Doomstead

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and large language models are all the rage these days and their impact is often touted as changing the world of work in a truly revolutionary way aka lots of job losses are likely to result from this technology.

These chat-based programs gain their knowledge by absorbing huge amounts of data and use that data to generate information that is often but not always correct. The results are quite interesting and if you have not already done so I would encourage you to start a conversation with one of these bots. The technology goes beyond texting however and can extend to generating pictures and even videos from simple prompts. In the next few years expect to see more and more AI generate pictures and even videos. You can possibly see which jobs are at risk just based on my descriptions and what nefarious uses this technology can be used for.

Anyhow, this thread will be dedicated to issues such as ChatGPT or other such programs and their potential issues they pose in the immediate future.

In the article I got linked up it goes on about the vast amount of energy required to power the various AI farms that have sprung to power these latest AI technologies. It sounds extreme, but due to sheer amount of electrical energy required there is a suggestion of powering future AI farms with nuclear energy.


Future data centres may have built-in nuclear reactors (BBC) (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68238330)

By Michael Dempsey
Technology reporter

A man with a shiny metal Concorde model on his desk, and old circuit boards on a shelf, is clearly in love with technology.

Chris Sharp is the chief technology officer at Digital Realty, a US business at the intersection of construction and high-tech. It builds data centres, the anonymous warehouses full of computers that keep the online world spinning.

And the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), which requires far more processing power than standard computing, has put rocket boosters under the data centre world.

His company has just built a huge new data centre in Portland, Oregon dedicated to AI. Just how different is this from an ordinary data centre?

"A normal data centre needs 32 megawatts of power flowing into the building. For an AI data centre it's 80 megawatts," says Mr Sharp.

AI systems are using all this extra electricity simply because they are doing so much more processing than standard computing. They are chewing through far more data.

Mr Sharp also points out that the entire web of technical support demanded by AI is greater. "You have five times more cabling, for instance."
A technician at a data centre in ChinaImage source, Getty Images
Image caption,
Data centres already used huge amounts of electricity, but AI is significantly increasing their power consumption

All of this points to a problem. How can AI grow when it requires so much more power to function?

Demanding ever more juice from the existing grid means competing with homes and other industries, and is not going to win the data centre sector any friends if blackouts result.

"Our industry has to find another source of power," Mr Sharp declares. He reckons that is nuclear.

More pressingly, he predicts that data centres in the not too distant future will come with their own dedicated, built-in nuclear reactors.

The technology in question is the much-touted Small Modular Reactor (SMR). These are designs for advanced reactors with about a third of the power generation of a traditional, large nuclear plant.

While there are currently no SMRs in commercial operation around the world, China is building the world's first, and similar technology is already used by nuclear-powered submarines.

Meanwhile, universities, such as the UK's Imperial College London, have for years operated small nuclear reactors for teaching and training purposes. Imperial's own reactor, located just outside London, was operational from 1965 to 2010.
The core module of China's forthcoming commercial SMR being transported last summerImage source, Getty

Today most companies developing SMRs for commercial use are focusing on helping towns and cities to keep their lights on. However, a clutch of specialist firms have decided that data centres are the best candidates for their SMR designs.

Dr Michael Bluck runs the Centre for Nuclear Engineering at Imperial College London. "Data centres are power hungry things, but with AI we're moving into a new level of power requirements," he says.

"There are about 50 SMR designs out there. The challenge is to build them in repeatable units, factory style, standardising production lines.

"There's no reason why a small fast reactor can't power a data centre, except that you have to get it past the regulator."

In the US, one SMR design from a company called NuScale has already been given the go-ahead by the Office of Nuclear Energy. Meanwhile, in the UK the Office for Nuclear Regulation is continuing to study SMR designs from Rolls-Royce and US tech firm Holtec International.

And US energy firm Westinghouse wants to build four SMRs in north east England, in Tees Valley, close to the existing Hartlepool nuclear power station.
Banner around links to stories about AI

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Dr Bluck thinks nuclear submarines offer a compelling safety case for SMR technology. "We build a reactor and put it in a submarine, and people sleep within two yards of it."

And he forecasts the tech sector's involvement in SMR development will prove decisive. "These guys have got oodles of cash!"

By contrast, Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist for Greenpeace UK, says that the high cost of SMRs will prove to be too great a barrier.

Unrealistic hype lies behind the cost estimates for SMRs," he says. "This hype will fall away as delays and difficulties emerge."

Dr Parr argues that data centre operators will get cold feet when revised costings emerge to render SMRs uncompetitive compared with renewable energy sources.

Greenpeace is also opposed to nuclear power on safety grounds, pointing out the risk of accidents, and the need to deal with the radioactive waste.

Spencer Lamb, chief commercial officer at British data centre developer Kao Data, doesn't view nuclear-powered facilities in the UK as being something imminent. "I've heard about SMRs, but it will take a long time to deploy a nuclear-configured data centre in the UK, and AI is happening now," he says.

Back in California, a company called Oklo says it has an SMR design that is almost ready to roll.

"AI is the catalyst, the main driver," says Brian Gitt, who is in charge of business development at the company.

Oklo plans to manufacture SMRs that it says can built both quickly and safely.

"People question the viability of nuclear power due to the waste product and risk of an accident," says Mr Gitt. "We recycle the fuel through our reactor multiple times, dealing with the waste, and the new reactors cannot melt-down, they are self-cooling and self-regulating."
An artist's impression of the exterior of an Oklo SMR and data centreImage source, Oklo
Image caption,
Oklo's designs for its planned SMRs appear to be going for more whimsy charm than your typical power station

Mr Gitt declines to reveal if any data centre firms have already signed contracts, but he says that "all the major operators are interested". He adds: "Power is their biggest problem, and they want to deploy this technology within four years, by 2028."

Mr Gitt says that his 25 years working in the energy business has convinced him that nuclear power is the only answer to the pressures the new AI data centre world faces.

"[Without us] they just don't have the power to turn on all the machines they need to have. We are signing letters of intent on specific data centre locations for the 2028 timeframe."

So what will a data centre's very own nuclear plant look like? Oklo envisages a large stainless steel tank that contains the SMR dropped into a 50ft (15m) deep hole in the ground. The data centre would then constructed on and around it.

Perhaps the ultimate tie up between SMRs, AI and data centres is evident on Oklo's board.

Sam Altman, the high profile leader of leading AI firm OpenAI has been its chairman since 2015. As Mr Gitt says of Mr Altman, "he identified this issue 10 years ago."

Thoughts anyone?

Your article turned into an article about nuclear power.  But it started off on topic.

The is a group of doomers I would love to introduce the Diner to.  I published this in another thread today.


I like the way they split the screen and the grid layout for the participants.  The right side of the layout was used to show info from chatGPT about the discussion as it progressed.  This must be chatGPT 4.0.  I use the free version 3.0.  Which is wrong as often as it is right.

I shudder to think of the power I have used with certain questions I have asked.

Will it put people out of jobs?

No, but capitalism will.

Sadly, even the Black Widow probably can't stop AI from consuming still more Terawatts of power and infiltrating our existence, but she may at least slow it down a little.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/22/scarlett-johansson-sam-altmans-washington-00159507

Sam Altman's Scarlett Johansson Blunder Just Made AI a Harder Sell in DC

RE

They don't have enough Juice to keep the lights on reliably in Kenya, but the Big Gorilla will build a Geothermal plant just to power his Supercomputer AI farm there.

On the plus side, Come the Revolution, they could Nationalize the power plant, unplug the supercomputers and turn the lights back on.

https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/microsoft-to-build-dollar1-bn-geothermal-data-centre-in-kenya-following-nigeria/52bsqm5

Microsoft to build $1 bn geothermal data centre in Kenya following Nigeria facility closure

RE

Billionaires want AI, they just don't wanna pay for all the juice it takes to run the computers.  Somebody else should take the risk.

Who is out there demanding we have AI Data Centers?  Just tell the Billionaires, "You want this, you power it."  Has anybody seen any demonstrable improvement in their life from AI?  Most of the consequences so far seem to have been bad rather than good.  Deep Fakes and lost jobs for instance.

I see no pressing need for AI, and I certainly can't see why taxpayers would want to foot the bill.  Electric companies who might profit from it might want t, but they're already way behind on being able to supply power, so why do they want another headache?

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/big-tech-wants-nuclear-power-but-doesn-t-see-role-as-investor

RE

Quote from: RE on Jun 18, 2024, 12:51 PMBillionaires want AI, they just don't wanna pay for all the juice it takes to run the computers.  Somebody else should take the risk.

Who is out there demanding we have AI Data Centers?  Just tell the Billionaires, "You want this, you power it."  Has anybody seen any demonstrable improvement in their life from AI?  Most of the consequences so far seem to have been bad rather than good.  Deep Fakes and lost jobs for instance.

I see no pressing need for AI, and I certainly can't see why taxpayers would want to foot the bill.  Electric companies who might profit from it might want t, but they're already way behind on being able to supply power, so why do they want another headache?

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/big-tech-wants-nuclear-power-but-doesn-t-see-role-as-investor

RE

QuoteI see no pressing need for AI,

All the talk now is hype.  A.I. was a dream and progress was painfully slow.  Anybody into computer science knows this.  Finally enough progress was made to get useful results.  But what kind of results really? 

A circular saw is a great tool if you have a wall plug to plug the cord into.  It is superior to a hand saw in many ways.  Even so it is not a perfect replacement, and at the end of the day the power saw is only a tool that gets a job done.  A wooden chair is a wooden chair is a wooden chair.  Power magic is not transferred to a product.  Power only makes production easier.  And A.I. has to be told what to do.

Besides not being magic, A.I. right now is like a precocious ten year old that has just consumed five candy bars and has been told to sit still.  Superior in many ways to humans, A.I. has serious shortcomings, and it will have a maturity issue for quite some time.

As for putting people out of work.  That is a function of the system, not technology.  Ask a true Luddite.  We don't hate technology.  We only hate technology stolen into private hands!

The private hands seem to be a problem.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 19, 2024, 01:11 AMThe private hands seem to be a problem.

Private or Public, it consumes too much power.

RE

Quote from: RE on Jun 19, 2024, 09:07 AM

Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 19, 2024, 01:11 AMThe private hands seem to be a problem.

Private or Public, it consumes too much power.

RE

The public forced by common ownership to deal with reality could vote to limit profligate use to University Research.  All you get from private is chaos.

Could does not mean would, but it would be POSSIBLE.  With private it is impossible.

Start counting the job losses.

Might be a good time to break some looms.

(https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2018/03/10/2c74f509-2406-49bb-be00-577652fa4522/thumbnail/1200x630/9104e74420211d5a439314df9006614c/luddites-promo-295918.jpg?v=5842509bb796a146f9b20d3e8b03dac6)

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/business/ai-jobs-workers-replacing/index.html

RE

"We want data centers, but it can't be the Wild Wild West of data centers and crypto miners crashing our grid and turning the lights off."

"We" do?  Who is the we here?  Have they done a referendum asking people if they want a new Data Center in the neighborhood causing more frequent power blackouts and raising the rates on their electricity?  Everybody Knows we don't have enough power generation capacity to handle what the Billionaires have planned for us, but "we" want them so "we" have to pay for them.

And while big tech firms may be committed to using green energy, the Washington Post reports that, since they run on the same grid as typical power consumers, these data centers tend to eat up much of the renewable energy available, leaving power providers to source dirty energy to fill in gaps.

WHY do they run on the same grid?  Let them build their own fucking grid!  Put some solar panels on the fucking roof!  Power it with Green Hydrogen fuel cells!  Build a Fusion Reactor next door!

https://www.salon.com/2024/06/22/power-hungry-ai-boom-making-power-grids-dirtier-less-reliable/

RE

You can see here why Capitalism makes reducing power consumption impossible.

Tech companies build a data center wherever there's a power company that says they can sell them juice.  Since the more juice they sell the more money they make, they all say, "Surre! Build it here!"

Once built, on those hot days they find they're short of juice, so they buy some from the grid.  Somebody somewhere fires up an old coal plant to make up the shortfall.

Regulations need to be put in place that require AI to have its own power supply independent of grid power.  Without that, the consumption will rise faster than renewables could power it.  True anyhow, but it would at least slow it down

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/24/weird-wacky-ways-of-powering-data-centers-are-under-consideration/

RE

The tech sector's build out of data centers to support AI and the adoption of electric vehicles alone is expected to add 290 terawatt hours of electricity demand by the end of the decade, according to a report released by the consulting firm Rystad Energy this week.

Must...have...MOAR POWER!

Supplying the demand with reliable power is a matter of economic and national security, Womack said. Southern expects 80% of the demand through the end of the decade to be met by renewables, he said.

Which means that 20% more FF powered plants will be necessary as well, without retiring any of the currently running plants.  IOW, all of the added renewables does nothing to reduce carbon emissions at all, it just gets worse.

Opposite the banksters who see no solution to lack of affordable housing because of insufficient supply, the economistas tell us we must build terawatts of new power generation to feed the insatiable lust of billionaires for electricity.  Power for computers must be found...housing for the homeless cannot be.  The hypocrisy  of capitalists laid bare for all to see.  If they put half the investment they are making into data centers into affordable housing, the homeless crisis would be over inside of 5 years.

Still, not a single politician from any party including the minority parties has stood up to point this out and demand an immediate national affordable housing act.  Make a law that for every dollar Google spends on building data centers they have to match with a dollar spent on new housing.  All the housing and data center to be powered by the renewable energy plant they also have to finance.

Why is there nobody who will suggest this in any state assembly if not in CONgress?  Is there not 1 in the whole FSoA who can see the OBVIOUS?  Where is Captain Obvious when you need him?

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/9e/10/439e106e9d653bb3fd0a664fa9044581.gif)

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/30/failure-to-meet-surging-energy-demand-will-jeopardize-economic-growth-utility-execs-warn.html

RE

I read an article this morning about how much energy it takes to run the AI programs. I will give examples in the article that convinced me to start using Duck, Duck, Go instead. I can't take part in the tremendous carbon footprint it is having right now. Maybe sometime in the future if they can bring the footprint WAY DOWN, but for now I can't use it with a clear conscience.

Today data centers run 24/7 and most derive their energy from fossil fuels, although there are increasing efforts to use renewable energy resources. Because of the energy the world's data centers consume, they account for 2.5 to 3.7 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, exceeding even those of the aviation industry.
In 2021, global data center electricity use was about 0.9 to 1.3 percent of global electricity demand. One study estimated it could increase to 1.86 percent by 2030. As the capabilities and complexity of AI models rapidly increase over the next few years, their processing and energy consumption needs will too. One research company predicted that by 2028, there will be a four-fold improvement in computing performance, and a 50-fold increase in processing workloads due to increased use, more demanding queries, and more sophisticated models with many more parameters. It's estimated that the energy consumption of data centers on the European continent will grow 28 percent by 2030.
In 2019, University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers trained several large language models and found that training a single AI model can emit over 626,000 pounds of CO2, equivalent to the emissions of five cars over their lifetimes.

A more recent study reported that training GPT-3 with 175 billion parameters consumed 1287 MWh of electricity, and resulted in carbon emissions of 502 metric tons of carbon, equivalent to driving 112 gasoline powered cars for a year.
Once models are deployed, inference—the mode where the AI makes predictions about new data and responds to queries—may consume even more energy than training. Google estimated that of the energy used in AI for training and inference, 60 percent goes towards inference, and 40 percent for training. GPT-3's daily carbon footprint was been estimated to be equivalent to 50 pounds of CO2 or 8.4 tons of CO2 in a year.

Inference energy consumption is high because while training is usually done multiple times to keep models current and optimized, inference is used many many times to serve millions of users. Two months after its launch, ChatGPT had 100 million active users. Instead of employing existing web searches that rely on smaller AI models, many people are eager to use AI for everything, but a single request in ChatGPT can consume 100 times more energy than one Google search, according to one tech expert.

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/06/09/ais-growing-carbon-footprint/

Will be interesting to see how the court rules on this one.  Will Bezos get a free ride on the backs of the residential customers?  Place your bets here.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/03/utility_firms_launch_complaint/

RE

Good catch. The energy wars will really get going now. Climate disasters plus, data centers are going to be fighting for energy. Scarcity in so many sectors now will also bring things to a boil. Fun times. :)

Power companies love AI.  Not too good for J6P though.

"Expect lower reliability and higher costs for consumers, while energy producers might make more money on the supply side by producing less energy but being paid to exist," he said.

The ultimate TBTF company!

On the plus side, you'll be able to complain to dead movie stars about your electric bill on the phone.

https://www.investors.com/news/artificial-intelligence-ai-data-centers-demand-nuclear-energy/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqEAgAKgcICjDOm4YLMJD1gwMw5ZOJAw&utm_content=rundown&gaa_at=la&gaa_n=AWsEHT6Zc83B-2qbHQo3Qp71Q5tNBqyxEBq9L2urMtey1ZHe0BxQQkiK41qjZ4xtWTnLA_O2HzOsa2tC3xBF&gaa_ts=6692b635&gaa_sig=kVbCY4qa1iCCj4X-DCVFx5TN1pinFUX4s8VxpxwlstFPmuW815EWPmE_f6W66BnOMHeIh9Z0Av27hf5wGSPhVg%3D%3D

RE

Quote from: RE on Jun 18, 2024, 12:51 PMBillionaires want AI, they just don't wanna pay for all the juice it takes to run the computers.  Somebody else should take the risk.

Who is out there demanding we have AI Data Centers?  Just tell the Billionaires, "You want this, you power it."  Has anybody seen any demonstrable improvement in their life from AI?  Most of the consequences so far seem to have been bad rather than good.  Deep Fakes and lost jobs for instance.

I see no pressing need for AI, and I certainly can't see why taxpayers would want to foot the bill.  Electric companies who might profit from it might want t, but they're already way behind on being able to supply power, so why do they want another headache?

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy-power-supply/big-tech-wants-nuclear-power-but-doesn-t-see-role-as-investor

RE

Telling billionaires to go build their own has worked so well in building municipal stadiums, hasn't it? New York State has committed to funding $600 million of the $1.4 billion stadium project in Buffalo, with the NFL and the Bills investing $550 million and Erie County $250 million. The new stadium will be owned by the state rather than the county, as is currently the case.
Framed a different way, taxpayers will pay $850 million of the construction cost (with $600 million coming from New York State and $250 million coming from Erie County). With the State of New York also paying for all maintenance and repair costs once the stadium opens. Always good to be a billionaire. The first rule of being a billionaire is never put your own capital at risk.
Expect much the same with nukes for AI.

Texas Leaders Worry That Bitcoin Mines Threaten to Crash the State Power Grid

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10072024/texas-bitcoin-mining-threatens-power-grid/

Love this quote  ;D  :

When I used to give career advice to my MBAs, I joked that going into tech is like becoming a stripper—you make a lot when you're young, but it goes down fast. Even today you can find former senior programmers driving an Uber or mowing lawns, aged out of a fast-changing industry.

There's a half million people whose  Amerikan Dream has become a nightmare.  Those are folks with 6 figure incomes and hefty mortgages which won't get paid on a salary stacking the shelves at Harbor Freight.

Irony is it's those same programmers who wrote the code behind AI.  They coded themselves right out of a job.

Big Tech Cuts Half a Million Jobs, Blames AI

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/big-teach-cuts-half-a-million-jobs-blames-ai/

RE

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/big-teach-cuts-half-a-million-jobs-blames-ai/ (https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/big-teach-cuts-half-a-million-jobs-blames-ai/)

QuoteOf course, AI has its own problems, including hallucinations that invent information and phenomena that don't exist. Google pulled an AI blunder after it assured users that cockroaches living in a penis is totally normal, indeed that's how they got their name.

This article is light on facts and is presenting speculation as data.  I quote this single paragraph to show the contradiction, and other problems with AI were cited.  It makes it look like the author is vetting 'facts' the author actually knows to be made up.  The author admits AI has problems.  The truth is, at least for this year.  Is that only domain experts can use AI.  Programmers can use it to write a better program.  Only programmers can ask the right questions to refine results, and results have to be refined up the ying-yang.  Only a doctor can use AI to properly diagnose a disease.  Only a domain expert can tell if results are bullshit or not.  Currently AI generates more bullshit than a bull.

Regarding code.  AI can now teach anyone to program.  All they have to do is spend the time to learn.  Ask it questions and practice.

In other words.  Nothing has changed.  AI replaced the book.  You can now do proper book lernin without a book if you have the money to pay for AI, and you have a computer.  Free AI only gets you so far before your 'limit' is up.

If you want to know why tech companies have cut jobs, cutting jobs happens to be a FEATURE of capitalism.  It is ALWAYS done where it can be done to maintain the army of unemployed and increase PROFITS.  Maintaining an unemployed army is essential for profits.  Capitalism fails without it.  For real.

This article was written to hook you by fear.

* A new user can easily get an uncooperative AI session to take far longer to give results than if the user did the work themselves. If useful results are produced at all.  A new user will want to tell AI to  fuck itself in frustration.  And that is a total waste of time.  And hard on the keyboard.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 26, 2024, 11:12 AMIf you want to know why tech companies have cut jobs, cutting jobs happens to be a FEATURE of capitalism.  It is ALWAYS done where it can be done to maintain the army of unemployed and increase PROFITS.  Maintaining an unemployed army is essential for profits.  Capitalism fails without it.  For real.

Of course.  The point is though that AI enables them to fire the humans because the AI enables fewer code jockeys to write code faster.  So the department that once had 20  EEs writing subroutines now has 5 using ChatGPT getting it done.  The irony is that the same guys just fired probably wrote some of the code behind the AI.

RE

Good point.  I forget I only do it for fun.

It seems that humans have become what they are ( that distinguishes them from "animals" ) by the use of tools. Most of the purpose of the inner dialogue is to scrounge for the means ( tool ) to make our labor to survive more efficent...to accomplish our goals. There has always been problems in the society when new tools are invented. Now we have invented tools that are destroying our environment in about everything we do. AI represents a tool that will slowly cull the overpopulation problem. As the means of production takes away the contracts for labor, people will die earlier, and will quit having as many children. We are in an era of collapse. Big collapse. AI will speed the process exponentially.

It was so cool when a Microsoft update crashed the system for millions of people here lately. Microsoft is a powerful symbol for the development of the computing tool. It was conceived in a war with Apple. The programming involved to compete with Apple, using the DOS system has been a nightmare, and yet it is the go to programming language. I wonder if we had chose Unix to build the internet and other computing tools, with using open source, if we would have such a cluster fuck? The accumulation of material wealth has driven the development of this tool, not the excellence it could be used to benefit humankind. Like most all structures of modern society AI is a mess that will constantly be a problem. I see AI as running parallel with other means of collapse. It was inevitable that it would manifest. The scale of it's influence is huge so it will have huge implications of collapsing a functioning society.

Until/If mankind evolves to understand that the tools that are made are to be in harmony with nature then there is a chance that this specie will continue. If not, it will go extinct.

The chance of something dramatic happening makes AI interesting.

'Video Game Takes Over Universe.'  Now we will have full on automatic space communism.  Whoopie!

AI  grabs your attention, but actually AI is only a tool.  At first glance a tool to offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.  From that point of view, just another tool in a long line of many.  Is that a good thing?  Or have the rich been selfish and kept productivity improvements to themselves? 

Yes they have.  In America since 1979 wages have been flat while productivity improvements increase owner income every year. 

Uncle Karl sez:  The value of a commodity is the median amount of labor that is socially necessary to produce a commodity. The first order effect of a productivity improvement is to increase physical productivity and profits, but as demand does not change, a second order effect will, (as the improvement becomes the universal way to do things), reduce profit.  What goes up later comes down.  Profit goes back to where it was with workers getting a smaller slice of pie.

In America workers were getting a piece of the ever bigger pie from 1948 to 1980 until this:

QuoteStarting in the late 1970s policymakers began dismantling all the policy bulwarks helping to ensure that typical workers' wages grew with productivity. Excess unemployment was tolerated to keep any chance of inflation in check. Raises in the federal minimum wage became smaller and rarer. Labor law failed to keep pace with growing employer hostility toward unions. Tax rates on top incomes were lowered. And anti-worker deregulatory pushes—from the deregulation of the trucking and airline industries to the retreat of anti-trust policy to the dismantling of financial regulations and more—succeeded again and again.

Then all the extra pie went elsewhere.

Capitalism has serious flaws, second order effects which offset any benefit it gives.  As a force in society capitalism must be regulated or eliminated.  Technology is not the problem.  People are.  AI is another means of production, and really that is all AI is.  Who owns it.  That is what counts.

* Carbon fee and dividend would give ownership of oil and gas to the American people making the oil companies employees of us.  But so complete is the brainwashing of America, few people understand how this could be a good idea and change the game everything.

Consequently nothing will change.  America has a religious commitment to being owned.

QuoteI wonder if we had chose Unix to build the internet and other computing tools, with using open source

Actually that is what we have.  The issue becomes who owns it.  My opinion is that Google and Amazon owns it by proxy for the deep state.  I have strong opinions on the subject.  Personal experience.

The F.S.O.A.loves monopoly ownership.  Monopolies are a means of control one step away from accountability.  Fascism merges the state with capitalism, it is a defining characteristic.

Did Amazon or the White House ban Caleb's book.  You have to take a deep breath to answer the question.  That is the point.


You know the answer, but you can't bet on it.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 27, 2024, 09:37 AMTechnology is not the problem.

Technology always has blowback. Extending the lifespan with modern medicine has helped create the overshoot and a population of geriatrics.  Fertilizers and the "green revolution" also led to overshoot.  Cars and planes brought climate change.  Nuclear energy brought the atom bomb and Chernobyl.  Chemistry brought us "forever chemicals" and microplastics in the food chain.  The computer enabled increased surveillance and control of the population even without AI.

There is no technology that is free of negative consequences, and the more powerful the tech, the worse the consequences.  You can postulate "if Homo Saps had the WISDOM to use it correctly, it would be good", but fact is HS does not possess that wisdom.  Beyond just being stupid and shortsighted, there are always truly EVIL people who find nefarious uses for technology.

Even just the invention of Agriculture had negative blowback.  It led to the stratification of society, the development of a military caste and millenia of perpetual state sponsored war.

Tecchnology may not be "the" problem, but it definitely is A problem.  As a species, we did way better with basic technology and simple tools.  We have the intelligence to invent cool stuff, we do not posess the wisdom to use it without causing worse problems than it was meant to fix.

RE

Yes, consequences are not considered.  People use technology first and ask questions later sometimes maybe.

It is a vicious circle.  New tech to replace old tech in a spiral to death when consequences of old tech can no longer be solved by new tech.

(https://fortune.com/img-assets/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/PXL_20250513_194936824.jpg?w=384&q=75)

Tough times for Code Jockeys.  Thank God for Door Dash & Uber.

https://fortune.com/2025/05/14/software-engineer-replaced-by-ai-lost-six-figure-salary-800-job-applications-doordash-living-in-rv-trailer/

Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he's been rejected from 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet

RE

Quote from: RE on May 14, 2025, 01:59 PMSoftware engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI

RE

I constructed a query and asked a public llm (recently updated), how many people are there doing AI as a hobby in the United States.

The answer is 10,000, to know the number was not a llm hallucination, I asked it to explain the reasoning behind that number.  It made sense.

As one of the 10,000 I have something to say about this.  There is no A.I. without software engineers and there are plenty of businesses who would like their private data put into a local llm for security reasons.  They want it done now.  It seems to me a guy could make serious bank right now doing that.  Businesses do not know how to do it themselves.

It is easy to blame AI for what capitalism does.  Technology never has been the problem.  The problem is how technology is used and capitalism uses technology in the service of money.  Capitalism has no other consideration.

So as a loyal servant of the matrix, when you get tired of blaming immigrants for stealing your jobs, say AI did it.  And then after your monkey mind gets tired of blaming AI, switch back.

AI can help a software engineer write code, if they know how to use it.  But the software engineer turns into a supervisor who has to watch AI like a hawk to keep it on task, or AI will start doing some really stupid shit, and ruin everything.  The gains are not as great as commonly believed.  Once a project gets into territory that a llm is not familiar with, there are no gains.

AI hype is way overblown.  If a company really thinks they can replace skilled technical staff with AI then they will deserve what they get, just like Tesla will get what it deserves as consequence for the behavior of Tesla's private owner.  Out of bizness.

*llm - large language model

Quote from: K-Dog on May 14, 2025, 02:36 PMIt seems to me a guy could make serious bank right now doing that.  Businesses do not know how to do it themselves.

Well then, make a biz card and drop in on some local biz you could write some AI app to improve their biz, explain how it will improve proffits and bill them @ $200/hr.  Call it K9-AI.  You can quit stocking shelves.

RE

Quote from: RE on May 14, 2025, 06:05 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on May 14, 2025, 02:36 PMIt seems to me a guy could make serious bank right now doing that.  Businesses do not know how to do it themselves.

Well then, make a biz card and drop in on some local biz you could write some AI app to improve their biz, explain how it will improve proffits and bill them @ $200/hr.  Call it K9-AI.  You can quit stocking shelves.

RE

Yeahhhhhhh,

(https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/pics/doomsteadcoderag.png)

This is an image, it runs in another window on my browser.

I just accomplished this within the last hour,  It is the result of so much effort I won't get into it.  But it mixes python php javascript code on a local web page that talks to a local server which runs a large language model.  I can switch the running model in and out.  Interesting to watch the personality of the responses change.  Nothing uses the web, (but I could not have built this without the web).

The leading edge of tech is referred to by those who actually are involved in the work as the bleeding edge.  I said I won't get into it, but it is like Columbus landing on Hispaniola for me.  The concept is simple.  The language model is considered to be a bad student who has a cheat sheet.  In this case the entire Doomstead codebase has been placed into a vector database.  The Question is first sent to this database where semantic matches are made and returned.  This data becomes the cheat sheet which is then presented to the llm along with the original question, and like a cheating student the llm which knows nothing of the Doomstead codebase can answer the question. 

Easy as pie.

Not so easy to actually do,  The number of software pieces that have to dance together to make this all work is huge.  Gigabytes of library code are used, and the webpage has about 1000 lines of code, most of it fancy-assed.  Getting all the software to all dance together for the first time is a major accomplishment.  And the vector database is written essentially from scratch using the fancy-assed code.  The buttons at the top do not do anything yet but are ready to wire up.  The send button sends and the toolbar text reports connection to the the LLM.  Essential operation achieved after days of wheel spinning.



* RAG  -- Retrieval Augmented Generation


A demo I ran across (and ran) uses a text 2000 lines long which is nothing but random facts about cats.  A simple chat LLM uses this text to be an expert on cats.  It may be fun to make an expert on doom and have people ask the doomstead questions.  We be an oracle!

It seems cool, but how will you use it to get going on the new K9-AI Consulting Biz?

RE

Quote from: RE on May 18, 2025, 06:02 PMIt seems cool, but how will you use it to get going on the new K9-AI Consulting Biz?

RE

It is cool and I am using it.  To be a consultant on this I will have to ride the horse for a while.  Learn how to integrate raw text, pdf docs, a database, images, all the options. On top of that the simple formula of exposing a question to the vector database and then exposing the results of that search with the raw question to the llm needs refinement to be useful.  Commands like 'format the results into a list in .md format' have to be injected in along with the question.  Prompt engineering is a thing.   

Adding the buttons to the top is going to be useful.

(https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/8d7ea0404d4ff5824e45ed2911466814?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=633&cropW=1126&xPos=0&yPos=31&width=862&height=485)

Here's the key quote in this article:


Who is going to make sure this happens?  Given the fact that with a downsizing of the workforce you'll have a surplus of qualified labor, supply-demand economics will drive DOWN the cost of labor.  Since the goal of any corporation is to MAXIMIZE profit, what they will MAKE SURE of is that the profit flows to the stockholders and the Board of Directors.  The only thing they will make sure of is that the grunt code jockeys will do more work for less money.  That's capitalism.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-21/ai-job-fears-accelerate-white-collar-grad-roles-threatened/105440772

AI threatens entry-level jobs as university grads struggle to get hired

RE

What we've then got to make sure is that that increase in labour productivity flows through to higher wages. Otherwise, the benefits of that higher productivity are going to be absorbed by profit.

This statement is deluded and childish.  The author is ignorant.  There is nothing in capitalism that will guarantee any fair outcome.  In fact the capitalist system is designed to make sure fair outcomes do not happen.  Markets destroy fair outcomes.  Capitalists divvy up the profit pie without any restraint.  Capitalists hate restraint.  Capitalists kill to be unrestrained.  But the author expects fairness.  Not on this planet.  Not for more than ten minutes before a grifter comes by and smells opportunity.  The author likely thinks bitcoin is great too.  That shit smells fine.

Anything to take the focus off the system.  A.I. is blamed by capitalism for taking advantage of workers the way fascists blamed Jews.

QuoteThe machinery itself is innocent of the misery it brings. The same steam loom that throws the English weaver out of work could be freeing them from drudgery - if only it weren't private property. - Uncle Karl

Marx's Distinction Between Living and Dead Labor

Living labor refers to the active, creative work performed by humans, which Uncle Karl considered to be the sole source of new value.
Dead labor embodies value congealed within tools, machines, and raw materials.  Including modern AI.

AI is just another form of dead labor.  Like a hammer or spreadsheet AI merely transfers it's existing value and does not generate new value.

As long as the system operates without sufficient checks and balances, all increases in productivity regardless of the source (human effort. advanced technology, hocus pocus, eye of newt, whatever), will benefit capital owners and not the broader working class.


When the trickle-down theory was first promoted, trickle-down stopped.  The theory was a purposeful lie.  The growing divergence between productivity growth and worker compensation since the late 1970s precisely coincides with the decline in private sector union power, and the start of trickle down blabber.

As is the case with most technologies, AI isn't inherently bad, it's how it can bee  used to turbocharge bad and turn it into deep evil.  In the hands of bad actors like Peter Thiel and Trumpolini AI becomes the ultimate tool for Fascist repression.  Will Der Trumpher use it to identify and target his "enemies"?  Is the Pope Catholic?  Does a Bear shit in the woods?

You can forget the comparisons with Nazi Germany.  The AI fueled Fascism we are faced with growing in 2925 Amerika is a Stage 4 Cancer eating up the body politic beyond the reach of any cure.  The death of democracy is a forgone conclusion now.  As a nation state, the FSoA is the Walking Dead.  The Zombification is unstoppable and irreversinle.


Peter Thiel's Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/30/peter-thiel-palantir-threat-to-americans

Peter Thiel's Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans

RE

Sweet someone with a private website like ours who lets his stuff get embedded.


100% About what Luke Smith says about AI.  The massive quantities of power is another question.  What it is and what it is good for it the question for today.

And my fooling around with it consumes as much power as a 100 watt old school light bulb while the program runs.

My python AI project (https://github.com/KeithHayes/Process-Transcript)  <--- I format a continuous un-formatted string of text into a properly formatted string of text with punctuated and identified sentences.  Fragments remaining un-formatted.  It is a work in progress and quite a nut to crack.  To the technically curious - It is complicated task to make a large text file flow through a small context window.

I have made enough progress to know I am going to wind up with something useful.  And repeating Luke's point of view. 100% AI is a tool and useless without humans in the loop.

AI stocks currently taking a beating, inspired in all likelihood by the post-IPO cold feet of the early investors in SpaceX.  Perhaps this will act as a catalyst to pop the AI Bubble, which besides its dubious issues with Surveillance and Spying and Dumbing down of Homo Saps who use it to substitute for rather than augment Human Intelligence, also probably doesn't pay for itself when you factor in the GOBS of Energy & Water it consumes and damage to the environment.  Add to that the fact that 99.9% of the benefits of AI go to the 0.1% of the population that owns the companies doing the buildout.

RE

I trust you see the recursive problem this creates.  Because AI can be used to crack the security protocols for any computer system, any security system must continuously use AI to defend against AI based attacks.  This leads to a running battle between the Hackers and the Network Admins to run more complex and sophisticated methods to crack or protect a system.  Each round of this battle leads to ever greater consumption of energy, water and time by the supercomputers waging this battle.  Since it is a war that neither side can ever really "win", there is really no upper limit to how much it will cost to keep a system secure.  It also probably makes your home computer or laptop nearly impossible to secure.

This of course is wonderful newz for anyone renting out time on their supercomputer (probably to both combatants), but for everyone else including the end consumer whose financial and medical records have to be kept secure, it's going to make it quite expensive.

RE

QuoteThe most advanced artificial intelligence models are improving quickly enough to outsmart prevailing cybersecurity know-how within months, the Five Eyes spy agency alliance has warned.

Bullshit who wrote this has no idea how the models work.  Accelerationist thinking.  All hail the singularity.  Models are trained on human data and can only do what humans can do as a result of their training.  Better and faster maybe, but no different.  Yet claiming that these models will soon out-think humans with superhuman abilities is popular.

The models do not actually think.  They pattern match and reflecting on the patterns (thinking) so far is something only humans can do.  They are like humans who do things by rote without any understanding, brain dead we call it in people.  Functional but not really alive.  That may get a lot of work done, but there will be nothing new under the sun.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 23, 2026, 09:33 PM They are like humans who do things by rote without any understanding, brain dead we call it in people.  Functional but not really alive.  That may get a lot of work done, but there will be nothing new under the sun.

True, but security systems don't really require original thinking.  They're all variations on an encryption theme.  Got a faster  more powerful system with better cracking algorithms, you can probably break it by brute force.  Besides that, just about all systems have some flaw in the code that can be exploited, or the original designer snuck in a back door on purpose.  So there's a better than even chance that the proliferation of AI computing will lead to more systems currently considered "secure" being broken.  Based on what I've read so far, particularly at risk are Block Chain Crypto Currency Wallets.  If any of the major cryptocurrency systems are broken, that whole sector could be at risk.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing,  but a few crypto Billionaires like the Winklevoss Twins could take a beating. 😁

RE

True enough, my objection is in giving the current version of AI super powers.  What it can do is impressive, and the tendency is to think of it as being more capable than it really is.

Dan Jarvie posted AI slop in the 'first person', so I bounced him along with the last two fake five eye Russian Trolls as being fake.

They may be replacing TDos with AI.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 24, 2026, 05:54 AMTrue enough, my objection is in giving the current version of AI super powers.  What it can do is impressive, and the tendency is to think of it as being more capable than it really is.

Oh absolutely.  J6P out there is being convinced that current AI is on the verge of turning into Lt. Data from Star Trek or Skynet from Terminator.  It's about to turn SENTIENT! It's ALIVE! 😬  No, sorry, nowhere close.

What is true though is that it will replace many jobs thought to take intelligence but are really repetitive wrote work.  Doctors, Lawyers and Engineers for example. Diagnosis already better using AI. Even Surgery not far off with robotic arms.  Writing Briefs, researching case law, AI better.  Design a new Bridge or locate the best places to find mineral deposits?  AI faster & cheaper.
 

QuoteDan Jarvie posted AI slop in the 'first person', so I bounced him along with the last two fake five eye Russian Trolls as being fake.

They may be replacing TDos with AI.

Didn't respond to those DJ posts since registering a new Screen ID to circumvent Cooler Time is a violation of the CoC.  Nonsense posts to boot.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 24, 2026, 05:54 AMDan Jarvie posted AI slop in the 'first person', so I bounced him along with the last two fake five eye Russian Trolls as being fake.

They may be replacing TDos with AI.

Who is Dan Jarvie? And TDoS is still TDos. He wrote a book don't you know, after telling the Austin City Council that the world was ending because of that peak oily stuff. I wonder if that video is still around?

I think the Energy Crisis has past the "coming" stage and has moved into the "already here" stage.  Forget the CO2 increase, the Waste Heat alone from these DCs will drive temps up by another .5C, not to mention sucking up what little free water is left.  Plus everyone from Europe to S America wants a new AC unit.  Pretty soon everyone will need a Nuke Generator just to power their McMansion.

Power Consumption is on an Exponential Increase which clearly cannot be sustained.  Just a matter of time before this engine seizes up.

RE

(https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fglasgowarchers1948.co.uk%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F03%2Ftreasure-of-the-sierra-madre.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=80277460df11b4e4d958a8fa461dc52f9c6a55d110a2e433d31dc30f5606397e)

We don't need no stinkin' Data Centers. The Diner rolls its own.

Seriously, the world has too much money to invest because a growth slowdown does that. It is in the math, and it happens when limits are reached. Money collects in piles to grow, but without overall economic growth a money pile can't grow itself.  At least to the stratospheric level of unearned riches.  It piles up but can't grow. It gets hungry.

Hungry money created an imagined need for 'compute,' resulting in the biggest bubble of all time. Bubbles only happen in a bizarre world where a parasitic class reaps profit without contributing, but that is a story for another day. The point is that we are in a financial bubble that will either collapse or put god to shame with the brilliance of man. It is up to you to decide which is more likely.

Were society organized differently using sane ideas, universities could have supplied models to play with. And the evolution of the state of the art would have been developed on existing hardware, with new hardware built only as the organic need called for it, sans speculation and bad investment.

There are plenty of people like me who could make this stuff useful. A pair of RTX 6000 cards at a reasonable price would help. Currently, that pair would cost $24,000—somewhere in that ballpark. What I was able to do with $1,000 gives one-sixth the 'compute' capacity at half the speed, something like that. And the memory in this machine should not be worth over $4,000.

We have the fucking Borg taking over (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic0.cbrimages.com%2Fwordpress%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F05%2FBorg-Hugh-Star-Trek-The-Next-Generation.jpg%3Fq%3D50%26fit%3Dcontain%26w%3D1280%26h%3D720%26dpr%3D1.5&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7d6a66e4b7f6108e1b4a8d4a5d5304ac74a623eebdc9289b5432f3676240cc48) , and I have to pay through the nose to have any fun.

Once again, convenience, inequality, and the accompanying foolishness kicks sagacity to the curb.

And previous generations had ignorance as an excuse.  The highly educated 21st century cretin can't say that.




Then it was to convert the national debt.  It is to fund a new royalty based on financial conquest now.  In the land of amnesia, Americans now prefer being exploited to being free, showing that a lot can change in 250 years.

Regarding the performance of the system, I am happy. I am impressed with the results, and playing with this thing is going to keep me busy for a very long time, even without system upgrades. A single RTX 5090 would do as well as this system, and it would be faster. But an RTX 5090 currently is selling for eight times what a single RTX 5060 Ti card with half the VRAM costs.

Going with two cheaper cards yielding the same VRAM made sense. I can deal with the speed penalty. The 5060 is a slower card, but the complication of two cards is something I would have done anyway. Even with a 5090 I would keep one of the 5060 cards. That would be interesting. Sometimes they would work together, and sometimes they would not. Together, the speed could slow down to 5060 speeds, but in that configuration, the added VRAM would be there for a reason. I could use it for added context (short-term memory) when appropriate.

A fascinating configuration would be two RTX 5090 cards running together, which makes no financial sense, but which would work fine provided they were running a model that could not run without overflow on a single card and which would fill the cards without unused VRAM. The PCI bus would bottleneck power draw in that case, and a circuit breaker would not pop. Since getting both cards working on independent tasks where they both draw full power would require deliberate effort, the system would be stable. A breaker would only pop if both cards ran at 100%, and that would require programming. When cards idle, they don't use a lot of power, and some models use more power than others when they run.

The PCI bottleneck is minimal in this system and is a deliberate choice. This motherboard is intended for AI use. If the A.I. bubble bursts and I can pick up some enterprise-class cards cheap, that would rock.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 27, 2026, 12:57 PM
Seriously, the world has too much money to invest because a growth slowdown does that. It is in the math, and it happens when limits are reached. Money collects in piles to grow, but without overall economic growth a money pile can't grow itself.  At least to the stratospheric level of unearned riches.  It piles up but can't grow. It gets hungry.

The problem is there's no money left to extract from most of the population.  The only people with surplus to spend are the rich, and there aren't enough of them.  The only biznesses that work are the ones people HAVE to spend on, like Food, Health Care, Housing and Transportation.

AI will never pay off the $TRILLIONS$ being borrowed to invest in the infrastructure.  When  people grasp this fact of life, the bubble will pop.

RE

QuoteWhen  people grasp this fact of life, the bubble will pop.

Then I can have enough cards in the box to run a 80 GB model without quantization. 

* The Russian Language thread starting is gone, I think it is implemented well.  Any other language too.  I added logic that makes it impossible for any new member who has never posted in a topic to start a new topic.  The 'bots' immediately adapted and made a post in an existing topic, I forgot where it was.  I deleted it and then tested the new deletion function which deletes members who have not made a post in the registration grace period which is now set to four hours.  A new member has to make a post or the member gets deleted after four hours.  If for any reason you or I (or any moderator) does not like the post we delete it.  Without posts the new member will be deleted within and hour.  The deletion function runs automatically once an hour to check the grace period.

Look at the positive side.  When these Data Centers find they can't get enough power to run all those chips, a lot of those machines will get scrapped and sold for parts.  You'll be able to pick up barely used chips for pennies on the dollar.  Nothing wrong with a used chip, they're good as new.

RE

If you don't want to watch the whole thing just check out the windows of chats running at the same time.  A model larger than a consumer can run is on the box.  Dozens of chatbots are running, each doing something, 'thinking'.  There is a monster chip used in data centers inside the box, and this mofo trots along at two kilowatts.

I looked at the estimated price when it hits the market.  $122,000 has been estimated.  Any day now.  I'm saving my pennies.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 31, 2026, 07:15 PMI looked at the estimated price when it hits the market.  $122,000 has been estimated.  Any day now.  I'm saving my pennies.

Be patient, wait a couple of years and at least one Zero will get knocked off the price.

RE

When (not if) this Bubble POPS, it will be legendary.

RE

Most people do not have the hardware to run A.I.

It is a delicate balance. Keep people from getting their own hardware so they can't do it for free while maintaining a healthy enough economy TO CHARGE FOR TOKENS.

The establishment of the Rentier economy.  That is what it is all about.

QuoteToday's rentiers no longer limit themselves to land and housing. They control digital platforms, software licenses, trademarks, patents, infrastructure rights, even water and airwaves. This expansion reflects the evolution of capitalism itself: no longer focused on production and wages, it now thrives on access and enclosure.

Token Cost Calculator. (https://tokencostcalculators.com/)

American culture is all about getting a bean feed without working for it.  Anything goes and nothing matters.  Not all Americans are as craven as this, but those who are control the narrative.

QuoteThe post-World War II era (roughly 1945–1975) witnessed a temporary decline in rentier dominance in the West, especially in countries with strong welfare states, public housing and progressive taxation. Keynesian policies, public investment and union strength curtailed rentier power and emphasized productivity over ownership.

Control over access to models allows the rentier to extract payment without producing anything of equivalent value in return.  That is disgusting.  But what is worse is what it turns us all into.

When the most lucrative economic activity is owning a tollbooth rather than producing anything, the culture will reflect that.

Here is something RE might have some insight on.



I can't imagine there would be enough in the caper to make vanishing for life worthwhile.  I know trucking does not pay what it used to, but being a fugitive is no fun.  I was AWOL from the navy for a bit over two years before I paid the piper.  It is not fun.  It is like your life is permanently on hold.  That might not bother some people, but it was not for me.

The drivers must have used fake names and résumé's, Considering the state of the FBI, it may work out for them.  MAGA might even be taking a percentage.

Sure it will lead to a shorter work week.  Will you still be paid the same weekly salary for your shorter week?  Somehow I doubt it. 🙄

RE

A long and fairly exhaustive article which exposes some of the REAL dangers of AI, as opposed to the much less likely though terrifying possibilities like rogue agents creating a super virus which exterminates humanity in the next decade.

The real danger is in the "bonkers" belief the big players have that AI is on the verge of consciousness and will soon lead to the "singularity", a merging of man and machine that will be a new leap in evolution and will proceed to colonize the universe.  They don't envision this leap for all of humanity, just their own uber wealthy class of tech bro Billionaires. Everyone else is superfluous and expendable.

Personally I'm not worried about AI actually reaching consciousness anytime soon, but the policies and focus of these "techno fascists" in making the effort has more bad outcomes than I can count, not to mention being a huge waste of energy and resources that could be put to much better use in other ways.

Right now the Tech Bro leaders of this cult have the initiative and the money, and are in control of how AI is being developed.  There is however a grassroots movement of people determined to put a stop to it also.  Hopium remains that the worst outcomes can still be avoided.


RE

Here is the Cliff Notes version.

The rise of a technocratic ideology centered on artificial general intelligence and superintelligence has become a dominant force in Silicon Valley, shaping trillion dollar investments, political agendas, and visions for humanity's future. This belief system, often referred to as the TESCREAL bundle encompassing { transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism } asserts that sentient, omnipotent AI is not only inevitable but morally imperative to create, even at the cost of current human welfare. Proponents like Elon Musk frame AGI as a cosmic mission to extend consciousness beyond Earth, justify the dismantling of public institutions such as USAID, and prioritize speculative future lives over present day suffering, all under the guise of rationality and progress. These ideas are no longer fringe; they have infiltrated mainstream tech policy, philanthropy, and political strategy through influential figures and well funded organizations like OpenAI and Anthropic, which operate with implicit commitments to these worldviews despite public claims of ethical neutrality.

The ideology merges seamlessly with neoreactionary thought—cyberlibertarianism, anti democratic elitism, and the fantasy of sovereign freedom cities—to form what some call technofascism. This is a fusion of technological utopianism and authoritarian hierarchy that seeks to replace democratic governance with oligarchic rule by tech elites who view human labor, autonomy, and rights as obsolete. Rather than treating AI as a tool shaped by human values, this movement treats it as an autonomous force demanding surrender to its development, dismissing concerns about surveillance, discrimination, or inequality as distractions from the singular goal of achieving posthuman transcendence. The belief in inevitable AGI serves as both justification and prophecy, allowing billionaires to redirect public resources toward speculative futures while eroding institutions that protect the vulnerable.

Effective altruism and longtermism provide the ethical veneer for this agenda, reducing moral decision making to utilitarian calculations that weigh hypothetical future lives against tangible present harms. This mindset enables the rationalization of policies that dismantle healthcare, education, and international aid under the claim that those resources would be better spent accelerating AI development. The result is a system where the interests of a small group of technologists, funded by wealth accumulated through privatized public goods, dictate global priorities without accountability or consent. Their vision does not seek to empower society but to render it irrelevant, replacing democracy with algorithmic governance and human agency with machine supremacy.

The danger lies not in AI itself but in the unchecked concentration of power among those who believe they alone are qualified to decide humanity's fate. As these ideologies gain influence over policy, funding, and public discourse, they normalize the erosion of civil rights, environmental protections, and social safety nets under the banner of innovation. Policymakers must recognize that AGI remains speculative, that its alleged benefits are unproven, and that its pursuit often comes at the expense of real people today. To defend a just future, we must challenge the assumption that technological progress is inherently good, reject the moral authority of those who claim to speak for unborn generations, and insist that democracy, equity, and human dignity remain non negotiable foundations for any society. The true threat is not an AI uprising but the quiet takeover of our institutions by a cult of rationality that has forgotten what it means to be human.

I will disagee with this:

"The danger lies not in AI itself but in the unchecked concentration of power among those who believe they alone are qualified to decide humanity's fate. "

Should read :

"The danger does not lie in AI itself, but in those who believe they alone are born to be the masters of us all.  Entitled to tax all the rhythms of our everyday lives with tokens.  Tokens they turn into billions of dollars for themselves. "

For themselves as they stand on the shoulders of giants.  If you take the philosophy side of their greed too seriously, really seriously at all.  Then you are playing their game, and then you are on their leash.  Good boy, sit down.  If you want to get into AI and don't have a kick ass edge device like the Diner does then, you are a SERF.

Flee in terror of that,  but not A.I. itself.

The problem is America is fine with exploitation.  America likes exploitation.  America loves exploitation.  The American political landscape quibbles about who the winners and loosers should be. But that there should be winners and losers everyone agrees.  Americans dream of unearned riches and the liberal class is blind to their exploitations, justifying current arrangements using their own philosophies.  Consequently exploitaion will be the new task of compute.  Finding new ways to charge you for tokens will never end.  The only way data centers are ever going to get paid for is if you pay for them. And paying for them is not enough.  Tokens will also be buying private islands, but the only thing Americans will wish for is having a piece of the action.

Having a philosophy behind tech flim-flammery is the way to get most of the big brains on board.  It works!  Even if you don't agree they have you listening on their frequency.  They tuned you in.



A.I. made those Cliff Notes, but I am certified organic.  No data centers were used.  The dual video cards did it.

(https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/pics/threadripper.jpg)




100% natural organic AI


More tech Bro porn:


And the thoughtful will think, but that is all they will do.

The dangers of binary thinking.

Whitney did a good job making a distinction between using AI for assistance, and using it to do your work for you.  Pangram cannot distinguish between fully AI-generated text, and human-written text that was merely edited with AI.  That makes the tool useless and dangerous.  Not to be used.

I find it curious that Americans who are totally down with the idea that money is money no matter how it is earned and that green is green.  Once money is in your bank account or wallet, it has no history.  And if that attitude is not the American way, what is?  Cashiers do not ask you where you got your money, if they did they would be fired.  But knowledge suddenly now has history?  No it does not.  Good writing becomes bad because of where it came from, no.  Facts become suspect because of how you got them. No.  It saddens me that people do not see this as the obvious truth.

A program like Pangram is ridiculous.  The final output, is it good bad, useful or not.  That is what matters, and not where 'text' came from.

Money and knowledge have similar properties.  So do oil and water.  But they do not mix well.



It is hard to keep a good man down.  It may be that AI will rot most brains.  Not this one.  Actually, smart people finally have 'someone' to talk to is a truth not much discussed.  Smart people can now check their own ideas out, refine them, take them to where AI or themselves have never been before.  It's a spacey thing.



But there is a downside to the upside.  Some people can't wrap their heads around that AI responses are only the statistical inference of the enormous amount of training data they were filled with, and nothing more than that.  Unfortunately that also seems to be true of many people.  They can't rise above their training.

Quote from: K-Dog on Sep 20, 2026, 08:56 AMIt is hard to keep a good man down.  It may be that AI will rot most brains.  Not this one.  Actually, smart people finally have 'someone' to talk to is a truth not much discussed.  Smart people can now check their own ideas out, refine them, take them to where AI or themselves have never been before.

I talked to AI. It made the common human mistake of assuming what my academic training was in, based on my professional publications. Oops. So I told AI what my degree was, and it disagreed with me, as obviously it was smarter than I was.

As you say....AI isn't going to rot this brain. It can make up all the certainty it likes, as it is quite smart....too bad that doesn't equate with being correct. Say, any more than Hubbert, Campbell, Hirsch, ASPO, Berman, Ugo or Gail (all smart folks) were. If only AI had been available to them back then, do you think they would have taken its word for it being far off in the future, or do you think it would have validated their wrong answers?

Quotetoo bad that doesn't equate with being correct

It is as correct as the training data that was put into it is.  No more or less than that.

Collect enough garbage literature and leave out anything that was the product of rational considered thought.  Throw in 'The Camp of the Saints', and dump in the Elders of Zion.  You have a NAZI now.  Have another AI generate fake training data to add into the mix as existing filth is insufficient.  A Mein Kampf styled body of literature.  Thousands of books.  Give that AI an agentic toolbox, and then we have a serious problem.

In my opinion LLMs exist to be fact-checked.  They are like people in many ways, needing to be fact-checked is one.

Or you could create an AI that is all peace and love.  One that finds homeless people to see if they would like a hamburger or a blanket tonight.  One with the right agentic tools would break a single loaf of bread into a million fish sandwiches.  Enough to feed everybody.

Quote from: K-Dog on Sep 20, 2026, 10:50 AM

Quotetoo bad that doesn't equate with being correct

It is as correct as the training data that was put into it is.  No more or less than that.

Okay. So given the internet, as many scientific articles and archicves as it can hold (which mine certainly has), and everything else under the Sun that can be loaded into it, and STILL get some basic stuff wrong....how exactly is the one you use supposed to be smart enough to be of value? KNOWING a bunch of facts and whatnot, that I understand, but that makes it an encyclopedia....which isn't the same as an intelligence.

Quote from: K-DogIn my opinion LLMs exist to be fact-checked.  They are like people in many ways, needing to be fact-checked is one.

Indeed. And what does it do upon being fact checked? Mine told me I was wrong. So then I told it I was the person who's background it was checking. It refused to believe it independently until I told it the subject in question was me, and I was ordering it to know who I was. Then it said something about updating its information for future reference.

I never went back and checked to see if it had told the truth or not. 

You are right, it is not intelligence.  It is only an automated best guess.  That is all that is going on.  As to the quality of response, that can be controlled, and the subject of how they are trained is fascinating in itself.  Most of the fear of AI is the result of overactive imaginations.  Currently the way things work is that one token of output is produced at a time and they can be inspected.  Imagine trying to 'take over' when every thought you have can be inspected.  If people could read your mind.  That is how it is now with AI.  Every token can be inspected.  If people make dangerous AI it is because they are negligent and stupid.

Most of the problems with it have to do with the way current social arrangements are organized.  Having nothing to do with the technology itself.

While the general public sees the threat of AI wiping out Humanity as some variation on the Terminator plot, where the machines become conscious and fire off all the Nukes or release a deadly virus, the REAL threat is much less complicated and built right in to letting AI Agents operate on their own seeking information and writing their own code to facilitate that.

The problem is of course SECURITY, and while a human hacker will eventually get tired of seeking holes in a security system, an AI Agent never will, and it operates much faster than its Homo Sap counterpart also.  These Hacks have already occurred with all the big hyperscale models to such an extent that the Tech Bros themselves are getting nervous and asking everyone to SLOW DOWN!

It should be obvious that ain't gonna happen.  Even if it happens on the surface, there's too much incentive to create models and systems designed for specifically the task of hacking the security of other systems.  Goobermints want that ability to spy on everyone, Terrorists want it to attack their enemies, Thieves want it to steal money.  So even if Open AI or Claude has some limits dropped on it, other TOP SECRET models will be deployed by the NSA, CIA, KGB, Mossad, IRGC et al to go ferreting around working their way in wherever they can.

It also doesn't necessarily take $Billions$ to create a model capable of doing this kind of hacking, our own resident AI Hobbyist KDog can do it on a shoestring budget.  If he had even just say $1M to spend on hardware and memory, you could up its power by a few orders of magnitude.  KDog also obviously isn't the only Code Jockey out there who likes to tinker with this stuff in his spare time, there are plenty of recently unemployed IT Geeks who do it in their spare time while hunting down a new job.

So with all these hobbyists out there, at some point you're going to have gobs of these independent models and their agents cruising around the information superhighway looking for security holes and eventually finding them.   Imagine just one finding its way into the Bloomberg computer system used by all the Wall Street and City of London and Hong Kong trading desks.😵😁

This is just one of the real risks of AI right now.  The other one is the huge financial bubble that has been stoked to fund the big hypercale models.  "Investors" are getting cold feet and the revenue model isn't looking so hot as the price of Tokens drops.  If these companies can't start turning a profit in a year or two, the TBTF Banks, Pension Funds, Hedge Funds etc are going to try and cut their losses.  They are on the hook for this, and when the tide turns it's 2008 on steroids.

So, one way or the other, AI is going to generate a major crisis, even if it's not an E.L.E.

RE

By me 😀

This diagram is a bit hard to explain, it shows all the connections between code in the Diner Codebase.

(https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/pics/codeconnections.png)

All that to bring you this website.

Quote from: K-Dog on Sep 21, 2026, 02:09 PM(https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/pics/codeconnections.png)
All that to bring you this website.

Let me make sure I understand. That pretty picture is what is required to create a bulletin board like the old message boards of yesteryear (which I once ran knowing not much of anything internety) to handle the 3 of us poster people?

More to the eye I assume, for example, can the Slovakian and Eastern European spammers now be spotted and eliminated without us seeing their posts? And does this mean the MIB can no longer come in and erase files and posts of non-subversive material inside the databases?

Let me make sure I understand. That pretty picture is what is required to create a bulletin board like the old message boards of yesteryear (which I once ran knowing not much of anything internety) to handle the 3 of us poster people?

QuoteUnder the hood, yes.

Many of the connections are abstracted away from the programmer and are essential plumbing.  But before anything was written on the page you are seeing now the code was four function calls deep.  And as code was building the page it was jumping all over the place inside that mess.

Quote from: K-Dog on Sep 21, 2026, 02:09 PMBy me 😀

I knew that you weren't tinkering just to make the Diner spiffy. lol.   Figured that out as soon as I worked out how the "AI" actually worked.

RE

It does make it spiffy, we have custom text colors now.

And we have a cool mobile pages which trackbacks link to.  With the 'assistance' it only took a week to get that working.

And it makes recovering from the white screen of death much easier.  This is not 'VIBE' coding.  My overall workflow is the same but I have a chatbot that can examine the codebase.  It is called opencode.  It helps and the biggest danger is not breaking the Diner for an in-determinant period of time since it can roll a mistake back easily any more.  The danger now is the chatbot doing improvements on its own, or following instructions too literally or not literally enough.  Then I have to pull the plug and roll it back myself.  We have wound up in a tangled mess a few times.  I have had to to a Trump on the session, nuke it and start over.

It is some seriously crazy shit.

And my perspective which might be worth something since I am actually doing this.

I am not understanding software people not being able to get jobs if there is any truth in the pro-ported AI revolution.  A novice could not be doing what I am doing.  AI technology only replaces coders in a one off application that is a rubber stamp of what has been done before.  Anybody can ask AI to build a simple app that seems amazing.  But those apps are Potemkin.  Your are not going to develop a complex software app just by talking.  If it has any complexity you are going to need a formal specification.  Writing software is implementing a specification, even a hacker will make notes about what they are doing. 

So  I do not see why entry level jobs are not more available for code jockeys, I think a personal assistant lowers the bar because if you do not know something you can ask about it.  My mofo will even check something  on the web if we are not sure.

It doubles what I can do at least.  It is a wonderful tool, but a tool it is, and nothing more than that.

A little more detail on the REAL risk posed by AI to the global financial system.  It's similar to the debt crisis of 2008 in some respects, but much larger because it features an equity component as well, and the debt isn't distributed amongst millions of individual debtors like the mortgage crisis.  In this case the debt is concentrated amongst the very rich and the stock purchases are counted as part of the capital structure of banks & hedge funds that bought the stock.  A large loss in the stock value would force many of these owners into bankruptcy or at least a liquidity lockup, soit wouldn't just be the Hyperscalers going bust, it would be the TBTF Banks who underwrote the stock on them as well.  IOW, not just one AIG to bailout, there could be a dozen or more of these systemically important banks in the deep doo doo.  With Goobermints already in a deep debt crisis of their own, it's not clear how they could do a bailout of this scale.  The longer the bubble goes, the worse it gets.  In terms of equity losses, it's far more than $132B, it's in the $TRILLIONS$

A real clusterfuck in the making.

RE

Morgan's estimate is probably on the low end of the off balance sheet liabilities, but that obscures the fact that their on balance sheet liabilities are at least equal and probably double or triple that number.  So if the bottom falls out on the stock price, you're going to have a whole lotta hardware and a lot of expensive real estate going to auction.  Even if they could get 50 cents on the dollar for the hard assets (unlikely) your shortfall is probably $2T minimum.

On the upside, hobbyists and tinkerers will be swimming in cheap memory cards.

RE

The 'opencode' tool I am using is normally set up to use an LLM from a data-center.  I modified it to use a particular LLM that is modified to be a code jockey and nothing else.  When it is running it fills most of the video cards.  The Diner dreams of a 5090 but the price is now 70% over MSRP.

Because the tool is made to be used over the web and not use my video card, there is a counter in the interface that keeps track of how much you are spending to use the tool.  Ours is stuck at $0.00.  We don't even have an API key to log onto a data center.  We do not want one.

Chatbots can generate a lot of tokens.  Good I do not have the problem of paying for them.

* If you watch You-Tube videos on how to do anything AI the first half of the video wastes your time telling you how to sign up for an account.  You need a credit card they say, but don't worry you won't use enough tokens for what we are about to do to cost anything.  And they are telling the truth.  It appears to be a rite of passage, no corporate sponsorship without pushing the borg solution.

Their tutorials are examples.  Put software to real work in a loop and tokens matter.  But what can I say, I doubt it is possible to have a You-Tube channel without being a rabid ass kissing capitalist.


As far as cheap memory cards go, until there is an economic crash the shortage will continue.  Nvidia is all about making money, and if that makes everyone else poor.  Their attitude is too fucking bad.  I regret not getting a 5090 last November now it is too much.  But Nvidia will say too much for you, but not for somebody else.  They love the shortage.