A Question
I have no expertise in artificial intelligence. There are plenty of experts around, and many of them are warning of the dangers AI to humans and the planet, so I yield to their expertise. What I do know is that the use and growth of AI data centers poses a threat to our water supply, to the electrical grid, and to the physical and mental health of people who live near them.
As a sometime economist I know that AI has no solution to the limits to economic growth, to climate change, to the depletion of resources, to the problem of desecration of the planet through wars and pollution, and to the ever-increasing glut of humans. These problems will fester on their own, and AI or not, we are facing the collapse of human civilization.
The U.S. has chosen to face these problems by electing the deranged and malevolent criminal sociopath Donald Trump as its president. Twice. This is real human beings using their given intelligence to choose a dangerous criminal to be their leader. Dear leader. It can easily be concluded that natural intelligence is threat enough to life on Planet Earth.
The best of human intelligence is fighting back. In Wisconsin’s recent primary election, one candidate, Francesca Hong, ran her campaign promising to place a moratorium on AI data centers. She was the only candidate to make such a promise, and I voted for her. She was vilified for being a "democratic socialist," and lost to the establishment candidate, but by making the issue so prominent she painted the winner, David Crowley, into an electoral corner. In order to win in the general election he will have to promise the same moratorium as she did. I, for example, will let him know that I will vote for Alfred E. Neuman if he doesn't.
One question that has arisen, for me at least, is how easily corporations building AI data centers have been able to get city councils, county boards and other public agencies sign non-disclosure agreements when they approve the construction of these facilities. These are elected representatives of the citizens who routinely sign documents that hide the details of what they signer from the same citizens. They are also routinely being recalled by the voters for doing this.
So are all these local officials corrupt? How did they get that way? I suspect the answer is that AI corporations really, really, really want their data centers, and will use any means available to get what they want. When J. Edgar Hoover was director of the FBI he could not be fired by any president because he had compromising information on all politicians of both parties. He had job security for life, and any president who would dare to threaten this would find him or herself reading headlines exposing some past or present crime or indiscretion.
Nowadays, in the virtual multiverse in which we exist, anyone can be investigated and have embarrassing information made public.
I can give an example from personal experience. A relative, now deceased, was best friends with a Washington-based "right wing" columnist who had sources in the FBI. They had been spying on Dr. Martin Luther King for years, and discovered that he was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife. They confronted him with this information, trying to get him to commit suicide. King was embarrassed for sure, but neither killed himself nor stopped campaigning for civil rights. He told the FBI agents that he was only human. So the agents from then on called him "Only human Martin Luther King." This was supposedly an inside joke that gave them derisive power over him. Whatever gets you through the night. This also supposedly gave the "right wing" columnist power over King, and by extension, my "inside knowledge" pretender relative, who took great pleasure in telling me this story. This, combined with enormous amounts of alcohol, got him through the night, and likely many more.
So what to do? The country is rising up against AI and its infrastructure of data centers. If blackmail is being used to get local officials to secretly approve data centers, citizens can prevent it by banning nondisclosure agreements. Maybe AI companies will respond by blackmailing everyone – they have the technology – but there are limits to criminality. At some point it won’t get them through the night.
As a sometime economist I know that AI has no solution to the limits to economic growth, to climate change, to the depletion of resources, to the problem of desecration of the planet through wars and pollution, and to the ever-increasing glut of humans. These problems will fester on their own, and AI or not, we are facing the collapse of human civilization.
The U.S. has chosen to face these problems by electing the deranged and malevolent criminal sociopath Donald Trump as its president. Twice. This is real human beings using their given intelligence to choose a dangerous criminal to be their leader. Dear leader. It can easily be concluded that natural intelligence is threat enough to life on Planet Earth.
The best of human intelligence is fighting back. In Wisconsin’s recent primary election, one candidate, Francesca Hong, ran her campaign promising to place a moratorium on AI data centers. She was the only candidate to make such a promise, and I voted for her. She was vilified for being a "democratic socialist," and lost to the establishment candidate, but by making the issue so prominent she painted the winner, David Crowley, into an electoral corner. In order to win in the general election he will have to promise the same moratorium as she did. I, for example, will let him know that I will vote for Alfred E. Neuman if he doesn't.
One question that has arisen, for me at least, is how easily corporations building AI data centers have been able to get city councils, county boards and other public agencies sign non-disclosure agreements when they approve the construction of these facilities. These are elected representatives of the citizens who routinely sign documents that hide the details of what they signer from the same citizens. They are also routinely being recalled by the voters for doing this.
So are all these local officials corrupt? How did they get that way? I suspect the answer is that AI corporations really, really, really want their data centers, and will use any means available to get what they want. When J. Edgar Hoover was director of the FBI he could not be fired by any president because he had compromising information on all politicians of both parties. He had job security for life, and any president who would dare to threaten this would find him or herself reading headlines exposing some past or present crime or indiscretion.
Nowadays, in the virtual multiverse in which we exist, anyone can be investigated and have embarrassing information made public.
I can give an example from personal experience. A relative, now deceased, was best friends with a Washington-based "right wing" columnist who had sources in the FBI. They had been spying on Dr. Martin Luther King for years, and discovered that he was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife. They confronted him with this information, trying to get him to commit suicide. King was embarrassed for sure, but neither killed himself nor stopped campaigning for civil rights. He told the FBI agents that he was only human. So the agents from then on called him "Only human Martin Luther King." This was supposedly an inside joke that gave them derisive power over him. Whatever gets you through the night. This also supposedly gave the "right wing" columnist power over King, and by extension, my "inside knowledge" pretender relative, who took great pleasure in telling me this story. This, combined with enormous amounts of alcohol, got him through the night, and likely many more.
So what to do? The country is rising up against AI and its infrastructure of data centers. If blackmail is being used to get local officials to secretly approve data centers, citizens can prevent it by banning nondisclosure agreements. Maybe AI companies will respond by blackmailing everyone – they have the technology – but there are limits to criminality. At some point it won’t get them through the night.
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posted by John Hamilton | 2:36 PM
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