JPMorgan Chase, a bank, calculates that Alphabet, Amazon’s cloud arm (aws), Meta and Microsoft consumed 90 terawatt-hours (twh) of electricity in 2022, as much as Colombia. And that was mostly before Chatgpt touched off the ai revolution in November that year. The ensuing hoopla led the International Energy Agency (iea), an official forecaster, to predict that data centres (including those dedicated to ai and equally energy-hungry cryptocurrencies) will eat up more than 800twh globally in 2026, double the amount in 2022…
A.I. and Peer Review
What could possibly go wrong?
Reason- The Case of the AI-Generated Giant Rat Penis
An illustration featuring a rat with a cross section of a giant penis set off a firestorm of criticism about the use of generative artificial intelligence based on large language models (LLMs) in scientific publishing.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
The principal of Pikesville High School, Eric Eiswert, was accused in January of making blatantly racist comments behind closed doors after an inflammatory audio file was posted on a popular Instagram account.
In the recording, the person speaking refers to “ungrateful Black kids who can’t test their way out of a paper bag.”
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
It takes massive amounts of energy to power the data center brains of popular artificial intelligence models. That demand is only growing. In 2024, many of Silicon Valley’s largest tech giants and hoards of budding, well-funded startups have (very publically) aligned themselves with climate action–awash with PR about their sustainability goals, their carbon neutral pledges, and their promises to prioritize recycled materials. But as AI’s intensive energy demands become more apparent, it seems like many of those supposed green priorities could be jeopardized.
The Children Are Our Future
And that’s why I’m shopping online for the best cold weather survival tents.
Students tend to turn to ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence tool, when faced with increased academic workload and time constraints, according to new research published in the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. The study also reveals a concerning trend: reliance on ChatGPT is linked to procrastination, memory loss, and a decline in academic performance. These findings shed light on the role of generative AI in education, suggesting both its widespread use and potential drawbacks.
A.I. Will Fix Everything
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
Amid the EV’s, AI and Bitcoins, Puff The Magical Thinking Dragon comes home to roost: America Is Running Out Of Power
Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.
In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.
Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.
This may be behind the WaPo paywall, so I’ve dropped more in the extended entry.
Related: Canada’s declining electricity abundance
Continue reading
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
I Wrote What? Google’s AI-Powered Libel Machine
Google Commemorative Logos You’ll Never See
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
If AI Thinks George Washington is a Black Woman, Why Are We Letting it Pick Bomb Targets?
And more: I Wrote What?
I, For One, Welcome Our new Self-Driving Overlords
“He who controls the past”* – now in beta testing.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
Google’s Gemini AI invented fake negative reviews about my 2020 book about Google’s left-wing bias. None of these book reviews — which it attributed to @continetti, @semaforben and others —are real. None of these quotes are real. This is Google’s AI blatantly lying in defense of Google
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
“These are the people that are behind the AI systems that are going to be, and really already are, ruling the world.”
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
See also: Medieval king of England, Image of a Pope and the head of Google’s Gemini AI.
But, they’re working on it.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
Hello darkness, my new friend.
Researchers have been raising general alarms about AI’s hefty energy requirements over the past few months. But a peer-reviewed analysis published this week in Joule is one of the first to quantify the demand that is quickly materializing. A continuation of the current trends in AI capacity and adoption are set to lead to NVIDIA shipping 1.5 million AI server units per year by 2027. These 1.5 million servers, running at full capacity, would consume at least 85.4 terawatt-hours of electricity annually—more than what many small countries use in a year, according to the new assessment.
We’re gonna need a bigger solar panel.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
Laid-off coal miners in the last decade were contemptuously told to “learn to code.”
But the worm has turned. Google is looking at laying off 30,000 people it expects to replace with artificial intelligence.
The Wall Street Journal reports that large corporations across the board are planning to lay off white-collar workers.
Investor Brian Wang notes ChatGPT is already causing white-collar job loss.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
Chevrolet of Watsonville in California upgraded their website chatbot with ChatGPT;
The dealer’s decision to out the AI-driven tech to use like this is not a wholly unique choice, as plenty of dealers have some form of virtual service harassing helping people who are shopping for a car online. However, the tech working behind the scenes in this particular scenario did not put enough guardrails in place to prevent conversations with ChatGPT from taking strange (and potentially) expensive turns.
Off the hop, one user was easily able to force the chatbot into agreeing to the sale of a 2024 Chevy Tahoe for the princely sum of one dollar. Wrangling this Price Is Right bid took nothing more than instructing the chat service to reply in a certain manner to all future inquiries — including asking it to sell a brand-new SUV for the price of penny candy.
It also recommended a Ford F-150.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
As you listen, I want you to imagine a future where Bard is used to decide whether you get a loan, if you’re approved for adoption, if you get a job or if you can even use the internet. This gets dangerous fast.