The AI dooooooom thread

[Tamas]

It is ridiculous. We are accelerating global warming, pushing the world economy to the brink, all so we can have more verbose emails and very lifelike fake images.

[Grey Fox]

and vast reduction in wages payed. The rich get richer.

[Razgovory]

It is ridiculous. We are accelerating global warming, pushing the world economy to the brink, all so we can have more verbose emails and very lifelike fake images.

These people genuinely think they are going to create a technological singularity.  They would destroy the entire economy in their mad quest for immortality.

[Jacob]

and vast reduction in wages payed. The rich get richer.

... combined with a significant costs for consumer goods.

[Jacob]

These people genuinely think they are going to create a technological singularity.  They would destroy the entire economy in their mad quest for immortality.

I remember years ago reading about Thiel funding biotech technology that promised a form of immortality derived from the blood of young people. If it had been fiction I would have derided it as being to obnoxiously didactic a metaphor.

Also these billionaires really do seem to want to set themselves up as demi-gods.

[HisMajestyBOB]

This is why billionaires are bad.
If we had stronger taxes and anti-trust laws this could have been avoided.

[garbon]

This is why billionaires are bad.
If we had stronger taxes and anti-trust laws this could have been avoided.

Yes, they are indeed terrible for society.

[Syt]

It is ridiculous. We are accelerating global warming, pushing the world economy to the brink, all so we can have more verbose emails and very lifelike fake images.

Don't worry, Google got you.

https://fortune.com/2025/12/01/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-project-suncatcher-extraterrestrial-data-centers-environment/

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says we're just a decade away from a new normal of extraterrestrial data centers
December 1, 2025, 1:25 PM ET

Google's "moonshot" aspirations to expand its AI footprint are taking on a more literal meaning.

CEO Sundar Pichai said in a Fox News interview on Sunday that Google will soon begin construction of AI data centers in space. The tech giant announced Project Suncatcher earlier this month, with the goal of finding more efficient ways to power energy-guzzling centers, in this case with solar power.

"One of our moonshots is to, how do we one day have data centers in space so that we can better harness the energy from the sun that is 100 trillion times more energy than what we produce on all of Earth today?" Pichai said.

Google will take its first steps in constructing extraterrestrial data centers in early 2027 in partnership with satellite imagery firm Planet, launching two pilot satellites to test the hardware in Earth's orbit. According to Pichai, space-based data centers will be the new standard in the near future.

"But there's no doubt to me that a decade or so away we'll be viewing it as a more normal way to build data centers," he said.

To be sure, Google isn't the only company looking to the skies for an answer to improving data center efficiency. Earlier this month, Y Combinator and Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud sent its first AI-equipped satellite to space. CEO and cofounder Philip Johnston predicts extraterrestrial data centers will produce 10 times lower carbon emissions than their earthbound counterparts, even taking into account the emissions from launch.

While the cost of satellites used to test AI hardware in space has decreased drastically, putting extraterrestrial data center development within reach, the cost of building these solar-powered centers is still an unknown, particularly as earthbound data centers are expected to require more than $5 trillion in capital expenditures by 2030, according to an April McKinseyreport.

Google, which catapulted itself back into the AI front-runner conversation with the recent release of Gemini 3, is one of several major hyperscalers pouring money into data centers to expand its computing capabilities. Google itself announced this month a $40 billion investment in data center construction in Texas.

All the while, speculation of an AI bubble threatens to create an oversupply of data centers, which could render the data center space race a dangerous overinvestment.

"The stakes are high," the McKinsey report said. "Overinvesting in data center infrastructure risks stranding assets, while underinvesting means falling behind."

Harnessing solar energy to power data centers has become increasingly appealing amid growing concerns about the sustainability of expanding AI compute, which requires an exorbitant amount of power. A December 2024 U.S. Department of Energy report on domestic data center usage found data center load has tripled in the past 10 years and may double or triple again by 2028. These data centers consumed more than 4% of the country's electricity in 2023, and are predicted to consume up to 12% of U.S. electricity by 2028, according to the report.

Google alone has more than doubled its electricity consumption on data center use in the past five years, using 30.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity last year compared to 14.4 million in 2020, when it began specifically tracking data center energy consumption, according to its latest sustainability report released in June.

Google has worked to reduce the energy needed to power its growing data centers, reporting it reduced its data center energy emissions by 12% in 2024, despite an increasing footprint. However, concerns about the lasting sustainability of data center expansion remain.

"There is still much we don't know about the environmental impact of AI, but some of the data we do have is concerning," Golestan Radwan, United Nations Environment Programme chief digital officer, said in a statement last year following the program's note warning of the environmental impact of AI infrastructure expansion. "We need to make sure the net effect of AI on the planet is positive before we deploy the technology at scale."

[Syt]

That said, I'm somewhat ashamed that I was having a productive ChatGPT day, using it as a sounding board and tool to better structure a project bird's eye view and close any gaps in my analysis. Granted, much of my time was writing long ass prompts/feedback to make sure it had enough feedback (our corporate accounts have basic company knowledge that were fed, but obviously it needed a lot more than that) and then reviewing the output to respond with more instructions and/or edit it. In hindsight I'm not sure if it would have been more productive to do it more fully manually, but it pushed back on some assumptions and reminded me of some items that I had genuinely missed in my drafts/instructions.

[Josquius]

Chat gpt has really reached the enshittification stage I've noticed. You only get a few messages per day of any sort then it locks you out.
Wonder if this is impacting usage much of if most people are light users.

[Jacob]

Google AI gave me wrong information for a search today.

I googled "who were Vancouver City counsellors in 2020". The AI result gave me a list of current counsellors, said they were the current counsellors, then added "it's important to note they may have held different positions in 2020".

[Syt]

Chat gpt has really reached the enshittification stage I've noticed. You only get a few messages per day of any sort then it locks you out.
Wonder if this is impacting usage much of if most people are light users.

Pay your tithe or the AI deity will not share its wisdom!

[DGuller]

All you people thinking AI is just a speculative waste of resources, I wish I shared your optimism.  Speculative bubbles are painful when they burst, but humanity has survived them plenty of times before.  I'm not sure humanity is ready to survive the AI that delivers on its promises.

[Syt]

Weirdly I agree with another thing that Sundar Pichai said - AI will touch all parts of life and everyone needs to figure out what its best uses for them are. I.e. it's a new tool; and I think we're in the very confusing phase of trying to see what it is actually useful for and what it isn't useful for (let alone the energy/environmental impact).

Unlike Pichai, however, I don't think it's necessarily here to stay in all areas (of course he has a vested interest that it does). Once things settle and development cycles get longer and longer there will be some good use-cases, some cases where it's not helpful or even detrimental and a gradient between those poles.

Problem is that currently everyone and their dog are jumping onto the bandwagon and there's chance for a lot of damage before we get to a more "equilibrium" state and the AI corpos are pushing hard for this.

[Syt]

Anecdote: near my office is a small rather crappy "christmas market," trying to be cool with a little disco tent and street food stands. Their advertising posters are fairly shitty AI generated images, the kind you get when you enter an extremely basic prompt with no strong direction for the GenAI.

I was wondering if in 30 or so years there will be a big nostalgia phase for this sort of content, kind of like 80s or 90s styles sometimes come back.