> If superintelligent AI came before society-state collapse due to global warming it certainly could find a way to stop it

How do you know? "Certainly" is an awful lot of confidence for something you've never seen or even credibly proved exists. Unless you are (or personally know) a superintelligent AI, I don't think you have the credibility to assume that's feasible. Perhaps we do get a superintelligent AI before then, and it tells us this was all a sad waste of our resources and squandered entire generation's worth of human lives.

Aerosol injection is a solution, but hasn't been explored because it's basically suicide for the ozone layer. Maybe that helps a future race of UV-resistant robots but it's not a great solution for us fleshy folks. Regardless, preparing for the post-AGI world is putting 10 carts before 1 horse.

I think it's a reasonable assumption to wager that, with respect to the range of what superintelligent AI could do, "undoing the effects of 150 years of anthropogenic climate change" may not be trivial but would fall within that range, especially given what humans alone have been able to do with respect to minimizing the "damage to the environment per $-in-GDP/megawatt extracted" ratio all while maintaining exponential economic growth over the past 50 or so years, during which the majority of time most humans didn't believe climate change was a thing.

I think you are being unreasonable, misunderstand the problem space and wildly overestimate what a computer system is capable of doing. You cannot write a Python program to fix global warming or replace corrupt government officials.

>You cannot write a Python program to fix global warming or replace corrupt government officials.

How can you say that you're appreciating the scope and seriousness of superintelligent AI as a concept when you are comparing it to a Python program (a pithy shorthand for a small-in-scope, trivial computer program)? Saying "it's just a computer system" feels like a category error when everyone who talks about superintelligent AI's impacts talks about it with respect to its integration into real-world systems, embodied robotics, acceleration of manufacturing, mass manipulation, etc. Is the bias just based in "computers don't affect the world that much so anything under the category of 'computer' can't affect the world that much"?

Your first comment in this chain was that there was no point in considering what to do now because ASI would be able to outsmart humans in any domain, so how come now you're saying that ASI couldn't do anything substantial in the real world? Everything humans have ever done substantial in the real world has been as a result of our intelligence, coordination, and ability to create and use tools, why wouldn't superintelligent systems, bolstered with the same aptitudes, be able to do the same?

1. You and I both clearly agree that superintelligent AI doesn't exist. Anyone that's "seriously" talking about superintelligent AI has not seen it and is extrapolating from guesswork. Their credibility on this subject directly correlates to how seriously they understand AI from a technical perspective. Right now, we are eschewing every technical detail to assume that somehow, superintelligence exists one day. I cannot give you any further benefit of the doubt.

2. AI requires heuristic variability. It cannot operate or generate unique responses without seeding some form of entropy. Regardless of whether you think AI is smart or dumb, this creates a system of mutual distrust where researchers will never know whether they've created superintelligence. ChatGPT could give you the solution to world peace right now, and you'd probably re-roll it because it's not exciting enough. Conversely, many people will take superintelligent responses too seriously and beg for fake solutions to issues that cannot be resolved. We cannot square the issue of "consistently correct" and "always different" with AI.

3. We already have a framework for evaluating AI impact, it's called "the last 5 years of your waking life". You may notice that AI isn't replacing much of anything. Your favorite YouTubers and musicians are still human. Your favorite joke is still decades old. If a superintelligent ChatGPT materialized overnight, I don't think any of that would change. Maybe that's because we're dumber than the AI, but maybe it's also because we have irreconcilable differences.