[dijit]

The half-life of iron is pretty low too, the advantage of the rail system is what it allowed us to do when it was cheap enough.

All the investment in AI should help bring infrastructure up to a higher level, power distribution and cooling for example are at a much higher level than would have otherwise been.

Who knows what use that might have if it suddenly becomes incredibly cheap.

(this is my silver lining thinking)

[rwmj]

The lasting infrastructure of railways was the rights of way and the stations, and I think you're hinting that building them in the 1840s allowed us to do that when no one cared very much about NIMBYs or bulldozing through the countryside.

What's the corresponding infrastructure of AI? The major cost - the GPUs - are effectively obsolete after 3-5 years. The physical location of the datacenters, power, cooling and fibre that connects them might be the lasting infrastructure. Is datacenter location important? Are we actually building up new power sources (apart from endless announcements about FANGs opening nuclear power stations, which as far as I'm aware have not happened yet)?

[AbstractH24]

I’d look to the lasting infrastructure improvement from the dotcom era. Such as laying fiber.

A big ones here may also be increased technological literacy, the rise of a new UI paradigm (chat with a non-human) and the structuring so much data in the world that while it previously existed was hard to meaningfully leverage because it was unstructured.

And, last but not least, lowering the barrier to entry to starting tech companies by eliminating and launching a new generation of SMB-like tech startups that don’t need to take VC-money and scale to survive. And as a result can can solve problems facing niche industries (not to be confused with things like Wix or Etsy that lowered the barriers business selling real world products to create an online presence)

If nothing else, mainstreaming AI will have the same impact mainstreaming spreadsheets did.

[pjc50]

The half-life of metallic iron is apparently 2.6 million years, so I'm not sure what you mean there.

[isoprophlex]

For some radioactive isotope probably. Uranium 235 half life is, what, > 500 million years? That would make iron significantly hotter. Normal Fe is effectively around forever.

[A_D_E_P_T]

On long enough timescales, the most stable thing in the universe is the iron isotope 56Fe. All heavier atoms will decay to 56Fe, and all lighter atoms will eventually combine to form 56Fe via quantum processes, even at zero temperature. 10^15000 years from now, there'll be iron stars comprised almost entirely of 56Fe.

[dijit]

Hahahah,

fair point, maybe you could show me a 50 year old rail that is still worthy of being ridden. ;)

Even a 20 year old rail is problematic from what I understand (from a UK perspective).

[1718627440]

It's not the tracks itself that need to be maintained first. When they are the issue the easiest fix is to swap the rails.

What need to be done first is the gravel and then also the ties. Expensive are also trackout/switches with motors, and of course the signal boxes. What is now the big deal is adoption to newer technologies like ETCS.

What needs the fastest maintenance nowadays, though, is software :-).

[GeoAtreides]

Maybe some isotopes of iron have a half-life, stable isotopes don't decay (iron is the element where all decay chains end)

[ViewTrick1002]

Rust.