I agree that fusion is feasible and will likely account for a large fraction (>20%) of energy supply by the end of the century, if all goes well. I agree that would be pretty great. And yeah, Helion looks promising.

But I don't think we should be updating much on headlines about achieving ignition or breakeven soon. In particular, I don't think these headlines should be significantly shifting forecasts like this one from Metaculus about timelines to >10% of energy supply coming from fusion. The main reason is that there is a very large gap between proof of concept and a cost-competitive supply of energy. Generally speaking, solar will probably remain cheaper per kWh than fusion for a long time (decades), so I don't expect the transition to be very fast.

It's also unclear what this should all mean for EA. One response could be: "Wow, a world with abundant energy would be amazing, we should prioritise trying to accelerate the arrival of that world." But, I don't know, there's already a lot of interested capital flying around — it's not like investors are naive to the benefits. On the government side, the bill for ITER alone was something in the order of $20 billion.

Another response could be: "Fusion is going to arrive sooner than we expected,  so the world is soon going to look different from what we expected!" And I'd probably just dispute that the crowd (e.g. the Metaculus forecast above) is getting it especially wrong here in any action-relevant way. But I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.

Isn’t there some meme about fusion always being right around the corner, but never materializing? Of course, I think it may be reasonable to expect fusion some time this century, but a “within 5 years” headline seems really bullish.

What do you think this implies for global priorities? When do you expect nuclear fusion to be competitive in developing countries? Why is this Metaculus  forecast so pessimistic?

I think fusion is great, but it will probably take some time to have a real impact.

For those who didn't bother to click the link, this is pretty important information: it's backed by Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz and (at least indirectly, through Mithril Capital) Peter Thiel.

We are excited to announce that Helion has raised $500 million from Sam Altman with participation from our other existing investors, Mithril Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, and Dustin Moskovitz. We thank all of our investors who participated in this round of funding. Their belief in a future of clean, zero-carbon electricity from fusion is inspiring and we are incredibly proud to have their support.

It might be worth including this in the post, or even just quote the whole text of the article into the EA Forum post, since it's short, anyway.