Gregory's ServerI am in no way clever enough to make up that bit about petrostates funding AI, it’s an actual thing on this, the worst timeline
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/business/saudi-arabia-investment-artificial-intelligence.html
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31 comments
 Marc Andreessen: “And another thing! We would’ve solved climate change in the 70s if the pesky environmentalists hadn’t killed nuclear power!” Also Marc Andreessen: “I’m proud to announce we’re working with one of the most brutal, repressive, corrupt regimes in history to help them launder their oil money on a computer that uses ⅛ of the global electric supply to generate ransom notes.” Andreessen: “AI doesn’t want, it doesn’t have goals, it doesn’t want to kill you, because it’s not alive. AI is a machine—[it’s] not going to come alive any more than your toaster will. . . . AI is not a living being that has been primed by billions of years of evolution to participate in the battle for the survival of the fittest, as animals are, and as we are. It is math—code—computers.” The AI might not kill us, but, as masters of #AI, Marc and his #Billionaire friends will.  @losfromcp @jimray yeah, its not so much the car i worry about, as the methed up idiot driving it @jimray Nicely stated! Not trusting this scenario. The 99% of wealth from productivity improvements only goes upward. "...Others foresee a golden age of drastically reduced work hours, a shockingly low cost of living, medical breakthroughs and life-span extensions, and the elimination of poverty. Which camp is most likely right?" @losfromcp @jimray Once again, corporations are Skynet (or paperclip maximisers, or psychopaths, take your pick). @losfromcp @jimray shocked to see an AI billionaire say something true about it. Of course it's just to hide something else. @losfromcp @jimray As @cstross points out, corporations really ARE paperclip maximizers that end up taking the iron out of our blood to make paperclips. @jimray I wrote months ago how full of bs Andreessen is. He just keeps proving the point. https://robertvanwey.substack.com/p/marc-andreessen-makes-a-strong-argument  @jimray Personally I think if the AI bubble bursts soon but we get a massive nuclear power buildout because of it, that will be a silver lining. As long as the new nuclear generation isn’t as half-baked as the LLMs.  @MisuseCase @jimray can't happen in the US, the lead time for a nuclear build is too long and the AI hypsters don't have enough pull to shorten it. They'll end up running on solar+storage... @RandomDamage @MisuseCase @jimray No-one has built civilian nuclear power at the speed we can build hydroelectric plants, let alone wind or solar. Solar and battery makes any speed comparison ridiculous. And that's before considering scale - even NuScale weren't talking about a reactor in every home. @moz @MisuseCase @jimray thought: what if they're just trying to signal that this isn't a fad and they'll be around long enough for the construction time of a nuclear plant? I mean, it's totally a fad, and I expect it to take a couple of companies out, but maybe this is a way to pretend otherwise @RandomDamage @moz @jimray It’s probably a way to address concerns over how much electricity AI uses, since it has huge power demands. But not really “address,” since “we’ll install our own nuclear plants to power it all” is bullshit like everything else Sam Altman says. @RandomDamage @MisuseCase @jimray More likely it's the same virtue-signalling nonsense the far right in Australia are doing when they talk about it. Specifically, change nothing now while we talk about eventually building nuclear power plants. The "do nothing now" is what matters, both to them and to everyone else.  @RandomDamage @MisuseCase @jimray looks like nuclear is a total dead end now
Small reactor even more expensive than large, we need to look for something else. https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/engineering/small-reactors-dont-add-up/   @jimray everything that the fossil fuel industry touches, turns into sh*t... @jimray I've encountered two courses led by artists who are actively encouraging their students to use AI and they're clearly completely ignorant of the discourse surrounding it. Everyone just sees $$$ and everything else fades into the background. It's impossible to respect artists and writers who are all in on this shit. We're supposed to be creating and thinking. AI is, at best, providing commercial incentives and I get it, we need to eat. But, ethics matter. @jimray Of everyone who should be questioning and pushing back, it happens to be artists, writers and creative folks. That's literally what we do. It's also why we're reputed to love to suffer for our work and often die for it. And, I don't think we're supposed to do so unnecessarily but cuddling up to power and kissing it's feet is pretty much the opposite of being subversive or interesting. The advice has been, "don't be afraid to use AI to generate ideas for content, to inspire you". @jimray Which...talk about handing over your power as an artist. Originality isn't everything but with the whole of existence for inspiration you're using a spreadsheet of averages. How can you not understand that everyone who uses this will eventually make things that have no creative voice? The weird AI art that's full of weird glitches IS the interesting art, the compelling art. The "better" it is, the less it has anything to say about the conditions of creation and the less it matters. |
@jimray Up to now, I've grumbled about guilt trips over individuals failing to pretend-recycle every last scrappet of plastic, while corporations get to play 3-card Monty buying and selling (at profit) 'credits' rather than cleaning up their messes.
Everything about this what you've linked is _much_ worse.