The combined worldwide energy usage of ChatGPT is equivalent to about 20k American households.

Or about 10 small countries. Not even being that hyperbolic: American households are fabulously, insanely wasteful of energy.

The rest of the world (barring places like Saudi Arabia, which are rarely used as moral or socio-cultural examples the world should learn from) has done the whole ‘What’s the point in trying to better the world when America and China do more damage than the rest of the world combined?’ debate decades ago, and we ended up deciding that we can’t control the worst offenders, and can only do what we can.

Literally any moral value or standard is subject to ‘but but but what’s the point if you can’t eradicate the problem entirely?’, that’s why it’s such a weak fallacy. Minimising absolutely pointless destruction of non-renewable resources won’t successfully save the environment tomorrow, but we can do it anyway, and if will help. We can’t eradicate theft, but we can do our best to pay for things before taking them. We know that being polite in public isn’t the 1 thing holding our society back from utopian perfection, but we do it anyway, because it helps.

We can all pinky promise not to murder or violently assault anyone, and pay no attention to the weirdo protesting that ‘What’s the point in not assaulting people when actually, cars and illness and unhealthy lifestyles do more harm’, because that person is presumably just looking for an excuse to hit someone.

And yeah, long story short: using ‘American households’ as an example of how insignificant AI’s energy usage is is kinda like saying smoking is safe because it’s actually less harmful than spending 6 hours a day on a busy road in Delhi. If you don’t spend 6 hours a day near busy roads in Delhi, you won’t exactly think ‘oh that’s ok then’. And if you do, your lungs need all the help they can get and you’ve got all the more reason to be wary of smoking (I say this as a smoker btw).

Huge areas of Africa and the middle east are becoming uninhabited because of climate change. Those people all need food and water, and the western world does not have the resources or inclination to house and feed them all. It is almost unanimously described as the worst crisis humanity has ever faced, and the practical solution - stop wasting fossil fuels and non-renewable resources when there’s a viable alternative - is so insanely easy.

Billions of lives could be saved, if everyone on the planet agreed to be mindful of energy waste. Not ‘stop using energy’ or ‘everybody become vegan and live in houses made of recycled banana peel’, just quit wasting.

But there are entire countries who don’t seem to get the whole ‘acting together for the betterment of humanity’ thing, so that incredibly simple solution won’t work. And all we can do in the meantime is to lead by example, make ‘responsible consumption’ a lifestyle rather than an option, and hope against hope that enough Americans and Chinese people decide to reduce their dependence on 1000 daily images of shrimp Jesus or an endless output of bullshit papers written by AI to pretend that’s what science means, in time to maybe save some of the planet before wildfire season lasts 12 months a year.

Also: it’s not even like you’re gaining anything from constantly using AI or LLMs. Just fleeting dopamine hits while your brain cells wither. Of all the habits one could try to reduce, or be mindful of, to literally save lives and countries, anybody who honestly thinks generative AI is more important is very addicted.

Also also: it’s just so shit.

The only time I remember feeling genuine panic at a software update was years ago when my laptop suddenly decided it urgently had to restart. It took longer than I’d expected to boot up again and it kept showing the message ‘All your files are exactly where you left them’.

I have no idea how or why but that really felt like a threat 🤣 of course when it finally turned on I was scouring all my folders trying to remember what I had where to see what they’d accidentally deleted. I felt stupid for being so suspicious then went online and ‘all your files are exactly where you left them’ was already turning into a meme. It made people angry as hell.

And thinking about it, if someone is unlocking their front door and you interrupt them to say ‘excuse me, sorry, just wanted to say: all the stuff in your bedroom is exactly how you left it,’ they probably would not feel reassured.

It is not a reassuring thing to hear. Anyway, fuck meta.

A Napoleon complex, as I understand it, is when a high achiever feels insecure due to a reasonably insignificant, but noticeable, flaw, and gets so bitter and defensive about it that it draws attention from their achievements to the flaw and their bitterness.

Eg, man rises to the top of his country, conquers others, spreads and empire that, for all its flaws, revolutionised global concepts and uptake of democracy, human rights etc. English critics mainly focus whether he’s a few inches shorter than average.

Whereas Elon: did not do any of that, and the ‘minor flaws’ are his remarkable personal anti-magnetism.

It’s absolutely unbelievable that the richest man in the world still can’t get any friends, let alone partners, who can stick around longer than a year or so. He was brought up with the finest education money could buy and every opportunity, and has not managed to invent, discover, or excel at anything other than buying things.

Not only has he not conquered a multitude of countries or spread anything other than anger and personal dissatisfaction, he couldn’t even rise to the top of his own country.

And, not being funny, his own country was not the stiffest competition in the field of ‘really respectable, well liked, competent people’. White South Africans do not dominate the league tables of Cool Chill Folk Who Fairly Earned Their Worldwide Respect, and all he had to do was keep buying companies and collecting money and not being such a raging wanker as to be a threat to multiple countries’ national security. That is such an achingly low bar, and I truly do not believe anyone except Musk could have failed to clear it.

TLDR: Napoleon ruled his country and many others, leaving a new global standard for law, human rights, freedom, and democracy (which is even more impressive considering he was a kinda imperialist knob).

Musk’s talents are being astronomically rich, and against all odds, setting a new global standard for ‘that white South African pro-apartheid guy who turned out to be unusually racist and anti-meritocracy’. How bad do you have to be before billions of people would recognise you from that description? The man was born on a golden throne and has managed to make a name as the most distasteful turd in the open sewer miles away.

I think the ‘we’ is referring to fascists, not British citizens.

And alarmingly, that’s not even a joke. There’s a clear cult of personality thing being whipped up, and I legit don’t see what he’s got in common with the baying mob other than racism, fascism, and a taste for violence.

Why would so many people be convinced to bus up and down the country spewing hate at migrant hotels, raising flags everywhere like we’ve fallen to USA levels of idiocy, at the behest of a man who doesn’t share their: country, nationality, culture, religion, class, upbringing, life path / experience, financial or social position or priorities, or literally anything other than… well, I can’t think of anything other than fascism, unhappiness, and probably the petulant anger of someone who can’t figure out why nobody likes or respects them.

And I don’t think many of them are consciously aware of the unhappiness or thwarted desire to be a valuable member of society, so fascism it is.

Just so you know, this comment is visible on the internet for anyone to see, and has been for 2 years.

When they actually introduce all these fantastic new features, we will know who to blame for the idea.

I get your point but I don’t think Russia recreating the first acts of WWII on a NATO country can be dismissed as a ‘distraction’ from many real world events short of actual official world war 3, or Putin being arrested or something.

There is also a strong argument that illegally invading a country is always quite a significant event, certainly to the people in that country.

Yeah, but most of us have this funny idea that war is a bad thing and we don’t want to do it again.

I’m pretty sure there are enough ‘pro-war, show those bad guys who’s boss! We ain’t no pussies’ people to form a formidably large army, though, which seems like a win-win for everyone.

Those who want war can go ahead. Everyone else can continue what we’ve put so much effort into for the last 100 years or so. And all the ‘big fan of war as long as it’s happening to somebody else’ people can choose to be very quiet, or shipped off to the front lines.

I suspect the internet would suddenly take a very pacifist turn.