AI: You don’t have to use plastic! Silicone, graphite, ceramics, glass, woods, and aluminum can all be used as substitutes and often have more desirable physical properties for specific applications.
CEO: I hear you, I really do, but scientists already recommended this and we’ve already done numerous analyses that have all concluded that it’d be too costly to implement and would leave us with products that aren’t competitive.
CEO: …Could you figure out how to increase our gross margins by suggesting changes to these designs?
AI: Sure! We can start by replacing those braze-on threaded nuts with a plastic clamp. I suppose that lag bolt could be plastic as well.
Former CEO of the river poisoning company says there is no way to meet our river poison reduction goals, so we might as well build bigger river poisoning machines because they might help us figure out how to stop poisoning the river. /s
I feel like there was a time when the tech folks in silicon valley had a lot of credibility, and we are now living in a period where most of the world sees them as a joke but that fact has not yet entered into the culture of silicon valley.
Similar thing happened to the games industry as well, I think. Initially it was creative people and engineers who were focused on what they were making. These days the industry is dominated by suits that just want to extract as much cash as possible from players.
It went from niche hobby, to large secondary media market, to the largest entertainment industry in history. Game companies are, as you brought up, no longer being run by people interested in video games. While a lot of the talent they hire, are still people who are passionate about video games, a lot of them are, just people who learned a skill, in order to have a productive career. The latter is becoming a larger, and larger, percentage of the people actually making video games. Video games are just another industry now. Just like any other, they exist to make money, and the people who work for them are people who just want a pay check.
The indie development scene is the only hope really, for people who don’t want the top 40 pop charts version of games.
The problem with repairing the earth’s climate isn’t that we don’t know what to do. It’s that humans refuse to organize themselves in a way that achieves that goal. AI won’t fix that.
This is the kind of thing that makes me support use of extra-judicial methods (at least in a temporary and limited context) against global oligarchs and senior lackeys.
The host then followed up with, “Do you think we can meet AI’s energy without total blowing out climate goals?” and Schmidt answered with, “We’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we’re not organized to do it — and the way to do it is with the ways that we’re talking about now — and yes, the needs in this area will be a problem. But I’d rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it and having the problem if you see my plan.”
This is outright malicious. How exactly would AI “solve the problem”? Later on in the article (I am not watching the propaganda video) alludes to “AI … will make energy generation systems at least 15% more efficient or maybe even better” but he clearly just made that up on the spot. And at any rate, even if “AI” helps discover a method to make (all?) energy generation 15% more efficient that would still require trillion-dollar investments to modify current energy generation plants using the new technology.
Who is Schmidt to say that the returns of using the total spend in the above-mentioned scenario wouldn’t be better used on investing into wind and solar?
Kind of like speeding toward a cliff but he doesn’t think we can stop in time. Instead, he wants to floor it in the hopes of hopping the gap and landing safely on the other side.
That is certainly one of the ideas I’ve ever heard.
He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. Billion dollar corporations have never had any interest in doing anything to solve the climate crisis. Lots of the failure of late stage capitalism is that companies are driving off the cliff. It’s about extracting as much now so that CEOs can live large and hope their progeny gets to colonize Mars (which won’t happen.)
We’re not going to hit those targets anyway… SO LET’S MAKE IT WAY FUCKING WORSE
I wonder if we’ll ever get to the place where people like this unexpectedly meet violent ends. They’ll sacrifice any number of lives for their shareholders interests.
“You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down.”
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This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
why do we pretend these people are human
“Fuck the climate! What about my bank account?!”
this is exactly, and i cannot stress enough just how exactly, the plot of “Don’t look up”
I remember enjoying the movie and being angry at all the critics saying how they couldn’t enjoy it because it was “too on the nose.”
I am like “have you motherfuckers not been paying attention?”
That’s one reason I haven’t watched it. Isn’t it meant to be a comedy? I’m not sure I can bear the frustration
So can we grab a few of those bronterocs and set them loose in a few board rooms?
deleted by creator
Pretty much.
AI: You don’t have to use plastic! Silicone, graphite, ceramics, glass, woods, and aluminum can all be used as substitutes and often have more desirable physical properties for specific applications.
CEO: I hear you, I really do, but scientists already recommended this and we’ve already done numerous analyses that have all concluded that it’d be too costly to implement and would leave us with products that aren’t competitive.
CEO: …Could you figure out how to increase our gross margins by suggesting changes to these designs?
AI: Sure! We can start by replacing those braze-on threaded nuts with a plastic clamp. I suppose that lag bolt could be plastic as well.
“I love life on Earth… but I love capitalism more.”
Former CEO of the river poisoning company says there is no way to meet our river poison reduction goals, so we might as well build bigger river poisoning machines because they might help us figure out how to stop poisoning the river. /s
I feel like there was a time when the tech folks in silicon valley had a lot of credibility, and we are now living in a period where most of the world sees them as a joke but that fact has not yet entered into the culture of silicon valley.
Similar thing happened to the games industry as well, I think. Initially it was creative people and engineers who were focused on what they were making. These days the industry is dominated by suits that just want to extract as much cash as possible from players.
It went from niche hobby, to large secondary media market, to the largest entertainment industry in history. Game companies are, as you brought up, no longer being run by people interested in video games. While a lot of the talent they hire, are still people who are passionate about video games, a lot of them are, just people who learned a skill, in order to have a productive career. The latter is becoming a larger, and larger, percentage of the people actually making video games. Video games are just another industry now. Just like any other, they exist to make money, and the people who work for them are people who just want a pay check.
The indie development scene is the only hope really, for people who don’t want the top 40 pop charts version of games.
Give me the FromSoft 90’s death metal scene everyday.
the Suffocation era of Blizzard would be nice too
Yeah agree with you about indie games. Still some genuine passion there
Chant with me… Indie games… Indie Games! INDIE GAMES!
The problem with repairing the earth’s climate isn’t that we don’t know what to do. It’s that humans refuse to organize themselves in a way that achieves that goal. AI won’t fix that.
This is the kind of thing that makes me support use of extra-judicial methods (at least in a temporary and limited context) against global oligarchs and senior lackeys.
This is outright malicious. How exactly would AI “solve the problem”? Later on in the article (I am not watching the propaganda video) alludes to “AI … will make energy generation systems at least 15% more efficient or maybe even better” but he clearly just made that up on the spot. And at any rate, even if “AI” helps discover a method to make (all?) energy generation 15% more efficient that would still require trillion-dollar investments to modify current energy generation plants using the new technology.
Who is Schmidt to say that the returns of using the total spend in the above-mentioned scenario wouldn’t be better used on investing into wind and solar?
He’ll be happy to let AI solve it until AI suggests we should eat the rich and distribute the wealth…
AI: “The only way to solve climate change is to do what the scientists said 30 years ago. My existence is the flame that consumes the earth”
Kind of like speeding toward a cliff but he doesn’t think we can stop in time. Instead, he wants to floor it in the hopes of hopping the gap and landing safely on the other side.
That is certainly one of the ideas I’ve ever heard.
He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. Billion dollar corporations have never had any interest in doing anything to solve the climate crisis. Lots of the failure of late stage capitalism is that companies are driving off the cliff. It’s about extracting as much now so that CEOs can live large and hope their progeny gets to colonize Mars (which won’t happen.)
We’re not going to hit those targets anyway… SO LET’S MAKE IT WAY FUCKING WORSE
I wonder if we’ll ever get to the place where people like this unexpectedly meet violent ends. They’ll sacrifice any number of lives for their shareholders interests.
“You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down.”
AI can’t solve shit.
Why do we listen to these CEOs anyway?
All that extra processing power for the AI to just say: “you should have listened to the scientists years ago”.
I’m fairly certain we could ask AI right now if that’s a good idea and it would tell us no