technocrit

We are constantly fed a version of AI that looks, sounds and acts suspiciously like us. It speaks in polished sentences, mimics emotions, expresses curiosity, claims to feel compassion, even dabbles in what it calls creativity.

But what we call AI today is nothing more than a statistical machine: a digital parrot regurgitating patterns mined from oceans of human data (the situation hasn’t changed much since it was discussed here five years ago). When it writes an answer to a question, it literally just guesses which letter and word will come next in a sequence – based on the data it’s been trained on.

This means AI has no understanding. No consciousness. No knowledge in any real, human sense. Just pure probability-driven, engineered brilliance — nothing more, and nothing less.

So why is a real “thinking” AI likely impossible? Because it’s bodiless. It has no senses, no flesh, no nerves, no pain, no pleasure. It doesn’t hunger, desire or fear. And because there is no cognition — not a shred — there’s a fundamental gap between the data it consumes (data born out of human feelings and experience) and what it can do with them.

Philosopher David Chalmers calls the mysterious mechanism underlying the relationship between our physical body and consciousness the “hard problem of consciousness”. Eminent scientists have recently hypothesised that consciousness actually emerges from the integration of internal, mental states with sensory representations (such as changes in heart rate, sweating and much more).

Given the paramount importance of the human senses and emotion for consciousness to “happen”, there is a profound and probably irreconcilable disconnect between general AI, the machine, and consciousness, a human phenomenon.

https://archive.ph/Fapar

Google’s carbon emissions have soared by 51% since 2019 as artificial intelligence hampers the tech company’s efforts to go green.

While the corporation has invested in renewable energy and carbon removal technology, it has failed to curb its scope 3 emissions, which are those further down the supply chain, and are in large part influenced by a growth in datacentre capacity required to power artificial intelligence.

The company reported a 27% increase in year-on-year electricity consumption as it struggles to decarbonise as quickly as its energy needs increase.

Datacentres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers the ChatGPT chatbot. The International Energy Agency estimates that datacentres’ total electricity consumption could double from 2022 levels to 1,000TWh (terawatt hours) in 2026, approximately Japan’s level of electricity demand. AI will result in datacentres using 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030, according to calculations by the research firm SemiAnalysis.

Spotify, the world’s leading music streaming platform, is facing intense criticism and boycott calls following CEO Daniel Ek’s announcement of a €600m ($702m) investment in Helsing, a German defence startup specialising in AI-powered combat drones and military software.

The move, announced on 17 June, has sparked widespread outrage from musicians, activists and social media users who accuse Ek of funnelling profits from music streaming into the military industry.

Many have started calling on users to cancel their subscriptions to the service.

“Finally cancelling my Spotify subscription – why am I paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago, while their CEO spends all my money on technofascist military fantasies?” said one user on X.

When I started working on this video about Palantir, I didn’t expect that it would make me want to have a panic attack. Then again, maybe panic is the appropriate response to learning that an artificial intelligence and surveillance company is actively collecting data on every American citizen in order to establish a technological dystopia.

An industry-backed researcher who has forged a career sowing doubt about the dangers of pollutants is attempting to use artificial intelligence (AI) to amplify his perspective.

Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr, a Denver-based risk analyst and former Trump adviser who once reportedly claimed there is no proof that cleaning air saves lives, is developing an AI application to scan academic research for what he sees as the false conflation of correlation with causation.

Advocates call the CTC a rubber stamp for highway widening. The body didn't do anything to dispel that notion yesterday.

"LLMs are not just text generators but pretext generators"

PhD programmes need to better prepare students for careers outside universities, researchers warn.

Archive: https://archive.is/f1YtL

I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

• Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
• Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
• Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters at the summit in the Hague that President Donald Trump was like a "daddy" intervening in a schoolyard fight.