1mo ago

The Dirty Truth of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud Computing has revolutionized how we live and work. But the dirty truth is that the warehouses full of computers that power AI threaten the progress we've made to protect people from pollutants. These data centers and the plants that power them typically burn fuels that emit hazardous chemicals that cause cancer and other health issues into the air the local community breathes.
Elon Musk and his company xAI are poisoning Black communities in TN and MS, just to make more money. While it's not new that data centers threaten to erode our climate progress, xAI's disregard for laws and regulations meant to keep people safe from pollution is unprecedented.
Tech companies and the billionaires who own them must be held accountable. As the country continues to progress in AI, we must ensure that frontline communities aren't the ones paying the price.

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The "dirty truth" isn't just about carbon. It's about colonization of resources.
AI isn't "cloud-based" — it's earth-based. It runs on rare minerals, stolen water, and fossil fuels.
And the heaviest costs aren't paid by Silicon Valley, but by frontline communities: Native lands, Black neighborhoods, rural towns.
We’re told AI will save the planet. But it’s being built on its destruction.
This isn't progress. It's extraction with a neural net.
👉 theitalianuncut.ch
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud Computing has revolutionized how we live and work.
Not for the average joe (or jane) it hasn't.
Of course, those trying to sell their services would like us all to think that it has...
- Unfortunately, it has, just not necessarily in ways you know. AI is being used by most retail chains to catalogue and classify you when you shop. AI is being used by your job to analyze your behavior and productivity. It's being used by cities to track you. And they're all heavily reliant on cloud service providers.
  
  I get what you mean but conversely, how does it impact let's say a barista? They head to work, clock in, sit there bored until someone makes an order then makes it, the cashier rings it up on a device (whether that uses AI or cloud-based anything as opposed to a desktop in the back room of the store is irrelevant to them), and they go back to trying to look like they are cleaning something.
  Or a factory worker? Yeah maybe AI does the back-end scheduling, but however their shifts are determined, isn't it all the same to them?
  Are their salaries any higher or lower as a result of using "the cloud"? Do they get PTO now, whereas before AI or cloud computing they did not?
  Yes those technologies impact our culture, but I strongly disagree with the wording that it has "revolutionized how we live and work". The CEO seems the most impacted, the worker the least, but the former still lives a cushy life while the latter not so much -> genuinely what has been "revolutionized" there?
  In the future though, I believe it could be revolutionary - e.g. if the CEO could use AI to monitor every single worker in the entire company, then (without the need for any human middle management) personally video call them from the golf course to tell them to stop taking so many bathroom breaks, since just bc they chose to have a baby is no reason to "slack off" rather than work!! /s on the latter btw:-P But we don't seem quite there yet?
  White-collar workers who can now WFH would have been a major exception, except... (gestures wildly at surroundings) yes we have that CAPABILITY, and seemingly not much desire to actually fulfill it?
  Workplaces have always tracked their employees - via cameras, keylogging or similar (lower-resolution methods merely seeing if activity is taking place), or even just eyeballing that people look busy(-ish). Cities have always tracked the people going through it - e.g. speed traps. Yes the scale of it can now be done cheaper and easier than ever before, except... can it? If someone does not take a phone with them, or uses a dumbphone, and drives a dumbcar (hehe, that term does not exist yet - but it SHOULD! also I would like a dumbTV please:-D), then the options get a lot more narrow (not non-existent, as pictures of a vehicle can still be taken, and that could still be analyzed by AI - but again, isn't that mostly the future rather than now, not in terms of capability but in terms of what is used in actual practice?)
  I am just not seeing it, or at least I mean that what I do see happening seems mostly jargon-esque and buzzword ego-stroking, much like "AI is transforming EVARYTHANG!", seemingly intended to inflate stock prices more than actually accomplish any particular goal. Palantir in the USA being the major exception... gulp, but that too will need at least a few months to ramp up, rather than already having "revolutionized how we live and work", at least for most (even if nowhere close to quite all) people, again who are not the CEOs nor the increasingly dwindling (these days, sadly) white-collar workforce, and even there the subset of them that have actually been transformed (except... how again? yes cloud engineers work on the cloud, obviously, but before that server engineers worked on servers, and desktop engineers worked on desktops, so that seems not a fair comparison)?
  But I am willing to be proven wrong, if you think that I am? :-D

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