Apr 18, 2023 02:51 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 18, 2023 02:52 PM by C C.)
Building a Dyson sphere using ChatGPT
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/20...ore-231703
INTRO: In 1960, physicist Freeman Dyson published a paper in the journal Science describing how a technologically advanced civilization would make its presence known. Dyson’s assumption was that whether an advanced civilization signals its intelligence or hides it from us, it would not be able to hide the one thing that’s essential for any civilization to grow – energy. Advanced civilizations would likely try to capture all the energy of their star to grow.
For doing this, borrowing an idea from Olaf Stapledon, Dyson imagined the civilization taking apart a number of the planets and other material in their solar system to build a shell of material that would fully enclose their planet, thus capturing far more of the heat than what they could otherwise. This energy-capturing sphere would radiate its enormous waste heat out in the infrared spectrum. So one way to find out alien civilizations would be to look for signatures of this infrared radiation in space. Since then these giant spheres – later sometimes imagined as distributed panels rather than single continuous shells – that can be constructed by advanced civilizations to capture their star’s energy have become known as Dyson spheres. They have been featured in science fiction books and TV shows including Star Trek.
I asked AI engine chatGPT to build me a hypothetical 2 meter thick Dyson sphere at a distance of 2 AU (~300 million kilometers). I wanted to see how efficiently chatGPT harnesses information from the internet to give me specifics and how well its large language model (LLM) of computation understood what I was saying.
I asked it a number of questions based on the technology, economics and material science aspects of building a giant structure like this and it answered all of them within reasonable bounds. Some of the questions I asked chatGPT included:
I verified at least some (but not all) of the numbers it gave me from other sources and was finally able to arrive at the following conclusion:
Building a 1 meter thick Dyson sphere at 1 AU from the sun would take approximately 10^25 kilograms of material. The composition of this material would include silicon, carbon and metals. If we could disassemble both Jupiter and Mercury and also mine metal-rich asteroids and the major metal-rich moons of Jupiter and Saturn, we would get least 10^27 kilograms of material would be more than enough to build this sphere. At current world GDP growth rates and assuming current prices, it would take about 600 years for us to have enough capital to build the sphere.
The calculation includes a number of approximations, but 600 years is a very short period of time based on astronomical and even civilizational timescales. If we improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of materials through technological developments – a trend that has been the norm and not the exception throughout human history – the timelines could be shorter.
I must say I am enormously impressed. The questions I answered were simple, the answers complex. What is amazing about this back and forth is that if I had to assemble the same set of answers together by doing a regular Google search or by constructing written sources, it would have taken me days, if not weeks, to do it. At the very least, my exchange with chatGPT shows that it can accelerate the process of gathering together information in a coherent manner exponentially, and a not insignificant reason for this is its ability to understand natural human language and then put together answers based on that understanding.
I am copying my exchange with chatGPT below in its entirety to give readers an idea of the level of detail it can bring to the conversation. There’s little doubt to me that we are in a new regime of machine intelligence here, one that surpasses anything we have seen before. With tweaks that ensure even greater accuracy, we will soon be using chatGPT and its descendants to design complex technological projects and explore creative ideas. If nothing else, it would be able to provide excellent starting points... (MORE - details)
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/20...ore-231703
INTRO: In 1960, physicist Freeman Dyson published a paper in the journal Science describing how a technologically advanced civilization would make its presence known. Dyson’s assumption was that whether an advanced civilization signals its intelligence or hides it from us, it would not be able to hide the one thing that’s essential for any civilization to grow – energy. Advanced civilizations would likely try to capture all the energy of their star to grow.
For doing this, borrowing an idea from Olaf Stapledon, Dyson imagined the civilization taking apart a number of the planets and other material in their solar system to build a shell of material that would fully enclose their planet, thus capturing far more of the heat than what they could otherwise. This energy-capturing sphere would radiate its enormous waste heat out in the infrared spectrum. So one way to find out alien civilizations would be to look for signatures of this infrared radiation in space. Since then these giant spheres – later sometimes imagined as distributed panels rather than single continuous shells – that can be constructed by advanced civilizations to capture their star’s energy have become known as Dyson spheres. They have been featured in science fiction books and TV shows including Star Trek.
I asked AI engine chatGPT to build me a hypothetical 2 meter thick Dyson sphere at a distance of 2 AU (~300 million kilometers). I wanted to see how efficiently chatGPT harnesses information from the internet to give me specifics and how well its large language model (LLM) of computation understood what I was saying.
I asked it a number of questions based on the technology, economics and material science aspects of building a giant structure like this and it answered all of them within reasonable bounds. Some of the questions I asked chatGPT included:
- How much material would I need to build this Dyson sphere? What would be its composition?
- What are major sources of these materials in the solar system?
- What would it take to mine asteroids for procuring this material?
- If we were to mine asteroids, what kind of construction, human support, transportation and communication equipment would we need? (I was especially impressed by the level of detail, including equipment type and cost, that chatGPT included in its answers).
- What would be the rough cost of building this Dyson sphere?
I verified at least some (but not all) of the numbers it gave me from other sources and was finally able to arrive at the following conclusion:
Building a 1 meter thick Dyson sphere at 1 AU from the sun would take approximately 10^25 kilograms of material. The composition of this material would include silicon, carbon and metals. If we could disassemble both Jupiter and Mercury and also mine metal-rich asteroids and the major metal-rich moons of Jupiter and Saturn, we would get least 10^27 kilograms of material would be more than enough to build this sphere. At current world GDP growth rates and assuming current prices, it would take about 600 years for us to have enough capital to build the sphere.
The calculation includes a number of approximations, but 600 years is a very short period of time based on astronomical and even civilizational timescales. If we improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of materials through technological developments – a trend that has been the norm and not the exception throughout human history – the timelines could be shorter.
I must say I am enormously impressed. The questions I answered were simple, the answers complex. What is amazing about this back and forth is that if I had to assemble the same set of answers together by doing a regular Google search or by constructing written sources, it would have taken me days, if not weeks, to do it. At the very least, my exchange with chatGPT shows that it can accelerate the process of gathering together information in a coherent manner exponentially, and a not insignificant reason for this is its ability to understand natural human language and then put together answers based on that understanding.
I am copying my exchange with chatGPT below in its entirety to give readers an idea of the level of detail it can bring to the conversation. There’s little doubt to me that we are in a new regime of machine intelligence here, one that surpasses anything we have seen before. With tweaks that ensure even greater accuracy, we will soon be using chatGPT and its descendants to design complex technological projects and explore creative ideas. If nothing else, it would be able to provide excellent starting points... (MORE - details)
