The Scariest Part About Artificial Intelligence – The New Republic

This problem is finally getting a small piece of the attention it deserves, thanks to recent coverage by the Financial Times, Nature, and The Atlantic. But the tech industrys fossil fuellike tactics of greenwashing, gaslighting, and refusing to comment are going to make thorough reporting on this difficult. The closest weve gotten to candor came when Open AI founder Sam Altman admitted at Davos that A.I. will consume much more energy than expected, straining our grids. He admitted that the situation could become untenable: Theres no way to get there without a breakthrough.

Researching this issue gives one all the feelings of a dystopian twentieth-century sci-fi movie about parasitical robots stealing our human essence and ultimately killing us off. At every point, we want to yell at the screen, Dont let the robots in there! We wonder: Cant they be stopped?

If there was an A.I. abolition movement, Id join it today, ideally advocating exuberantly cruel penalties for the tech moguls who have ensnared us in this destructive and frivolous gambit. But being of a more constructive bent, Green New Deal co-author and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey last month introduced the Artificial Intelligence Environmental Impacts Act of 2024. Its unfortunately mild, calling upon government agencies to do what the industry isnt doing: measure and investigate A.I.s environmental footprint. Its perhaps a politically feasible first step, especially given bipartisan social and cultural concerns about A.I.

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The Scariest Part About Artificial Intelligence - The New Republic

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