Elon Musk has outlined new plans of his own to tackle the climate emergency, proposing a wild idea to block out solar energy from the Sun through a constellation of AI-powered satellites in the sky.
Many might point out the irony of a man currently at the forefront of the AI revolution looking for solutions to the climate crisis, but at least Elon Musk has a background in sustainable technology through his control of Tesla.
The fears surrounding global warming and its effect on the environment are very much real though, as artificial intelligence is already having a noticably negative impact on the climate, including Musk's own data center in Memphis which is allegedly causing a number of health problems with local residents as a result of the pollution generated by the methane-gas producing turbines.
However, the richest man in the world has proposed a new idea that would help offset growing concerns about the climate, as per Futurism, and it's just about as wild as you might expect.
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Sharing the idea of his X account, Musk proposed: "A large solar-powered AI satellite constellation would be able to prevent global warming by making tiny adjustments in how much solar energy reached Earth."
Sounds great at first glance – especially as Musk already has existing satellite constellations operated by SpaceX in the sky – but you probably shouldn't get your hopes up too much in practice.
While the satellite concept hasn't yet been tested, the general idea of blocking out energy from the Sun to combat climate change isn't anything new, and it's broadly referred to as a process known as 'solar geoengineering'.
This concept has previously been tested in experiments involving giant umbrellas in space, but has received criticism on a number of fronts from the wider scientific community.
One of the key concerns is that it works only as a temporary band aid, and would prove ineffective in the long term if the actions currently worsening the climate crisis – which now notably include rapidly increasing AI usage – aren't addressed.
Additionally, solar geoengineering also has the potential to cause a number of unintentional side effects and changes to our planet's climate, which would likely be irreversible once they came into effect, regardless of whether you continued using the process or not.
Understandably, both of those concerns have led many to believe that it's not worth relying on, especially as a long term means of 'solving' global warming, yet Musk remains adamant.
"It would only take tiny adjustments to prevent global warming or global cooling for that matter," the tech mogul insisted in the replies to his post, adding that "Earth has been a snowball many times in the past."
He also agreeded with one reply that suggested it as a "logical feature for a Kardashev Type 2 civilization to build," which would likely take thousands of years for humanity to reach, and therefore aren't exactly realistic for dealing with the current issues at hand.