OP, this article is from 20 September 2024.
Like that’s not a written rule here, but that seems like something you shouldn’t do given this is a news community.
so more like a newnews situation?
The US restarting Three Mile Island while China is just building brand new reactors and laying out insane amounts of solar. It’s certainly a metaphor.
Not even to support people during an energy crisis, for the big name AI people want least
There were two reactors at Three Mile Island. Unit 2 was the site of the meltdown. Unit 1 was undamaged, and continued to operate until 2019, when it was mothballed due to economic conditions. With the rising demand for electricity, that’s what that’s the unit they’re considering bringing back online. Unit 2 doesn’t actually have a generator anymore. It was scavenged for a plant in North Carolina in 2010.
Likewise, Chernobyl reactor 4 suffered its mishap in 1986. Reactors 1, 2, and 3 remained operational and on the power grid. Reactor 2 continued to operate until 1991; reactor 1 until 1996; and reactor 3 until 2000.
The fuel wasn’t completely removed from reactors 1-3 until 2013. Just to give you all some idea about the timeline of nuclear decommissioning.
And, depite the worst nuclear incident in the history of the US nuclear program, there are zero deaths attributed to the incident, and little or no measured impact on the local environment.
There’s probably more ordinary (e.g. falling off ladders, &c) work place fatalities at nuclear plants than the sum total nuclear accidental deaths.
…which was canceled in 2013.
But clicks!
What do these companies see in AI that I don’t? It’s not profitable and I’m yet to see positive application. I found something mentioning that it’s fighting climate change (which evidently seems like the opposite of reality) and fighting fake news (which itself is mostly powered by AI).
Even when I pull up a Microsoft webpage that is trying to advocate for AI usage, it has the most abhorrent use of AI in stock image form to kick off the article.
Massive surveillance and RoboCop.
Well yeah… That’s all I can see and it’s fucking depressing.
Riding the bubble, just don’t forget to get off before it bursts.
MS is just part of the hype machine. If they can socialize the cost of new generation (getting the government to restart 3MI) to buy cheap 'leccy, they’re actually hedging against the bubble.
They’ll have nice shiny data centres with very cheap power locked in long after the bubble has burst.
The overarching goal for AI is to seize the means of production (not even joking). For all of history the ruling class (pharaohs/monarchs/dictators/capitalists) has been entirely dependent on workers for the means of production. They control the capital, but capital has no intrinsic value. The workers turn that capital into <anything>, but the workers are also the greatest threat to their wealth and power; especially maintaining control of the military.
Once they control fully autonomous killing machines, they no longer have to worry about mortal theories like ethics, morality, empathy, or concepts like “freedom” and “democracy”. Once machines replace the workers, they can cull a majority of the human population, and keep all the planets resources for themselves — humanity has been over-consuming every resource since the early 1900’s, and if major changes do not occur we’ll likely kill the planets ability to support human civilisation entirely.
And will Microsoft be paying for this? Or the taxpayer?
😒
