Ignores the cost of model training, R&D, managing the data centers and more. OpenAI etc regularly admit that all their products lose money. Not to mention the fact that it isn't enough to cover their costs, they have to pay back all those investors while actually generating a profit at some point in the future.
AI doesn't have hopes and desires or something it would rather be doing. It has a utility function that it will optimise for regardless of all else. This doesn't change when it gets smarter, or even when it gets super-intelligence.
Encrypted data on the servers is only useful if your server is just dumb storage. I want the server to actually do something, e.g. serving media, running home assistant etc.
This sounds like the same behaviour from introducing fines for overdue library books or being late picking up children from day-care. It goes from a social olbigation or question ("Do I want to bother the day-care people by arriving late?" / "Do I want to bother this blogger and ask for their time?") to a financial transaction.
This is what I don't get. We don't have masses of unemployed people waiting in the ranks to fill a large amount of new jobs, as unlikely an outcome as that even is. Which means any large uptick in people working in manufacturing would have to come from some other industry. So what jobs would we give up for it?
Humans are better at exploring and doing science than rovers, they could get things done a lot quicker and better. They can repair things and are very adaptable. A mission to spend 6 months on the surface would be great. Perhaps not worth the risk and expense though.
It depends how you are defining "better". Much cheaper and safer sure, but also much slower and much more limited. If it was me making the decisions I'd still go with robots, but I wouldn't call them "better".
Apollo 17 astronauts drove roughly 12 miles in around 8 hours to get to a site and do some science. The curiosity rover's longest drive in a day is around 150 meters. If it drills a rock and encounters some difficulty, it has to wait send a reply home, wait another 4-24 minutes for the message to get there, wait 4-24 minutes for a message to come back before proceeding. It's also obviously unable to conduct repairs on itself or it's tools, or even do something as basic as cleaning the dust from itself.
Robots certainly have the advantage in longevity; curiosity has been operating since 2012 and is still going, but it's like comparing a roomba vs a team of professional cleaners. I think if you asked a planetary scientist if they'd could go back in time and instead of sending curiosity, send a couple of people for six months, they'd do it in a heartbeat.
There's no reason a robot couldn't do repairs on itself or clean dust from itself.
Think of all the science the robot will get done in the decades of research and engineering necessary to figure out how to get a human there and back to do science without immediately dying.
There are many reasons why that you're dismissing with a wave of the hand. But regardless, we are both in agreement that sending robots right now is the wise decision.
Keeping them alive and returning them doesn't require "a leap" which is the central point of OP I am disagreeing with. We have all the technology, material science etc to do it.
Sure, it requires some research, engineering and a crapload of investment, but it doesn't require anything that is currently "science fiction".
