this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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Fuck AI
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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I absolutely would not count on these companies to innovate. They can’t even make a functioning product and they’re supposed to find a new way to make potable water?
I mean, we can and do mass produce potable water from seawater right now, but there is an ugly problem to the distillery method: seawater has a lot of unwanted stuff in it, and if we just dump it back in the ocean, it raises the toxicity locally for that area.
Data centers can also use closed-loop cooling, air cooling, immersion cooling, etc; they're just using potable water because it is the cheapest (for them). But even if they didn't innovate at all, the high end of that estimate is like 0.02% of yearly global freshwater withdrawals. As you say, the devastating part is that location constraints determine who bears the externalities.
Innovation doesn't actually make money. Scams do.
Why capitalism fails in late stages.