I should disclose at the outset that I am not a neutral party. I’ve used these systems nearly every day for the past several years, and not grudgingly. A large language model reviews my code before I’ve finished my coffee. It has drafted my correspondence and debugged my thinking at two in the morning, and it absorbs the most bizarre of my interests with the patience of a saint and the slight sycophancy of a maître d’ who has already seen my credit card. I started using it in 2022 to create derivative art — some ugly, some beautiful, and some in between.
I love AI in the way an unrelenting autodidact loves a thing that never gets tired of its questions. This is my confession.
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This was an awesome essay that provided a lot of information that I wasn't aware of.
One of the parts that I was aware of, a part that infuriates me immensely, is the environmental and human/animal rights destruction that this insane race to the bottom is gonna introduce. Most of these data centers are being built, as you pointed out, in areas that are already suffering the effects of perpetual defunding, disregard, and decades of industrial pollution. Areas that lack the money, resources, and political power to mount a successful counterattack when a "Colossus" and it's megalomaniacal, k-hole dwelling, sociopathic daddy roll into their town and takeover.
I've been a proud supporter of SPLC, Sierra Club, NRDC, ACLU, CBD, and other nonprofits for years and I've read all of their recent reports about the harms this bullshit causes. Just when I though we were maybe, finally gonna do the absolute bare minimum to start transitioning away from fossil fuels after the "Inflation Reduction Act" (a stupid name btw), we're now quadrupling down.
Meanwhile, Mother Nature is escalating her warning signs exponentially with each passing year and we're doing nothing. All so the wealthiest, most selfish, evil, privileged pieces of excrement ever birthed can become even wealthier...