Honestly, even though I think having billionaires makes no sense for any healthy society, I don’t harbor some kind of visceral animus for the unreasonably rich. I think the Problem is with society, not with the privileged few who are rewarded by it for exploitation.
But truth be told, sometimes these guys (they’re almost all men, fwiw) just let loose with the most insane sht. I’m tempted to call Jeff Bezos a psychopath when he says things like “we should let millions of people die so that data centers get enough water” but that’s missing the point.
He didn’t say that out of indifference to human suffering – he genuinely believes that those data centers will (eventually) alleviate more suffering than they currently cause. He made a cold calculation and came to the conclusion that we (but not he) will have to make sacrifices for the greater good.
What’s insane about that isn’t the ethical toxicity of that last parenthetical observation about his conclusion, it’s the calculation itself.
Jeff Bezos has a bonkers amount of money. A truly unfathomable amount of money. Combined with his ten closest associates, Jeff has enough money to start a small country and fund it into the next century.
When faced with a problem like unsustainable data processing – which is essentially an engineering problem like any other – I would expect the mind of one of the richest tech entrepreneurs in the world to immediately turn to solving it. Developing new and better data processing technology, server designs, cooling systems. Not just because human sacrifice is so undesirable that it should be avoided at all costs, but because the company that solves the sustainable data center problem is going to be the company that makes bank and builds the future.
Instead Jeff is talking about poor people making sacrifices for the greater good.
After having used different AI models intensively (and critically) on a daily basis for years, I’m pretty sure that this technology is not only here to stay but, as it continues to improve, will bring abundance to workers across all strata of society (in addition to posing new dangers that we will have to collectively face). Beyond benefiting society at large on a historical scale, widespread use and integration of AI may even contribute to human evolution on a biological scale. The implications of AI for tekne, especially within the analytical frameworks of anthropology and biology, are profound. This tech is (part of) the future.
But the road to that future can not – and does not need to – run over the backs of millions of human beings.
It does not need to drain our lakes or raze our forests.
Some people – Bezos, Mao, Mussolini – believe the future should be bought at any price.
What I’m saying is that the actual price can be – in reality, is – much lower than both the luddites and the evangelists seem to believe.
Don’t believe me?
Google “sustainable renewable energy data center” and see what the future looks like.