Came back to tell that this one one of the most pessimistic and one sided views i ever had the misfortune to read. But now I know where it was posted, so it all check’s out :) . What a waste of my 10 minutes, could have written 5 terrible poems in that time instead.
Clearly all articles about AI should be about how it will turn the world into a utopia where everyone is well-fed, healthy and able to do whatever they want with their time and for god’s sake, no one mention the massive ecological catastrophe they’re making a huge contribution to.
I know right, who needs nuance? Just adopt one of two strawmen and don’t think too critically about your side of the debate.
How was what I said a strawman? Are you denying the massive use of energy and potable water being a problem?
Because nobody is saying
“Clearly all articles about AI should be about how it will turn the world into a utopia where everyone is well-fed, healthy and able to do whatever they want with their time and for god’s sake, no one mention the massive ecological catastrophe they’re making a huge contribution to.”
The guy you’re responding to is criticizing the article for being *"*one-sided and pessimistic" and your response is basically “you just want everyone to fellate AI corpos all day”? That’s just another one-sided take, for one, and for two, the only time I ever hear it is from comments like yours.
I’m tired of reading articles that, rather than having any semblance of nuance, opt for one of the two extreme ends of the debate because they know it’ll get them more clicks, even if it’s at the cost of further polarizing the internet.
And in the comments it’s as if people believe the only valid takes are the ones handed down to us in the media written by corporate shills and emotionally charged creators. It’s possible to think AI is a cool step forward for computer science and that it’s severely flawed in its current state. It’s possible to think that corporate data scraping has raised major privacy concerns and we should train AI more ethically. It’s possible to think AI is consuming a concerning amount of power and resources and we should find better ways to do it.
But the lack of nuance is better for engagement 🙄
We need skeptics to push back against these insanely wealthy business people who think that we’ll just take their word for things that that they then actively undermine in favor of profits and products that will not benefit society or make up for the intellectual theft that was required to build them. Ignoring or pretending these issues don’t exist does not make them go away.
Giving blind faith and loyalty to a company that does not care about you is how we get nefarious and self-centered powerhouses like google and facebook. Companies that large, that can influence the entire world on a whim, should not exist. If more people had listened to those of us sounding the alarms about these companies years ago, we might have saved ourselves a lot of grief.
I’d just ask that you take a step back, think about the motivations of the people you hold in such high regard, and allow skeptics the space to keep conversations like this going, before it’s too late.
I agree with you! but that has (almost?) nothing to do with the premise and use of AI. That’s just capitalism/corporatism and especially: very large players = bad. Sure. Did you also try AI, LLM or Image generation, locally with open source models? Do you think using these kinds of AI tools is anti consumer, even with open software and data sets?
A good skeptic would try and paint a balanced picture so their words carry more weight.
