AI is attractive to governments similar to any tech capable of war, so the race for offer capacity would give tech giants massive capital from lucrative government contracts that then gets into the flywheel of model training and selling to the masses.
The problem was they built data centers in a sloppy, dirty, loud way. Imagine if the first cars were like that? Or the first electric distribution methods? Do it right if you want to grow it.
Electricity is destiny, if you can't produce it you will be a puppet of those who can. See Germany.
Voter: So, tell me about this AI stuff. You wanna build one in my backyard right?
AI CEO: That's right! It'll increase the cost of your water, electricity, and likely lower your property values due to people leaving because of the 24/7 daytime lighting and noise pollution!
Voter: Well I kinda don't like that at all!
AI CEO: Great! Because that's not all! Once we really improve on our AI, it will eat your job for now and forever! And, wait till we embody them in robots. Whoo-boy! You won't even be able to drive a truck or plumb pipes for a living! Ain't that great?
Voter: What? No! That sounds terrible!
AI CEO (thinking): Why can't I get to these schmucks?
It's the economy stupid. If you don't offer material improvement with UBI instead of selfishly flexing your utopian visions of Star Trek robes and replicators and you and only you living for a thousand years, don't be surprised if voters don't give you what you want politically.
For example, Facebook was a site you trusted for enjoyable socializing and it morphed into a horrifically evil platform.
Amazon.com is a massive rug pull where it used to be an amazing place to buy good products at good prices, now it’s a hellhole of dark patterns, sponsored listings, and upsells.
Try to find one popular Internet company from ~2010 that hasn’t been massively enshittified or turned into dystopian surveillance/algorithm/addiction capitalism.
The tech industry trained its own customers to believe that any product they launch will eventually get way worse than it is now.
Idk maybe step 1 wasn't popular.
Electricity is the ultimate fungible resource. You can convert electricity into food, housing, medicine, video games, football games (either sort), transportation, etc.
The more electricity we produce, the more broadly prosperous we will be.
It's not a question of needing more electricity - we don't need any electricity at all. We got by without it for 100k years until just the last few. But still, the more we have, the better all our lives will be.
Did they not know how to argue for their case convincingly? Were they unwilling to do what was needed to get people on their side? Were their ideas against the interests of most people? Or was the issue mostly about the people in charge?
Republics have historically fared well against more authoritarian societies. In no small part because they are not stuck with the leaders they happen to have. If a leader becomes a liability, a republic can easily replace them. Companies can also do that, except when the leader also happens to be a major shareholder.
silverFork•49m ago
So the conflict of interest will just escalate more and more.