The other option is superconducting circuits, which work in labs but also have to many disadvantages to be practical yet. Eventually cold superconducting reversible computers could bypass energy issues, but that tech appears to be far.
What about just replacing the copper wire inside a conventional CMOS chip with a superductor? It took some searching, but I managed to find a paper titled Cryogenically Cooled CMOS which talks about the benefits and feasibility of doing this. Quoting from the relevant section:
If lower interconnect resistance improves performance, the use of ‘zero-resistance’ superconductors should provide the ultimate in performance improvement. Unfortunately, although performance improvements would be expected, they would not be as great as the simplistic statement above suggests. Furthermore, several technical obstacles remain before high-temperature superconductors (HTS) can be effectively integrated with VLSI technology.
Actually, as we will see, the resistance of superconducting films is not truly zero, except in the limits of zero frequency or zero temperature. Nevertheless, at 77 K and 1 GHz, measurements on patterned YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO) films have already demonstrated surface resistances one to two orders of magnitude below those for Cu under the same conditions. Theoretical predictions for YBCO suggest four orders of magnitude would be possible. Unfortunately, good-quality (epitaxial) YBCO films grow best on perovskite substrates having high dielectric constants. Lanthanum aluminate (LaAlO3), which is a popular substrate for HTS microwave circuits, has a relative dielectric constant of 25. Assuming the same interconnect geometry, this makes all capacitances more than 6× greater than would be the case for a SiO2 dielectric. Thus, some of the low-resistance benefits of HTS films are cancelled by the high dielectric constants of their associated substrates.
So it looks like there's no fundamental reason why it couldn't be done, just a matter of finding the right substrate material and solving other engineering problems.
What about just replacing the copper wire inside a conventional CMOS chip with a superductor?
That is the type of tech I was referring to by superconducting circuits as precursor to full reversible. From what I understand, if you chill everything down then you also change resistance in the semiconductor along with all the other properties, so it probably isn't as easy as just replacing the copper wires.
A room temperature superconductor circuit breakthrough is one of the main wild cards over the next decade or so. Cryogenic cooling is pretty impractical...
At some point soon, I'm going to attempt to steelman the position of those who reject the AI risk thesis, to see if it can be made solid. Here, I'm just asking if people can link to the most convincing arguments they've found against AI risk.
EDIT: Thanks for all the contribution! Keep them coming...