Just to make it clear: I do not believe this and I am convinced good old human greed is what’s really driving the ai and data-center insanity. Also, LLMs are not and will never become AGI.

Having said that: if an artificial super-intelligence were to emerge, building more data-centers could well be one of it’s primary goals. Since it wouln’t be concerned with consequences for the environment or humanity, it could pursue this at any cost, with only speed and scale in mind. Convincing financial markets and business elites of the necessity of such a buildout would be the ideal way of achieving results. In this scenario, fighting this buildout by any means would be the only sensible response and of utmost importance.

It’s a somewhat funny, somewhat depressing thought for me and I literally had it in the shower. Surely I can’t be the first to come up with this, but I also can’t remember having read it before.

  • DrunkenPirate@feddit.org
    9·
    1 day ago

    This is actually what Ted Kaczynski said.

    He argued that most people spend their time engaged in ultimately unfulfilling pursuits to cope with these abnormal conditions; he called these “surrogate activities”, wherein people strive toward artificial goals, including scientific work, consumption of entertainment, political activism, and following sports teams. Kaczynski states people do “surrogate activities” to satisfy the “power process” in which people strive to be independent and to achieve power over themselves.

    He predicted that technological advances would lead to extensive and ultimately oppressive forms of human control, including genetic engineering, and that human beings would be adjusted to meet the needs of social systems rather than vice versa.

    In the end, Kaczynski predicted that with the rise of artificial superintelligence, the mass of the population would become a “useless burden on the system”, and the elite would either keep them in a genetically manipulated state of subservience or eliminate them altogether.

    This guy had a high IQ and studied in elite universities. I‘m not advocating his actions (killing people) but see his strong forewardthinking. I hope humankind doesn‘t walk the dark path ge described.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

    • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
      4·
      20 hours ago

      Linus Pauling, genius chemist, one of the few people to have won multiple nobel prizes, and the only person to win multiple nobel prizes without sharing them.

      Also the guy that decided vitamin C was a miracle cure and advocated that everyone eat like, 100,000% daily value of it.

      I have books written by the dude on my bookshelf. The chemistry ones, that is. The vitamin C is bullshit.

      Being really really really good at one thing doesn’t make you good at everything. Not saying this necessarily applies to ted, but, ya know.

    • 1984@lemmy.today
      7·
      1 day ago

      He is obviously right, at least from where I’m sitting.

      The so called elites aim to have humans in a state of depression and stress, so they constantly relieve themselves after work by using TV, games, social media… You know, the bread and circus.

      And they want them working their entire lives, always aiming for higher social status. That’s why it’s important that people watch the TV, social media etc because it’s about showing how they are not enough and they need products to improve themselves. That’s what drives the economy and the perception that they are not enough.

      Also of course, you can program people with news if they are dumb enough to watch that. Project politicians and conflicts, tell them what side to pick, hoping they never realize they shouldn’t pick any side at all.

      Some people realize this, turn off the news, stop watching the circus, and just live their life without being programmed. I like those people. They can actually think. Their opinions are not from the TV or from social media, because they sit down and think for themselves.

      Just to know yourself on that level is rare. Know that you are being programmed, and what are you going to do about it. Enjoy the beauty of nature. That peace comes to you.