Yyyyep. The NFT hype still hasn't fully sunsetted and we're already hitting peak on the AI hype. Both of them horribly expensive, wasteful consumers of power and much-needed potable water while also having ten thousand other negative environmental impacts and not doing anything meaningful or useful.
Question: would carrots work better than sticks? It irks me when companies can spew all the carbon they want if they buy carbon credits. How about incentives to reduce instead?
*nods angrily* Anyone else see/remember the crypto thing where they moved into some former Warsaw Pact country and the price of electricity went up enough that locals started freezing to death?
When I think about the things that could be done with that money, when *cities'* worth of the unhoused could be fed, sheltered, and supported in finding their footing in life for just the cost of one of these ravenous machines' datacenters...I just *seethe.*
While I know there's PLENTY of corporations that can take the blame for climate change, I'd like to blame Minnesota's SINGLE INCH OF SNOW AND HITTING 54 DEGREES IN JANUARY on those awful racist NFTs because I'm petty like that.
I feel like NFTs were kind of the canary in the coal mine as far as how bad these tech industry billion-dollar grifts could get--while also laying the foundation for *normalizing* this stuff.
It would be really cool if somebody figured out a grift that suckered rich people into paying poor people. The last couple of major cycles have at best been rich people fucking over slightly less rich people.
IMHO every economic cycle is a harvesting of the mass of people for a small portion at the top. A healthy society would see the masses organize to prevent or at least mitigate it.
In total, yeah. But that last few big gifts have been targeted at the middle. NFTs, crypto, and now AI are all bang on people with money who want to make money. It might even be a generational thing as grifters realize that boomers with dealerships fall for dumb shit
There is a massive liquidity problem, which is a technical way of saying inequality is killing people, so it’s going to be bubbles all the way down until we address that
Hot take: at least part of the drive for AI is about the commercial real estate in San Francisco being so fucking expensive. The companies that own or lease these buildings have to keep extracting money from us to pay for those buildings.
meeting the fate of metaverse, nfts, tokenomics and blockchain!
the one-two punch of Google prioritizing AI alongside SEO adoption of sludge content really has done a number on how useful search is these days and I don't see it getting any better
I hope! My company is currently being gutted to make us “pioneers in AI”! Sadly I think investors and shareholders are still going to be dazzled by the hype long after the bubble bursts so companies are still going to push it for a while.
It's mind boggling we're just now asking this question. I'm not a silicon valley genius or a wall street braniac, but I'd have thought maybe BEFORE you invest billions is when you'd want to figure out how to *make* money off a new tech.
Still a bit too early to celebrate as it could be a short dip, but it could also be investers not believing that (generative) AI is reasonably profitable (which I sure as heck am already there.)
Even worse: by poorly paid freelancers. Futurism is hardcore against AI content and were some of the first to call out CNET on theirs, but they, er, don't always have the most rigorous standards for their freelancers.
