Abstract for: AI Hastens Limits to Exponential Growth

At any sustained positive growth rate of energy demand, depletion of terrestrial energy resources, including non-renewable deuterium fusion and renewable solar, occurs quickly. The time to depletion is inversely proportional to the demand growth rate. Artificial Intelligence could increase the growth rate of electricity from three percent per year to fifteen percent per year, effectively collapsing multi-millennial expansion timelines into decades. Simple algebraic models yield the main conclusions of the paper, supported by a system dynamics simulation. Even unthinkably vast resources, such as total oceanic deuterium or the full luminosity of the Sun, are decidedly finite when viewed through the logarithmic lens of constant growth. Uncertainties in the exact remaining resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium do not affect the conclusions of this paper. To grow after terrestrial depletion will require capturing more of the sun's output than the earth's cross-sectional area, eventually capturing the entire sun's output (Kardashev Type II civilization). Expansion beyond that threshold requires colonizing other star systems. The fundamental physical limit is dictated by the geometry of expansion and the universal speed of light. The consequences of constant exponential growth are profoundly counter-intuitive. While traditional forecasts estimate depletion by comparing current resources to current demand, the mathematical models in this paper demonstrate how growth radically compresses these timelines. This acceleration renders historical pre