The problems with generative AI are endless. The environmental costs of the technology have been well litigated these past couple years, as the data centers that power it demand vast quantities of water and obscene amounts of electricity that creates pressure to build out even more fossil fuel power generation at a time we should be doing the very opposite. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Long before [Irish presidential candidate Catherine] Connolly was targeted by a political deepfake, a far wider swath of people — particularly women and girls — were the victims of nudify apps and explicit deepfakes made possible by image generators powered by generative AI models. More recently, a wave of stories have been published about the mental health risks that can come with forming a dependence on chatbots, including everything from breakdowns and institutionalization to the worst possible outcome of young people taking their own lives — sometimes even with coaching from the chatbot on how to do it.
Governments are belatedly waking up to the harms of social media, particularly as the companies prioritize profits and shareholder value above any other possible metric. Companies no longer care about the individual harm their products can cause, or the political and societal disruptions they can contribute to. Political leaders’ policy responses are open to criticism, like why so many are focusing on age limits rather than much wider regulation that recognizes it’s not just teenagers being harmed by how companies govern their platforms. But it’s quite clear action must be taken to rein in these sources of social disruption.
Social media regulation took far too long to arrive, and even then, it came in an imperfect form. But governments don’t appear ready to grapple with the reality that chatbots and image and video generators are speedrunning the harms caused by social media. The deceptive critical framing of the superintelligence argument has sent governments chasing that red herring as they try to present themselves as being friendly to tech investment to attract a small slice of the trillions of dollars being shelled out on generative AI and data centers. In short, they’re sacrificing the wellbeing of their citizens and arguably the foundations of a democratic society for a chance at short-term investment.
So far the only real “regulation” I’ve seen governments push vis a vis social media is using it as an excuse to kill anonymity and privacy, rather than doing anything about the harmful content itself. What evidence do we have that governments ‘regulating’ AI is going to actually solve the issues presented, and not be just another backdoor to control their populaces?
I don’t think there’s nothing to be done, but perhaps I’m just getting a little tired of this strange cognitive disconnect from people rightfully recognizing that governments globally are shifting rightwards, turning into vehicles of oppression and re-stoking the fires of colonial-era racism, paying vast sums to companies like Palantir and other AI-heavy “defense” companies to help surveil their citizens… but then people also going, “hey, you’re totally the right people to help us solve this capitalist problem, right”? Like, if they wanted to help you, they already would be.
the superintelligence argument has sent governments chasing that red herring as they try to present themselves as being friendly to tech investment to attract a small slice of the trillions of dollars
Perhaps they are well aware that superintelligence is a distraction? Perhaps they are, in fact, distracting you (royal ‘you’), rather than them being the ones distracted?
How many people need to be disconnected from reality, siphoned into dependence on chatbots, and put at risk of losing their minds before governments take action against these agents of chaos?
Bro, who do you think is benefitting from this social control? If you don’t think that your government is using generative-AI already to conduct influence campaigns, you are hopelessly naive.
Sometimes I feel like everyone who would care already knows , and everyone who doesn’t care won’t care no matter what the facts say.
You could prove definitively that LLMs summon demons that eat live babies, and they’d shrug and dismiss it.
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Globally, data centers use 18.2 billion liters of water per year. California almond production uses 6-10 trillion liters per year. A little perspective may be in order here.
(According to the numbers I was able to find in ten minutes of googling trying to reproduce more reliable studies I’ve seen elsewhere. Feel free to correct me if you have better numbers. Truth is more important than being right.)
Energy usage looks like is projected to be around 3% by 2030, which is more worthy of concern. The water thing, for everything I can see or find, is vastly overblown and there are much lower hanging fruit to pick.
We shouldn’t be growing almonds in a desert and yet you hold that up as a defense for AI.
🤷♂️
Attacking data centers over water use when it is utterly dwarfed by the almond and dairy industries is weird priorities to me.
Almonds you can eat and get nutrition and energy from. Growing almonds creates jobs.
AI gives you falsified images and videos. Companies use AI to get rid of jobs.
We could eat just fine if almonds were never grown, and save 1000x the water that goes to data centers. That would have a far better conservation effect and hurt absolutely no one.
Also, we’re getting rid of jobs in the falsified images and videos industry? Must be if that’s what AI is.
On one hand, you’re right.
On the other hand, you’re missing the point.
Jobs aren’t the the goal of life. People need to remember that. Our current system of distributing resources is broken if we don’t have enough jobs, but we could change the system rather than forcing everyone to work when it’s not needed.
The water thing is not overblown if you consider that data centers will only use potable water and will not be able to use treated water. Per just one of many studies:
Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people.
With climate change and the exacerbation of droughts around the world, this puts any source of fresh surface or groundwater at risk of drying up.
Only 3% of Earth’s water is freshwater, and only 0.5% of all water is accessible and safe for human consumption.
This is a growing environmental justice issue (and data centers encourage further energy poverty that I haven’t even addressed, much less the increasing ratio of usage for industry vs residential), and to ignore that we as humans cannot replenish or increase freshwater supplies with any meaningful scale to support life, this becomes a dire issue.
I for one would much rather have water and affordable energy for communities.
Why start with data centers and not almonds or dairy? The difference in water usage is staggering.
