Researcher Estimates Dismantling Mercury Would Take Nearly 700 Years Even With a Billion Robots

Researcher davidad argued that the counterfactual of 'no further AI progress' is implausible, estimating that dismantling Mercury would take about 6.9 centuries even with a billion of the largest mining robots humans can currently build.

2026-10-02 ~ 2026-10-02 · 3 related posts

• davidad: Disassembling Mercury sans AI progress would take centuries, a bizarre counterfactual — davidad · 2026-10-02
• davidad does the math: a billion mining robots would need ~7 centuries to dismantle Mercury — davidad · 2026-10-02
• Back-of-envelope math: strip-mining Mercury would take ~6.9 centuries with a billion robots — davidad · 2026-10-02