BearStorms t1_is332cy wrote on October 12, 2022 at 11:07 PM

Reply to comment by civilrunner in what jobs will we have post singularity? by theferalturtle

Beautiful vision of a possible future!

>That and we'll be able to rapidly respond to things like forest fires with automated response drones within minutes due to satellite monitoring to ensure they never get out of control and forests are maintained with less destructive methods thanks to automation.

I was thinking about this and there are no technical limitations on doing this today. Yes, it may need some investment, but seeing what a huge problem this has become in the Western US why is there not a lot more investment into much better wildfire management? It surely must cause damages in order of 10s or even 100s of billions of dollars every year, especially if you calculate all negative externalities like impact on health due to air quality, etc.

civilrunner t1_is3l0mn wrote on October 13, 2022 at 1:20 AM

Rapid response technology is close but not there yet. It would require constant satellite surveillance for heat signatures (which we either have the capacity to do today or will within 5-10 years). Beyond that you need a swarm of autonomous heavy lift drones that can fill up and actually carry enough water which likely requires better batteries to be economical since today's best heavy lift drones are limited to a few hundred pounds. I do expect it to be something we're close to having though. Beyond that ideally you would want some form of AI to check to make sure it is the start of a forest fire and not something else (this should be pretty easy given burn bans and fire spreading and such) If we could respond to forest fires really quickly they become a lot less of a problem and it would allow us to grow forests again to help with carbon capture (forest fires release all the carbon captured from said forest).

I suspect once its feasible it will be done fairly quickly because as you said forest fires are becoming extremely expensive and well life altering so the economics and demand are definitely there.

BearStorms t1_is3xvu6 wrote on October 13, 2022 at 2:57 AM

>Beyond that you need a swarm of autonomous heavy lift drones that can fill up and actually carry enough water which likely requires better batteries

Why not use hydrogen fuel cell or even gas powered drones for this?

civilrunner t1_is3y5ju wrote on October 13, 2022 at 2:59 AM

Honestly I'm not sure and have been curious about that myself. It could just be that all the other technologies aren't reliable enough yet as well.