Probably the more pressing issue is how social media effectively killed the old web by writ of monopolizing internet traffic.

Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. have been gradually consolidating their influence in digital media through a combination of pervasive algorithms, aggressive telemetry practices, and just a complete disregard for privacy or security for the average user. Surfing the web is effectively dead since the majority of users just browse the same handful of sites on a daily basis. The whole rumor spreading is a consequence of having let them control so much web traffic that they can actually exercise an unprecedented amount of informational control. The Arab Spring was a taste of what was to come for the whole world, not just the ME.

Now they are spreading botnets and AI garbage everywhere, further pollution the web.

You do know that AI detection tools are notoriously unreliable right?

Again, you are not addressing my point about current AI harms being unaddressed by these researchers and instead fixating on hypothetical Terminator scenarios. These existential risks are so far removed from not just the public consciousness but also from actual scientific rigor that it comes across as tone deaf at best, and delusional at worst. Climate change is science. Terminator is not.

If we want to talk about climate change, sure but these are not the risks these researchers are usually discussing.

Funny to bring up climate change given data centers here in the USA are drawing upon fossils fuels for energy.

In any case, climate change is way more real of an existential risk than AI going Skynet. We have had way more data on that matter stretching decades compared to AI risks, of which largely only have a handful of supposed incidents of which seem very suspect in details.

Now if we talk about AI risks in the context of creating a surveillance state, causing accidents due to hallucinations, and empowering scams sure there is room for discussion there. Strangely, these issues are not addressed by any of these alarmists. At most they give a cursory nod towards economic disruptions such as job loss, which will likely prompt government action, or so I hope. But still not Skynet levels of existential threat.

The existential risks are so frankly out of the purview of the public that it comes across as almost offensive for a general public scrounging to make ends meet on a daily basis.

Why should people care about hypothetical Skynet scenarios when right at this moment they are seeing rises in cost of living and deteriorating public and private services? Why can these companies not align their superhuman AIs to help deal with these issues? Solving math problems and generating piano medleys may be interesting from a technical and scientific perspective, but people are more concerned about whether they still have a job tomorrow. The only risks they are seeing is their power bill skyrocketing.

Address the immediate needs of the public and maybe they will take these existential risks more. We already went through a Cold War where nukes were being pointed every which way and most people just went about their lives without caring about it. Because they had more pressing matters to attend to like affording groceries.

The whole AI trend really should be a case study in how to repackage religious, and in this case eschatological, rhetoric for the modern era.

If youâ(TM)re familiar with contemporary religions, there are a lot of similarities to the point of outright plagiarism. Which is fitting given current discourse around AI. Such creatively bankrupt individuals in charge of AI development smh.

Itâ(TM)s rather depressing seeing genuinely intelligent individuals spouting decidedly unscientific rhetoric. We had huge debates over science v religion in everyday facets of life and now you see these cargo cults springing up in STEM. Even the arguments are the same, just replacing God with AI like a madlibs book.

They were not even talking about California specifically though? Just about data centers in general across the US.
Also nice whataboutism.

For context, Axios is run by one Barak Ravid, a former serving member of the IDF. And not just a grunt, but one who served in the Israeli Intelligence Corps Unit 8200.

Ever since the war with Iran started Axios has been running propaganda piece after propaganda piece promoting American Warhawk rhetoric.

While I cannot speak for everyone, my understanding is that in China, and by extension Asia as a whole, people there are very repressed, overworked, and sexually frustrated.

Escapism is in high demand and companionship is sparse especially in light of demographic declines leading to higher competition and even conflicts between the two sexes. If you thought the incel culture here in the west was bad, itâ(TM)s on a whole other level in Asia.

You bring up crysis and I raise you Modern Warfare and Battlefield. Back then a lot of shooters went with the brown/piss filter approach to graphical fidelity that became so widely mocked and for good reason. Not only did it age poorly from a graphical standpoint, it all just looks so samey.

And even putting aside artistic intent, realism can actually be highly detrimental for game design as it can make readability and visual clarity incredibly difficult.

For example, modern battlefield games still have issues with readability where it can be genuinely difficult to discern player models from certain backgrounds, which the devs tried to circumvent with the controversial 3D spotting system. Because nothing says realism like having a bunch of colored arrows hovering above every player model.

Likewise you have the infamous yellow tape/paint in modern resident evil games to denote whether something is interactive or not. These are just some of the game design issues developers face when trying to go full into photorealism at the expense of gameplay.

This is an incredibly superficial view of graphical fidelity. Most games do not just push for realism in the sense that it looks just like real life.

Instead they pursue artistic realism, where liberties are taken with regards to lighting, shadow effects, particle physics, and even character models to evoke a specific reaction from the player. That is called artistic direction and atmosphere.

Also you seriously cannot believe that this default GenAI look is somehow realistic either. The lighting alone hardly aligns with how it works IRL. But that is a given since this dataset is likely plucking from social media glam posts and fashion magazines.

Like how would you even monetize AI models to begin with? Given that open source models exist especially in China it begs the question as to how you would reliably generate revenue through models alone, especially in a scenario where the performance of most models start converging on one another so the tech moat ceases to be in the long run.

Both ads and subscription fees have proven to be obtrusive and even downright exploitative, as they always ramp up the intensity or cost respectively.

Pretty much how I feel about the AI bubble. Yeah it will suck for some but I really doubt it will kill the American economy.

Now the housing bubble is a whole different ballgame and that popping combined with a devaluation of the USD will have genuinely catastrophic impacts on the American and even the global economy.

This Super Bowl has had some of the lamest and lowest effort ads I have seen in two or so decades of the Super Bowl. The AI ads are just the hallucinated cherry on top.

That AI.com one in particular shilling Sam, Elon, and AGI in particular was just pure unadulterated cringe. Could they really not think of an actual ad, even if it was generated by AI?

Though the Ring one had some genuine dystopian vibes with their newest feature for finding lost dogs. Totally not selling surveillance as a service here.

There is also the issue that said data centers will rapidly depreciate in value due to technological changes and general usage. On Earth at least we can drive up to one and change out the hardware periodically but in space that is not exactly an easy task fie a variety of reasons.

So either the data centers in space need to be cheaply made to recoup costs within say, 5-10 years or the demand for them exponentially scales at which point Musk would probably charge an arm and a leg for renting out their computational capabilities. Or shoot, he does both.

Either way this is probably going to be a huge money sink even for Musk and the U.S. government. I cannot see how you would recoup the costs of the hardware, let alone turn a profit within a reasonable timeframe without price gouging tactics.