I think there’s an ambiguity in “it’d eventually be very cheap and scalable.”
Consider alchemy. It’s cheaper to do now than it was when we first did it, in part because the price of energy has dropped. It’s also possible to do it on much bigger scales. However, nobody bothers because people have better things to do. So for something to count as cheaper and scalable, does it need to actually be scaled up, or is it enough that we could do it if we wanted to? If the latter, then alchemy isn’t even an example of the sort of thing you want. If the former, then there are tons of examples, examples all over the place!
Also technically Alchemy will in fact be cheaply scaled in the future, probably. When we are disassembling entire stars to fund galaxy-wide megaprojects, presumably some amount of alchemy will be done as well, and that amount will be many orders of magnitude bigger than the original alchemists imagined, and it will be done many orders of magnitude more cheaply (in 2021 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) as well. EDIT: Nevermind I no longer endorse this comment, I think I was assuming alignment success for some reason.
I think there’s an ambiguity in “it’d eventually be very cheap and scalable.”
Consider alchemy. It’s cheaper to do now than it was when we first did it, in part because the price of energy has dropped. It’s also possible to do it on much bigger scales. However, nobody bothers because people have better things to do. So for something to count as cheaper and scalable, does it need to actually be scaled up, or is it enough that we could do it if we wanted to? If the latter, then alchemy isn’t even an example of the sort of thing you want. If the former, then there are tons of examples, examples all over the place!
Also technically Alchemy will in fact be cheaply scaled in the future, probably. When we are disassembling entire stars to fund galaxy-wide megaprojects, presumably some amount of alchemy will be done as well, and that amount will be many orders of magnitude bigger than the original alchemists imagined, and it will be done many orders of magnitude more cheaply (in 2021 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) as well. EDIT: Nevermind I no longer endorse this comment, I think I was assuming alignment success for some reason.