I’m going to have to bookmark this one so I can link it the next time some STEMbro starts lecturing me about whatever it is that he thinks science has “proved” about consciousness or perception or free will/determinism or…

It’s as if some notable proportion of humanity suddenly switched to eating nothing but vaguely food-shaped plastic, then a study concluded that that might have negative effects nutritionally.

No shit?

It doesn’t get much more performative than that.

The thing with the data centers is that the goal is entirely different from anything we’ve been told.

The key is that Google is implementing a system that allows people to get the information they’re after directly from them rather than clicking theough to a website. That’s undermining ad revenue, which not only threatens the existence of the websites but threatens Google’s existing ad-based business model.

So it can only be the case that they’re pivoting to a new business model.

And the key to that is the data centers.

Their goal, I grow more certain nearly every day, is to effectively privatize the internet by driving independent sites out of business, so that they (and their handful of more or less equally wealthy and powerful competitors) become the only source for all of that data they’ve already stolen.

Yeah - there’s a fairly significant game of The Emperor’s New Clothes going on, as the new set of impossibly wealthy assholes insist on pretending they’re not impossibly wealthy assholes and instead try to force society into accommodating them, apparently entirely unaware of the simple fact that all they’re doing is hastening the demise of the civilization that birthed them and on which they’re little more than grossly destructive parasites.

And that’s not an opinion - either mine or anyone else’s. It’s a simple fact that’s been borne out by history over and over throughout the ages, and will be again, no matter how many comforting lies people tell themselves and each other.

Slurp gobble.

All other considerations aside “Thiel-backed” guarantees all by itself that it’s technofascist bullshit explicitly intended to benefit the oligarchs at the expense of everyone else.

Weird how so many techbro ideas boil down to registering your identification with the tech oligarchs…

It potentially or ideally elevates consensus and moderate views, but since AIs are privately and generally corporately owned, and corporations are mindless monsters controlled by psychopathic shitweasels, the reality is that it will be (and to some notable degree already is) bent to the promotion of whatever toxic agenda the shitweasel owner(s) prefer.

And in point of fact, it’s made just that much more dangerous specifically because people tend to assume it represents some sort of “expert consensus and moderate views.”

We’re actually better off with populist and polarizing, since at least among that clamor of voices, the truth can still be shared. Under corporate AI, any truths the shitweasels want hidden will vanish entirely and any lies they prefer will be front and center.

If you can be effectively censored by the banning of a site flooded with CSAM, that’s very much your problem and nobody else’s.

They were profitable from the beginning.

The “problem” was that the original business model didn’t generate enough revenue to pay for obscene salaries and perks and lavish offices for a full complement of executive weasels, so they’ve been changing the business model and dicking the drivers over progressively more virtually from rhe day they first incorporated.

This is just a sort of ultimate step in that ongoing process - the final conversion of a company that started out serving the needs of the drivers and customers ending up entirely directed toward satisfying the greed of a relative handful pf psychopathic shitstains who contribute absolutely nothing of any actual value.

Like I said, corporate America in action…

Corporate America in action - a company that started out just as a sort of middleman between people using their own cars to shuttle around paying passengers and people who were willing to pay for a ride is now moving to eliminate human drivers.

Martial law.

We actually live in a world now in which the President of the United States explicitly states his intent to overtly violate the first amendment and the media just repeats it as if nothing of any note is going on.

I just think it’s funny that “AI” (which is “artificial intelligence” not in the sense of “human-made” but in the sense of “fake”) is contemperaneous with Trump.

This is going to go down in history (if humanity survives long enough) as the Idiot and Lunatic Age.

From what I’ve gleaned of the ravings of the angry stupid right blogosphere, a lot of people actually do think that only tree huggers want green energy.

And I have little doubt that that’s an opinion that Trump shares, but that’s not his main motivation in all of this. His main motivation is big fat bribes from the fossil fuel industry.

And thanks to Trump, the US is perfectly placed to be entirely left behind.

Yes - it really is the customers’ fault.

It’d be different if games were a necessity - then the idea of “predatory” behavior would be relevant, since we’d be talking about someone taking advantage of the fact that the consumer has to buy the thing in question.

But games aren’t a necessity - not even close - so any consumer is at any time entirely free to say no to any transaction without suffering any meaningful ill effects.

And any consumers who, in such a situation, do not say no to a bad deal have nobody to blame but themselves.

Hot take - while it’s obviously greedy for the publishers to be charging for this, the real problem is the idiots who are paying.