American AI insanity is an infectious epidemic

Ah, the beauty of naïvety!  /s

Something feels terribly wrong and broken with American political and business leadership. Many or most of them seem to have gone insane. On the politics side, insanity has been painfully obvious ever since 2016. 

But people running some big companies are just plain nuts. For example Teradata is planning to “win in the market with AI”, primarily by diverting money from annual salary increases into AI-related headcount, tooling, and product development. However, the company has not disclosed a concrete, detailed AI roadmap or plan. All that is clear is that they are reallocating money into a fairly generic “AI transformation” focused on AI talent, AI tooling, and AI-infused versions of their existing data/analytics products. Whether that will make economic sense or not is unknowable. The CEO sure doesn't know.

Some people are wary, especially young workers just entering the workforce. A FT headline captures the unease: ‘More harmful than helpful’: young people sour on AI.

Other companies are joining in the AI irrational exuberance freight train. One article comments: Google lays off Cloud, cybersecurity staff as Big Tech doubles down on AI investments; Google has reportedly laid off employees across parts of its Google Cloud and cybersecurity businesses, including teams within Mandiant and its Threat Intelligence Group; so far this year, 164 companies have laid off 116,379 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi, a platform that tracks job cuts across industries in real time.

Groovy! We're further letting down our defenses against cyberwar. Outstanding!  /s

Also, one has just gotta wonder if MAGA's recently released unexpectedly good job number is real or just faked MAGAware. Given the stunning mendacity of Trump, and his elite MAGA thugs in power, one can reasonably believe the jobs data is faked and inflated.

Others see major issues that the mindless US stampede to AI-ify everything is causing. This headline is blunt about the water problem: AI Data Centers’ Water Consumption Breaks 264 Billion Gallons in 2025 as Devastating Drought Hits Nearly 63% of U.S. As one can expect from our now corrupt and incompetent MAGA-fied federal government, nothing will be done until crisis hits. Of course, MAGA's demagoguery will blame Obama, Hillary, Joe Biden, Hunter & his laptop, etc., for all the shit hitting the fan. 

Good old UNU (United Nations University) puts the environmental issue like this: Rising Emissions, Depleting Water and Vanishing Land—UN Scientists: AI Is Threatening Natural Resources for Billions; by 2030, AI water use will match the needs of 1.3 billion people while power consumption will match the needs of ~2 billion. Yikes!!

Hm, there is a UNU? Well, at least Trump and his elite MAGA goons haven't polluted that school yet by turning it into an institution dedicated to pro-pollution, fake science propaganda and lies.  /not-s

Regardless of how AI plays out for businesses and the economy, it really is coming with an unregulated vengeance to almost all major areas of human endeavor. An article that Science published says it all: The last astronomers -- Amid a flood of AI advances, astrophysicists are questioning the soul of their field:

One afternoon in April, Cecilia Garraffo settled down at the head of a conference room table in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and gazed out at what might be the last astrophysicists of their kind.

The walls of this room had, in the past, reverberated with the din of thousands of other groups of scientists. Now, as streaks of sunlight poured in, the discussions turned to nonhuman collaborators. One by one, the gathered researchers discussed how they planned to apply machine learning to problems in astronomy. 

Afterward, as everyone filed out, black hole researcher Daniel Palumbo made a brief announcement. Representatives from AI chipmaker NVIDIA were on campus in search of scientists who wanted to solve problems using their hardware. To anyone who might need extra processing power, “today’s the day,” he said.  

Representatives of the AI companies, who seem to view astrophysics problems as public relations boons that offer compelling showcases of their models, boast that their technologies will soon achieve supremacy over actual theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists. Some even make mechanizing the study of the night sky a selling point.

Yup, today’s the day. We surely are going to find out good and hard just how wonderful AI is going to be for all of us. We will soon see AI supremacy over actual theoretical physicists. Dog only knows what AI has planned for us village idiots.

Q: Is Trump and his incompetent, corrupt MAGAfied federal government more likely going to (1) intelligently but effectively guide us into a dawning AI golden age for all of us, or (2) will they shamelessly cash in as much as they can, while not giving a rip about public needs or the public interest?

🤔

Hm, I wonder . . . a new golden age for us or them? 

Probably them