THE ONE-BILLION CASUALTY HORIZON: ATTENTIONAL THERMODYNAMICS, DATA CENTER ENERGY DEPLETION, AND THE SVASAṂVEDYA SOLUTION TO AI GOVERNANCE

Current Western artificial intelligence governance frameworks are experiencing a profound structural crisis. As documented across contemporary technical policy papers, regulatory bodies attempt to mitigate the material, socio-technical, and existential risks of machine learning using fluid modern ethics, localized compliance frameworks, and shifting social norms. This paper argues that such an approach constructs a superficial mud wall against an exponential civilizational crisis. To prevent catastrophic systemic failures, humanity requires a solid water-control dam anchored in deep-time epistemological resilience—spanning thousands of years of human knowledge transmission—and reinforced by immutable thermodynamic realities. By introducing the Svasaṃvedya principle (self-luminous, self-evident consciousness) brought out by Mauli (Sant Dnyaneshwar Maharaj), we prove that human attention is a finite, conserved resource. When left unprotected, modern Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) serves as an extractive, predatory feedback loop ("The Attention-Extracting Machine"). This machine systematically degrades human critical discernment (Vivek), leaving societies highly vulnerable to catastrophic, large-scale infrastructural weaponization.