u/lughnasadh

$250,000 degrees are long term investments. But what happens if the planned income to justify them isn't there in the 2030s and 2040s? If corporate America is happy to hire people with $10,000 degrees, is there any point in going for an equivalent degree at 25 times the price?

As the AI jobs apocalypse seems to have already started for college graduates, this question has now become urgent reality, not future hypothetical.

TED, ETS and Khan launch new $10k AI degree

"It is developing genetically modified seeds and crops, but it is also targeting the fast-growing industries of cellular agriculture, lab-grown proteins and food from precision fermentation……….What the Chinese lack in frontier biosciences – for now – they can more than compensate with vast industrial scale and state-directed credit. Systemiq thinks this could slash the cost of bioreactors and fermentation systems, achieving “price parity” with traditional food far sooner than widely supposed.

Once alt-protein is cheaper, market forces will make it almost unstoppable, in much the same way that 99pc of net electricity added across the world last year came from solar and wind."

The Western world's collective decision to embrace free-market neoliberalism in the late 20th century now looks like a mistake of truly historic proportions. It was their idea we should outsource "low value" activities like manufactuing.

But there's worse: we are still governed by the same failed ideology. It's why all Economists have groupthink, and politicians (supposedly) on the left differ little from the conservatives. We are permanently ruled by neoliberal conservatism, and voting changes little.

Meanwhile, we can look across the world to China to see a vastly superior version of Capitalism, ironically delivered by so-called "Communists". Some used to think China needed to learn from the West; it is almost certainly going to end up being the other way around.

China’s plan to dominate global food supply chains: Beijing’s 15th five-year plan will marshal all levers of state power towards one end

"Joe Biden’s former commerce secretary Gina Raimondo has decided that UBI in response to AI is the thing to fear most. At the Reagan National Economic Forum, she said: "I personally think it's like the end of America."

She is now heading up a newly-launched, extremely well-funded organization to make sure the country reaches for anything but a basic income in response to AI.

On the one hand, while selling themselves to investors, Big Tech says it can eventually automate almost any job a human can do. What they don't want is any responsibility for their actions. I'd expect conservatives to be against UBI, but Gina Raimondo, the person heading this up, is a Democrat.

The upside? This conversation is getting harder to ignore, and Gina Raimondo is bringing more attention to it, even if it's with dud ideas. In years of paying attention to this topic (AI/robots capable of most work), I've yet to come across a solution that isn't some form of Socialism or UBI.

So give it all you've got, Conservatives & Centrists; I doubt you'll come up with any workable alternatives, despite your $500 million funding.

Gina Raimondo Says Basic Income Would End America. Her New Billion-Dollar Org Is How She Plans to Stop It.

This implies we are two doublings away from Earth being 100% renewables-powered, at least for some of the day, perhaps before 2035. By 2040, more and more of the day will be able to be 100% renewables powered. This won't spell the complete end of gas, coal & nuclear electricity. Gas in particular will be kept as a backup, even when renewables are meeting electricity demands near 99% of the time. There will be rare times when wind and sunlight will be low for long periods.

Batteries have unlocked the era of anytime solar

The bad news about C02 emissions final plateauing is that there are still decades ahead of them adding further to the atmosphere and continuing to raise temperatures. Humanity still has plans for vast amounts of carbon dioxide to add to the atmosphere in the 2030s/40s.

Still, if this truly is a plateau, and not a bump on the path to further increases, then it's worth celebrating. Is this all down to the Middle East War? Hard to tell, but 2026 decreases in global manufacturing and transport activity account for some of the C02 decreases.

Will they rebound when the oil supply does, or has the missing capacity become permanently electrified/renewables-powered? Time will tell, though I suspect the latter may be the case. That's what makes me wonder if C02 emissions finally plateauing means Peak Oil has arrived, too. Unsurprisingly, global 2026 oil use is down because of the Middle East war. That conflict looks far from over. When it's all finally done, will the ME region have found the world doesn't need it so much any more.

Climate TRACE reported that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the month of May 2026 totaled 5.0 billion tonnes CO₂e. This represents a decrease of 0.1% vs. May 2025.

IEA cuts forecast for global oil demand

If the vast extra costs and build times stretching into decades aren't enough to persuade you nuclear power is yesterday's energy solution - here's more proof. Does it matter? Yes. The people who are still advocating for nuclear are taking money and resources from what works.

Renewables are not just "fixing" climate change by being carbon neutral; more importantly, their decentralized nature means they can be climate resilient. We all know there are many more coastal floods, level 5 hurricanes, and extreme droughts in the future.

Big, clunky, expensive centralised systems with vulnerable points of failure are not what we need to cope with that type of world.

Romania shuts its last nuclear reactor as drought-hit Danube river drops to record low

"Base Power charges customers $695 to install a single battery, $19 per month, and 13.1 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, which is about the going rate in the region. Base Power, which owns the battery, sells stored electricity back to the grid during periods of high demand."

As Base, and not the customers, own the batteries, it seems to me these customers are buying insurance against grid downtime as much as anything else.

Base Power has big ambitions, but isn't there a flaw in their plans? Solar Panels.

They're getting cheaper and cheaper & linking them to your own batteries means that you can drop the '13.1 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity' & '$19 per month' part of Base's deal.

Base Power raises another $1B to save the grid using backyard batteries

This approach uses tiny capsules containing living cells plus engineered microorganisms that act as biological “instructions”, releasing signals that tell stem cells what kind of tissue to become. The researchers have demonstrated bone, fat and muscle formation, with printing taking minutes to about an hour and tissue maturation taking roughly three weeks.

You often hear people complain about many exciting new sci-tech developments being in labs, and then never heard of again. But there's a whole host of problems to resolve before the lab-to-successful product journey is complete. In this case, the final product needs to be; reproducible, automated, inexpensive, scalable, regulation-compliant and sufficiently precise.

A technology solution that simultaneously solves the problems of cultivated meat & human tissue bio-printing would be so huge, it makes you wonder why people don't put more urgency into these commercialization efforts.

3D printing gets a living upgrade

It won't be long before that figure is 100%. At first, that won't be for the full year, but that will happen too. And as renewables adoption tends to race ahead of predictions, it will probably happen sooner than many people expect.

Pacific Gas & Electric, which owns Diablo Canyon, quotes its operating cost as $8.4 billion for the period 2024-30. Or $1.4 billion a year. An obvious question arises. Why pay $1.4 billion a year for something you don't need? There are 400+ other nuclear plants around the world. How long before the same economic reality comes for them?

The obvious solution for PG&E and other nuclear operators might be to start courting the data center sector. At least if nuclear-powered AI ever went Skynet, it would be easy to switch it off. I think humanity would have a much better chance of taking out 400 vulnerable targets, as opposed to countless millions of solar panels decentralized around the planet.

California Grid May/Apr 2026 Renewables Curtailment Figures, Source: California Grid Operator CAISO.

Diablo Canyon Operating Costs, Source: PG&E.

"We’ve cut the number of children who die every year by more than half,.....Electric vehicles now make up about one in four new cars sold worldwide, ……There are 1.5 billion fewer people living in extreme poverty today than in 1990, even though the population has risen 50 percent since then……..Nearly 95 million girls have been fully immunized with HPV vaccine, so they’re much less likely to develop cervical cancer later in life…..More than 86 percent of the world’s adults can read and write, up from about 68 percent in 1979, etc, etc"

I admire Bill Gates for his philanthropy and agree with him that viewed long-term and globally, the planet is on an upward trajectory. But there's something very naive in this outlook, and I see the same naivety elsewhere all the time.

"if you know where to look." ...... yes, abroad. Why can't we say hopeful things about home, Bill?

Because, of course, the reason most people in developed countries (especially if they are under 50) are unhappy, is that their living standards are declining, as the rest of the world improves. This isn't a zero-sum game. Other people's lives are not improving at their expense. Rather, for decades, they've let politicians sell them pretty lies. For example? Turns out de-industrialization & shifting manufacturing to Asia wasn't such a great idea.

I'd feel a lot more receptive to the Western super-rich telling us to cheer up, if they could be more honest about their luck in coming out on top in a system they've designed to make most of us poorer.

Proof of progress: Bad news isn’t the only news - There are reasons to be hopeful about the future, if you know where to look.

"The Federal Trade Commission last week issued a sweeping ban on foreign imports of advanced humanoid, quadruped, and wheeled robots, pulling a nascent industry into the same protectionist bracket as chips and AI models……..90% of recent US university robotics research papers relied on Unitree robots, per the Association for Advancing Automation."

It's fine to want to counter Chinese industrial dominance, but is this the cleverest way to do it?

• It will do nothing to slow or stop Chinese robotics. The US is only 14% of Chinese exports these days. The Chinese economy doesn't need America the way it used to.

• The same measures with AI sped up Chinese AI development, not hindered it.

• China's great advantage is a vast manufacturing/industrial hinterland that facilitates startups and development. That is what Europe & the US need to try to replicate.

• China has also joined-up thinking and long-term plans stretching over decades. Bans don't supply those benefits either.

FTC bans foreign humanoid robots, extending AI protectionism to robotics

"A record $242bn of European green-aligned bonds were issued in the first half of 2026, according to the Climate Bonds Initiative, a UK-based NGO. Total global issuance is on track to exceed the $673bn sold in 2024, the previous record year, when issuance in Europe totalled $385bn."

People often comment on the amount of money going into AI, but what Europe & China spend on investing in Green Tech dwarfs it. US/China 2026 AI spending will top 1 trillion in 2026. But Global Green Tech spend must be many multiples of that.

The AI Boom seems driven by investors hoping they'll make the lucky casino bet on AGI. Green Tech may not be as exciting, but as investments go, the results and returns are far more stable and long-lasting.

European green bonds rebound. Issuance in the region will drive global sales to a record high this year

BloombergNEF Finds Global Energy Transition Investment Reached Record $2.3 Trillion in 2025, Up 8% from 2024

"the most obvious financial implication of AI will be mass debt default, bankruptcies, bank failures and chaos in the international financial sector….Global debt (private and public) recently hit a record high of $353 trillion, with $29 trillion added last year alone. Two-thirds of this rise in global debt was incurred by rich countries’ governments trying to soften the blow of losing competitiveness. Borrowing to cover lost income can only last so long. Something will give. The most probable trajectory is that the AI bubble bursts, which may already be happening, triggered by the crash in Korea in recent weeks. This is followed by wealth destruction in the US as the Americans have bet the Wall Street house on Silicon Valley. Thereafter, the productivity rise associated with AI ensures that deflation sets in, unemployment rises as AI replaces the service jobs of the clerical middle (consultants, lawyers and administrators), leading to falling tax revenue and mass debt defaults."

It's one of the ironies of the AI race, that Big Tech's leaders seem mainly in it for the money, yet their creation (AI) will ultimately destroy much of the long-term wealth that they covet. Irish economist David McWilliams does a good job of explaining what is ahead.

He explores this from an angle that rarely gets explored … deflation. As AI deflates both prices and wages, it will make debt steadily more unpayable. That is everything from government debt, to corporate debt, to individual mortgages and personal debt.

The first victim of AI is the economy. Welcome to the 2030s: We are facing an era of mass deflation. If prices fall across the board, how will we repay all the debt we have accumulated?

One of the things I notice about Silicon Valley & Big Tech is how often they co-opt the language of transformation and change, and yet how poor they are at following through. Education, healthcare, and housing - all getting gradually worse. Not Silicon Valley's concern. They're chasing investor trillions to get rich quickly from AI.

The US administration is tariffing left, right, and center to encourage homegrown stories like the one in Mexico. What if Silicon Valley is built to just not care?

Why Mexico Built an $8,500 Electric Car The Olinia 1 is designed to fit the needs of the country’s drivers

Not only has Pakistan doubled its electricity capacity in 24 months. What is even more amazing is that most of that capacity is distributed solar. The stuff ordinary people build on roofs and balconies for their homes or small businesses.

No government per project approval, no World Bank or IMF needing approval, no government raising billions (graft, corruption, etc) for multi-billion dollar fossil fuel projects…….

This route to energy transition has become so easy and cheap that the fossil fuel industry can't compete anymore.

Pakistan is leading now, but huge chunks of Asia, Africa, and South America will follow this model. Distributed solar will probably be installed by the 100s of GW annually in the 2030s.

The solarisation of Pakistan’s energy economy: Distributed solar is driving up electricity demand, bringing huge social and economic benefits.

The same week China cracks down on 'companion AI', Chinese firm Ubtech launches companion humanoid robots. 10 different 'skins' to choose from. 5 Male/5 Female, all extremely attractive.

What have these 10 different humanoid skins got in common? They all look good looking enough to be in pop groups. The new AI rules directed at chatbots say "The rules state AI tools cannot excessively cater to users, induce emotional dependence or addiction, and damage users’ real interpersonal relationships."

I'm sure these robots aren't much use in the traditional sense (try getting them to fold laundry or empty a dishwasher). But they don't have to be. If people are already having satisfying relationships with chatbots, stick a gorgeous looking skin on it like these, and now its orders of magnitude more attractive.

Maybe we shouldn't all be so down on AI/robot companions. If it was normalized, there'd be a lot less tragic incel men out there.

'World's 1st mass-produced humanoid robot' motors to market in China

After decades of only featuring in science fiction. It seems our humanoid robot future is rushing towards us. Every month now, there seems to be real, genuine, incremental improvements. If these claims hold up, then this is another milestone. Laundry folding has become such a robotics training cliché that it might be hard to spot what's significant here.

The key breakthrough is generalization. They claim one laundry-folding video is enough to let the robot learn to fold laundry in any context. Before, the robots could only model specifics. If the rooms, tables, etc., were different, then the robots were thrown into disarray. Not anymore.

We've had "Sputnik" moments, and more lately "Deepseek" moments, but I suspect in the next 18 months we'll have a "humanoid robot" moment. When someone puts enough of these recent incremental improvements into one robot and gets them working, most people will be awed and stunned.

ACT-2 Preview: Generalizing Reliability: The final step towards fully autonomous home robot deployment

"The rules state AI tools cannot excessively cater to users, induce emotional dependence or addiction, and damage users’ real interpersonal relationships."

"Companies must now build in instant-exit options, regular reminders the AI is not real, and limits on long-term emotional memory. Study and work tools are exempt."

"ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent chose to suspend their AI companion features entirely rather than comply."

Birth rate concerns? Even in China it seems politicians will talk about anything but affordability or the cost of living when it comes to "fixing" declining birth rates.

Also, I suspect if you're the kind of person who is prone to this sort of addiction, you will probably find other ways to satisfy it.

Will China use these same sorts of laws now that humanoid robots are on the horizon? Won't people want humanoids that they feel they have an emotional bond with?

"Good news for individual creators. But a HUGE red flag to larger creator studios, podcast networks, kids media companies, localization operations and anyone that runs multiple channels from a single production stack. All the things that media companies do to publish at scale, including shared templates, synced upload schedules and a common infrastructure also make them look like a coordinated slop factory."

Given the huge amount of AI slop I still get in my Youtube feed, I don't think YT is going far enough, quick enough.

An observation? Some people seem fine with AI content. I've come across countless videos that are obviously (to me) ChatGPT scripts voiced by AI. Reading their comments, many people don't seem to be able to tell, or don't care.

THE SLOP PURGE HAS ARRIVED Somewhere at Google, a machine is deleting entire media companies before lunch. Google just revealed how it works.