(10 hours ago)wasellajam Wrote: (11 hours ago)rayheinrich Wrote: Copilot (and the other AI bots, though at the moment co-pilot is my favorite) is, I think, just as big a step change as the first fast search engines on the web. They can search the web in 50 or 100 locations in 5 to 10 seconds, something it would have taken me hours to do. And then give you a concise, well-organized answer to your terribly fuzzy question. And bring up suggestions to further help you refine your search. Once I learned to use Copilot, which took a while, I was and still am amazed at how powerful a tool it is. AI is going to have profound effects on our society. And like any powerful tool, it will be used in both great and terrible ways. Exciting times. Like watching a French new-wave movie where you are absolutely sure it has profound meanings but you cannot, for the life of you, figure out what the hell is going on. 
That's fine if it was magic. Unfortunately, it is not. Do you want a data center as your neighbor draining your community of its water and electricity resources. Personally I don't think it's worth it even if it was benign, which I don't believe it is. I think it will end up another way for the money/power hungry of the world to fuck with people just trying to live their little lives. Probably doing it already.
Oh, hi, Ray
My two cents: we're getting bogged down with first- and second-order effects (pseudo-reasoning and resource consumption). Remember the familiar Nineties nostrum: the unintended effects of a policy or technology are always the most significant. You can say (and it's true) that water and electricity consumption are those unintended effects, but it's hard to believe they're insoluble problems: just improve the chips' efficiency (or use something that works like a chip but isn't, as in quantum-computing qubits which were still being counted in non-exponential numbers the last time I looked). I seem to recall that quantum computing produces approximate results that require course correction, though...
But what are the unknown unknowns here? I firmly expect that when power (and water) consumption collapses due to improved efficiency, we'll be left with a lot of welcome mini-nuclear generating stations. Fine for what was once called the Third World, which needs the juice. And then will be able to jump-start technology and its innovation, but at whose command if their politics remains tribal?
AIs go into politics. It's already happening, from deep-fakes replacing old-style October-surprise mud-slinging and optimized district maps (the underlying pressure in the current redistricting panics) replacing old-style ward heelers who knew their beats. Well, OK... but you know what (even current) AIs do: invent stuff. Anything for the marginal vote. Any policy, any action, any judicial outcome once the human judges are overrun by floods of mixed real and fantasy precedents and interpretations... even made-up laws.
Oh, you want "terrible?" I keep up with military jabber, a little. It was command and control (plus as many additional letters as LGBTQ+ - ISR, you name it, with a "C" for counter- to each) networks and nodes. Now it's all domains, seizing and contesting. With hallucinating AIs generating perfect-looking operations, all trying to fool and corrupt each other. Like a game of Go, but with effectively infinite four-dimensional boards.
We only think we're living in interesting times.
