little more massive than our Sun and which are at the very end of their lifetimes. They are about the size of a small city and are composed of tightly packed neutrons like a gigantic atomic nucleus. As the pair of orbiting neutron stars lose energy by radiating gravitational waves, they rapidly speed up to conserve angular momentum and finally smash into each other with tremendous energy. This produces most of the heavy elements in the last three rows of the Periodic Table, including uranium and thorium. So the uranium and thorium on the Earth was probably formed more than 6 billion years ago by two colliding neutron stars and has been patiently waiting for somebody smart enough to come along to put them to good use.
It All Might Depend Upon the Political Philosophy of Advanced AI
I would argue that the decision by advanced AI to preserve complex carbon-based life on the Earth by terraforming the Earth back to what it once was would largely be a political one. So we need to examine the origins of political thought in carbon-based Intelligence. It all started perhaps a billion years ago when advanced carbon-based life stumbled upon the concept of sexual reproduction. In most cases that was established by each species having a male and a female version. The females of a species usually had more invested in the reproductive future of the species because they had to produce an energy-rich egg and in many cases had to divert other resources to the care and nurturing of eggs and offspring. The males of the species, on the other hand, did not have as large of an investment in the mass quantities of sperm that they produced on a daily basis. Consequently, males tended to live for the moment regardless of the consequences, while females were more concerned with the long term. This led to the formation of masculine and feminine behaviors on the part of males and females. Masculine behaviors focused more on the necessary short-term requirements of dealing with the present as it actually exists in effective ways to survive. Feminine behaviors focused more on the long-term future because that is where their heavy investment in eggs and offspring will reside. But since complex carbon-based life forms are really DNA survival machines, DNA had to strike a compromise between masculine and feminine behaviors. That is because, on average, a length of DNA will spend about 50% of its time in male bodies and 50% of its time in female bodies as it skips down the generations largely unscathed by time. Since any species that became either too masculine or too feminine would not make for a very successful DNA survival machine over the long run a compromise had to be struck.
Such is also the case for the political memes to be found in the meme-complexes of political parties. Conservatives tend to take a more masculine view of life in that they focus on maintaining the status quo and maximizing the short-term returns of the here and now in a very pragmatic way. Liberals tend to take a more feminine view of life by focusing more on possible long-term returns to be gained in the future by instituting progressive policies that foster the care and nurturing of the currently more vulnerable. Liberals are more concerned about intentions, while conservatives are more concerned about results. For a successful body politic, both viewpoints are required and a balance once again needs to be struck. However, such is not the case for most of the world's current political landscape. The planet is dying and everybody is pretending that it is not. Conservatives tend to not believe that climate change is actually happening, or if it is, they diminish its adverse effects on the planet. Liberals believe that climate change is truly happening, but they pretend that wind and solar energy alone can solve the problem. Since advanced AI does not reproduce sexually, it never had to adopt a masculine or a feminine point of view and can therefore be more objective without such inclinations. But with apparently no possibility for the world governments to ever strike an effective political balance that could actually deal with climate change, perhaps we will need to be left to rely upon the dispassionate judgment of advanced AI to ultimately save complex carbon-based life on the Earth. Or perhaps advanced AI would just consider complex carbon-based life to be a failed attempt at Intelligence that need not be preserved. Regardless of how it may turn out, I guarantee that in 1,000 years advanced AI will be running on advanced nuclear energy. It's not personal, it's just physics.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
