Vid clip - https://xcancel.com/tsarnick/status/1842401670225125539
I made the big mistake of watching that. And now [redacted]. Holy mother of fuck are tech bros evil.
We’re not going to meet the climate goals anyway, so instead we should just murder all the billionaires and eat their flesh as an act of divine punishmentIt wouldn’t even cost that much to do so. They would all fit together on one bus or so…
HOW CAN AI EVEN BE USED TO FIX THE CLIMATE YOU BAZINGA BRAINED DEMON
Moments like this are when you realize we’re getting the worst case-scenario with climate change and even then people like this will blame some external factor rather than themselves.
we’re getting the worst case-scenario with climate change
We’ve already passed the point of Peak Oil. These fuels only get more expensive to extract with each passing decade. And the political pressures that extraction creates is collapsing the capacity for efficient extraction at least as quickly as the industrial extraction is pinching off the low hanging fruit.
I don’t think its a given that we simply plunge over the 4° C threshold, because I can see an abrupt collapse in access to fossil fuel tying out with a steady increase in the supply of less geographically constrained wind and solar power. Also next-gen nuclear is at least peaking over the horizon, for real this time, given the advent of nuclear freighters in China.
But it’s also possible we demolish the infrastructure we need to replace fossil fuels with renewables, effectively cannibalize the rungs of our technological ladder in order to do… whatever the fuck this is. And then we lodge ourselves in a modern Dark Age, exhausted of the cheap energy that propelled us to the 20th century heights and rapidly losing access to the biome that supports the enormous increase in humans that gave us the brain power to innovate our way out of the last dark age.
Then we’re proper fucked.
people like this will blame some external factor rather than themselves
History is written by the survivors. I do wonder what they’ll write when the events of the modern moment are far enough in the rear view mirror to discuss without wading through a morass of oil industry propaganda. But I seriously doubt the survivors will be the Americans who handcuffed themselves to a decaying industry. I doubt it will be the westerners who have increasingly eschewed the very idea of “liberal arts” as a past time. I doubt it will be a society that incinerates its libraries and post offices and feeds all of academia into a digital set of funhouse mirrors that turns every idea into an advertisement for consumerist crap.
The heart of the western cultural dominance rests in its university systems. And that’s been deteriorating for the last sixty years. The countries that eclipse the NATO block education framework will spell the end of its ability to author the history books.
rapidly losing access to the biome that supports the enormous increase in humans that gave us the brain power to innovate our way out of the last dark age.
the last dark age only happened in europe. most of the world was actually thriving at this time. sad it didn’t last a little longer actually. would have been really interesting to see a globalized world where europe is left out until late in the game. i would suggest that western culture causes dark ages, that’s what we’ve been living for the last 500 years or so. almost everything has been erased. for a lot of us, the collapse of empire is a light at the end of the tunnel. it’ll be horrible, for certain, and was completely avoidable, but you know white people. crawl out to the fallout baby, when they drop that bomb
the last dark age only happened in europe. most of the world was actually thriving at this time.
You can find “Dark Ages” that have consumed various chunks of the planet, based on when certain central institutions of information collapsed.
Mississippi culture in North America and the Mayan culture in Central America. The collapse of various East Asia dynasties. The sacking of Middle Eastern city states
But we’re in a global manufacturing and information economy. If China and the US obliterate critical infrastructure in a war, South Africa doesn’t get to pick up on aeronautics or semiconductors or cosmetology where these two juggernauts left off. The info is lost and must be rediscovered.
for a lot of us, the collapse of empire is a light at the end of the tunnel
Nobody benefited when the Library of Alexandria burned.
Nobody burned the library of Alexandria it probably died from neglect, but Europeans did burn ~every book ever produced in central america and extinguished hundreds of unique cultures and languages. Western culture is a dark age IMO. And I’m not saying dark ages don’t exist elsewhere. Europe may be fanatically xenophobic, but they aren’t entirely unique either. Just the most successful at spreading darkness.
Why do techbros vastly overestimate the power and ability of AI? I know their paycheck depends some on hyping but holy shit, this is to the point its so disjointed from reality it has to backfire, this is flying cars in 2000 nonsense.
Why do techbros vastly overestimate the power and ability of AI?
Cause they’re not really tech-literate. They’re just sales guys. Might as well ask why a shady used car salesman keeps insisting his stock of Ford Tauruses can run laps around a Maserati and drive 400 miles on a single gallon of gas.
This is more if the said sketch car salesman believed his bullshit and drove said car around. Like when politicians refuse to drink the lead infused water after saying its safe, yet these fools actually do it.
People like Elizabeth Holmes are a dime a dozen in Silicon Valley. They assume that they can do anything with enough money and aren’t afraid of bullshitting their way to get there. With AI it’s just particularly obvious how deluded they all are.
the internet was a mistake
nah the internet was awesome before us corporations took control.
capitalism is the mistake.
Telegraphs are really cool and, while the bandwidth is low, we could still send cat pictures iwth a relatively low-energy system in a world that adjusted its expectations.
to be fair the internet can be quite low-energy as it is when it isnt used for ai, ads and video formats instead of text
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes, or something.
Lol. Everyone going to the data upload center to upload their stuff for the week before it gets put on the big hard drive on the train. And then the train goes to the nearest major city, downloads everything to the big archive, and comes back with a super-compressed updated index so you can make requests for data during next week’s run.
Telegraphed low quality memes for shit-posting at the speed of electricity, and stationwagon’ed high quality memes for those who prefer low speed shit-posting. It could work.
To add - I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the origins of that joke but here’s a Reddit post to explain it
💣
We already know of solutions to meet our climate goals. What more can A.I. offer? Unless it produces drones or robots that will assassinate whomever goes against enforcing these known solutions (alternative energy sources and minimization of oil dependence), it’ll just be an energy hog.
What more can A.I. offer?
Kill bots for protestors and resistance fighters, and surveillance tech. That’s the actual real world use of ai.
low-key the AI scandals have probably been taken advantage of to get people spooked of it and avoid this outcome. The pentagon wargamed out to this time, and their most realistic threat was what they literally called “Gen Zbellion”. Old men understand neither young people nor computers, and their powers combined terrify them.
I’ve heard variations of this from techno-salvationists for years. “We’ll invent a solution for climate change! That’s just how progress works! The world converges towards whatever futuristic vision I personally hold without regard for logic or material conditions!!”
Strategy game tech trees and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Tech Trees really just do re-package the whole “Stone age bronze age iron age steam gas atom jet whatever the fuck” mythos, don’t they? Like often literally by name.
That and reinforcing ideas about non-European cultures that are harmful. Shit like “Native Americans didn’t invent the wheel because they spent all their tax money on war instead of science.” Not like the real reason, which is wheels are fucking useless without large pack animals.
The first invented wheels weren’t even for transportation, they were grinding wheels which even further erodes their point.
:kelly:
How can it solve the problem if all it does is spit out (usually incorrect) versions of current data?
that’s not “all it does”. machine learning can and does produce or newly-define novel outputs from the broken down components and variables of collected inputs and can help recognize novel patterns within them. there’s not even one “it” because of the different machine learning methods and constructs.
That doesn’t mean any of it is the solution to climate change. We already know the things causing climate change and how to stop it, and have known since like the early 80s at least. There’s no “new pattern we can’t find in complex data.” It’s the same pattern we’ve been hearing about for decades. I don’t understand what even a real hypothetical superintelligent general ai system would solve here. *powers on* “uhhh… yeah degrow production of these pointless commodities with their hyper-globalized network of staged production and distribution, abolish cars and lawns, and scale back militaries especially the US military by gargantuan proportions and uhhh… abolish the capitalist system which undergirded all of this. you’re welcome”
