Thank you for sharing your thoughts so thoroughly, Frederick. I appreciate the depth you bring to the conversation, especially with your experience as a systems engineer focused on the global energy crisis. Your perspective on AGI arriving just as the world faces these compounding challenges feels particularly timely.

I don’t get the sense Altman thinks he and his colleagues have fully “created” AGI yet; perhaps they’re more like midwives, ushering in what’s possible without yet proclaiming it complete. And yes, the hype around AI often serves as marketing fuel—geared towards attracting interest and funding. For those of us working within this space, the trick is to see through the gloss while remaining open to its transformative potential.

Your organic analogies are both visceral and imaginative—the idea of humans as vital “cells” in a larger body is powerful. You’re absolutely right that nature’s renewal cycles are vast. In our own bodies, 330 billion cells are replaced daily, a natural rhythm that mirrors the ecosystem-level cycles we might strive for. And as you point out, while renewable energy remains a compelling vision, fully committing to it likely requires rethinking our entrenched, codependent economic, social, and political structures. Until we do, society may continue defaulting to choices that, while carbon-neutral, aren’t fully sustainable in the long run—as we’re seeing with Microsoft’s decision to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to power AI data centers.

Thank you again for adding such richness to the discussion. It’s comments like yours that remind me why these dialogues matter.