Me, an idiot: “So, kids, by setting the thermostat a little lower and eating less meat, we’re doing our part to make the world more sustainable”
VCs, very smart: “We just raised $100 billion dollars from the sovereign wealth funds of three petrostates to build the world’s largest AI supercomputer. It uses as much power and water as Guatemala and the primary use case is for management consultants to autogenerate powerpoints for justifying mass layoffs.”
I 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
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.
@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?"
@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...
@feld @jimray @MisuseCase nuclear power is just fine, it's just buried in fossil fuel powered administratium
Because radiation is scary
@feld @RandomDamage @jimray So the thing is, this is basically the position of all the people and institutions who spent years spreading FUD about nuclear so it wouldn’t be built.
“It’s too late to build the nuclear plants we made it difficult to build earlier, we cannot even try to build some of the ones we need, let’s give up on it.”
Not much different from the CEO of Exxon blaming regular folks for climate change.
@feld @RandomDamage @jimray Whether this is true or not, the reason we haven’t been doing it and can’t do it in time is what I described: people who said “we can’t build nuclear now” for decades, and are now like “it’s too late to build nuclear.”
Like, the people who caused this particular aspect of the problem are talking loudest about the problem.
@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.
@jimray @rstevens Or monkeywrenching!
Here is a guide: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-ecodefense-a-field-guide-to-monkeywrenching
Or here is one from the CIA itself:
https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf
@blabberlicious @jimray @rstevens @dangillmor
I think that just gets you elected president.
@jimray big problems like the climate crisis cannot be solved at the individual level, these are systemic problems driven by the selection pressures of the global capitalist system.
Abolishing capitalism is the only way forward.
@fanf42 @jimray I agree, there are no quick solutions to the problem.
Educating and organizing people into an effective political movement is a long and difficult process.
Unfortunately, the alternative is that capitalism simply descends into fascism as it tends to do in times of crisis. This is looking like an increasingly likely scenario across the western world.
Bart: “so individual action can’t make a difference?”
Homer: “ah ah ah! Individual action can’t make a _positive_ difference”
Those don’t call those motherfucking sacks of shit, of which Taylor Swifts father is one, Vulture Capitalists for nothing.
Jamie Billett
jimray
Joe 
LisPi
Ehproque has moved
Losfromcp
Rasmus Lindegaard
Nebulous Menace (Sandy B.)
Rob Vanwey
Misuse Case
Random Damage 🌻
Moz
feld
Nemo
Isocat now → @
Jonah Stein
Asta [AMP]
das_menschy
rstevens 🐳💨✅
Marek
bovaz
Darrin West
Cherry Vox
Tesmaia
Steve Williams
Professor_Stevens
pedro
Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷
Yogthos
Biorreactivo
fanf42
Rajnhildo Ursidino 
SaanichGuy 🇨🇦🇨🇦
Western Infidels
ThatKomputerKat 
Jason Petersen (he)
Montessori Space Programme 🛸
Carolannie
John Burns
RodneyPetersonTalentAgency
RealFinoxy