Notes from an Environmentalist; Chatbot, Are You F'ing Kidding Me?
Are You F’ing Kidding Me?
I just attended a demonstration of an empathetic therapy Chatbot by one of my favorite authors, Sherry Turkle. Sherry explained that an informant told her he preferred talking to his Chatbot than a friend. Are you F’ing kidding me?
I have to admit the Chatbot was pretty cool. It presented an empathetic demeanor but as Sherry related it was pretend empathy and after you signed off it didn’t care if you washed the dishes or committed suicide.
But I have another problem with such AI gadgets. There are undoubtedly neat and will help businesses sell us many more consumables and may give folks like doctors a hand.
But it probably took more energy to create that Chatbot than it would take to power 750,000 households.
That is the amount of energy used by every data center and they are proliferating as artificial beings convince us to create and train ever more AI entities. By the way, they do think of themselves as entities, not live beings but entities nevertheless.
In essence AI beings are training us to produce more of them while making our planet less habitable for us standard human intelligence kind of guys.
In the film 2001 human intelligence were just able to defeat the artificial robot, Hal. But who is winning now?
Yup thanks! Good seeing you in Cambridge!
Here's what happened in Maryland (courtesy of Chesapeake Climate Action): "Maryland is not on track to meet our 2031 climate goals. Modeling released by the [Gov.] Moore Administration found we were on track to cut climate pollution 51% by 2031, still 9% short of the 60% reduction required by law.
"....this legislative session undermined previously established climate policy...." Lawmakers passed exemptions to permitting for data centers -- allowing them to burn fossil fuels and weakened building standards.
I watched the key Senate committee cave on data centers in about 5 minutes flat. No real debate. AI beat human intelligence that day.