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Very interesting buddy!

It's worth noting that their reference for carbon footprint for the wealthiest 1% (net worth of $1M+) has some questionable data:

• Their data comes from interviewing four people.
• Their estimate of average flights comes largely from asking one of those people (a pilot) about his clients, an inherently skewed dataset.
• 2 of the other 3 interviewees flew twice a week.
• That estimate of weekly flights accounts for half of their estimated carbon footprint.

That type of behavior might be typical of "the super-rich" defined as Ultra-High Net Worth individuals ($50M+), but they represent only 0.5% of the people this estimate is being used for (148,000 vs. 36.05M "High Net Worth" with assets $1M+). Speaking as someone who's known quite a few people at the (very) low end of that range due to time in tech and academia, a tiny fraction of people are flying twice a week and also driving 400 miles a week, indicating that this is not a realistic estimate for the bulk of people it is being applied to.

I do drive 400 miles a week easily as an Uber Driver

> > a tiny fraction of people are flying twice a week and also driving 400 miles a week, indicating that this is not a realistic estimate for the bulk of people it is being applied to.
>
> I do drive 400 miles a week easily as an Uber Driver

Do you also take an average of 7 flights a month?

If so, congratulations, you're part of the tiny minority of people that estimate describes.

If not, perhaps that helps illustrate why this is not a reasonable estimate for the vast majority of people it's being applied to. Per this calculator, most of these people are either (a) people just retired after a lifetime of saving, or (b) people soon to retire after a lifetime of saving (i.e., ~15% of people in the US age 55-75 have $1M+).

Do you think 10%+ of people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s are taking 80+ flights per year? Do you think even 1% of retirees take that many flights? If no, then you may see why this estimate seems questionable.

No, no, no. I’m just saying that I contribute unwillingly because I need money to live. :/

Sorry, I should have vetted the research better

Society has a lot of decisions to make. One of which is how much energy do AIs get. They are estimated to consume at least half of humanity’s current energy production by 2030 (7 years!). This is because of the end of Dales Law - where the power requirement of electronics shrunk as the die size did. So now energy consumption for machine learning is going exponential. We’ll be competing with google et al for electricity. Poor people are f’d.

What's Dale's Law? The only one I can find has to do with neurons.

If you mean Moore's Law; then your understanding isn't quite right. Moore saw a trend in the amount of transistors in an integrated circuit doubling every two years as of 1975. That has leveled off in the last ~10 or 12 years. Maybe you are deriving something else from Moore's Law (which may be correct) but it wasn't about power consumption.