These kinds of discussions very quickly arrive at the “no ethical consumption under capitalism” line of thinking. No matter who you are, no matter what you do, some activity or product you engage with will have been the result of some kind of exploitation.
Yes, this is one of the central theses of the TV show "The Good Place". In simpler societies, it's easier to determine what is right and wrong, since actions are often local and can be judged on their immediate effects. But when everything is globalized and there's so many connections, determining right and wrong becomes much more difficult.
"no ethical consumption under capitalism" is true, explains why we can't just stop bad things (everything is bad, so you'd starve) and is a jumping off point for a discussion of what we can actually do about it without starving.
I’m still baffled as to where these 100x valuations came from. Amazon’s market cap is $2.65T, and I don’t see how any AI company comes within a faint whiff of that sort of value.
I’m not really a dev, so hefty pinch of salt with this take, but doesn’t this feel like we’re just inventing new “fuzzy” regex with much more required compute?
I think I heard that we’ll be fracking with nuclear materials soon so we can harvest the tritium water as a byproduct. Does anyone know if that’s just a wild, stupid theory that will never work, or an actual idea being explored? Sounds horrifying.
Recycling plastics is a huge lie that’s caused society to perform rituals that absolve them of the horrible impact they’re inflicting on the planet.
I don’t think this kind of gaslighting is unique or new, but the AI company’s specific melange of fear-mongering, disingenuous helplessness, ethics-washing, with a handy wildcard of regulatory capture is perhaps uniquely optimized and (so far) effective.
This brings back some memories. I was an admin for “Millions Against Monsanto”, a group on the still-nascent Facebook. I ultimately left because the org was overtaken by conspiracy theorists who couldn’t stop yelling about aspartame and antivax nonsense long enough to focus on the very real, and very alarming, actions of Monsanto. At this point in time it was still not considered “normal” to patent biological materials. I’m a bit more pragmatic, since I’ve grown past my college idealism, but I still don’t believe seeds should be considered patentable.
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