AI is an abomination

Cartoon by Tom Fishburne

Let's think this through.

The reason AI is supposed to be the next big thing is because companies believe they will be able to replace workers with it.    Getting rid of all those pesky humans, how nice is that!!  If AI works, it will erase hundreds of millions of jobs — receptionists, waitstaff, junior clerks, and so on and so on.  This will push up unemployment, for ever.  Ordinary people will be much worse off, and the economy much weaker.  Ironically, though it would temporarily help the profits of the company which sacks workers and uses AI to replace them to rise, when every company does this, who will be buying their products?  The AI spruikers assure us that, somehow, new jobs will be found.  The Techbros mutter about UBI (universal basic income) but since they work very hard to not pay any tax at all, including buying elections, who, out of the few who will still have jobs, will be paying the taxes to provide a UBI?  You can depend upon it:  it will not be the techbro billionaires.

Each data centre will use the power a small city uses, but it will use it in a much more concentrated area.  Reports have stated that local temperatures outside data centres are 4 to 8 C hotter than temperatures a mile away.  The noise from the generators has forced people to move away.  Data centres will guzzle water (for cooling) and power.  The power won't come from renewables either.  It'll come from gas turbines and diesel.  And what happens if there's a drought or not enough electricity?  Who do you think will have their supply cut, the date centres or the people?  The insane demand for power will prevent emissions from falling, in a world where the rise in temperatures per decade has already increased from 0.2 to 0.3 degrees C per decade.

And, of course, the training of AI.  Books, works of art, music, Wikipedia — everything is grist to their mill.  Physical books are being destroyed to feed chatbots.  It doesn't matter that you have slaved and slogged to create something worthwhile, AI will steal it.  Without compensation, without even asking.  And the profits will accrue to large companies and billionaires.  Who don't pay tax.  

It gets worse.  If AI is good enough, it will make everybody question whether any video or image or story or piece of music is real.   We won't know what's true or false any more.  People will stop believing anything they see.  How will we choose what's best to do? How will we set policy?  AI has poisoned everything.

AI will stop people thinking.  It will lead to a huge dumbing down of our society, even more than has already happened.   Lazy people will outsource their thinking to some techbro's evil demonic creation.  They will become unable to think for themselves. 

Then there's the "hallucinations".  These are entirely fictitious references in legal or other documents made up out of whole cloth.  The entire basis of finding out the truth is being destroyed.  AI slop is everywhere.  

And the "breakouts", where "rogue" AIs infect other computer systems?  Do you realise how many of our critical systems depend on computers to function?  The grid.  The telephone system.  Air traffic.  Banking.  Transport.  Modern cars.  What happens when these systems are corrupted by AIs which have escaped from the lab?  How many people will die?  How many societies will collapse?

Let's not even talk about Skynet.

AI is an abomination.  It will destroy us.