zlacker

> What's the point of establishing an expensive moon colony when we've got a perfectly functional planet right here?

I think this is the big difference between what you're describing and AI. AI already exists, unlike a moon colony, so we're talking about pushing something forward vs. creating brand new things. It's also pretty well established that it's got tremendous economic value, which means that in our capitalist society, it's going to have a lot of resources directed at it. Not necessarily the case for a moon colony whose economic value is speculative and much longer term.

>>idopms+(OP)
AI exists, yes, but "future AI" that "will be possible soon" that I hear many people talk about on HN doesn't exist. Yet. Maybe it will exist some day. Or maybe not. Or maybe it will take 40 years instead of half a year.

That was really my point: you can't really predict what the future will bring based on what we can do today. People were extrapolating from "we've got fancy rockets and space satellites" to "moon base" in the past, and now they're extrapolating from "GPT-4" to "GPT-5 will replace $thing soon" and even "major step towards AGI". I don't think you can make that assumption.

I'm also somewhat skeptical on the economic value, but that's a long argument I don't have time to expand on right now, and this margin is too narrow to contain it.