You’re right, but the article had a similar flavor. Specifically, when looking up information, users should be discovering curious details that raise additional questions. The AI is a homogenizing service that removes this “creative discovery” aspect of information gathering.

This isn’t about individuals. We safeguard knowledge institutionally. For instance, everyone should read this open letter from the top mathematicians on the planet, describing how we are about to undermine our mathematical understanding IDIOCRACY style. (I’m paraphrasing.)

Essentially, mathematical proofs are worthless without the communities that discover them. We care about math proofs because they create these communities (safeguarding knowledge for the next generation), not vice versa.

Having ChatGPT assert a proof we lack the expertise to check defeats the purpose. Not to mention, we already know it will get things wrong because of Gödel incompleteness so this whole situation is peak irony.

Oh, you mean the upfront price per chip, not the operating cost. Funny enough, the A20 chips are no more expensive (and possibly cheaper) than their Intel and AMD counterparts. The main issue is that the A20 is locked inside an iPhone, which is overpriced.

You are contradicting yourself. The first half of your comment seems to deny the deterioration of knowledge. The second half admits that “you can’t trust any knowledge from the internet anymore.”

So which is it? Is our relationship with technology epistemically suboptimal or not?

Well, unlike you, experts are worried. Consider how knowledge is gathered, stored, and disseminated. AI interferes with each of these steps in dramatic ways.

Even higher, since those Apple silicon chips are very efficient.

The thing that would make us better isn’t knowing; it’s doing. It makes sense to say that someone who knows better but behaves no better is literally no better.

Rationality is sensitivity and responsiveness to reasons, and plenty of folks are unresponsive to normative facts.

At least 70% of humans are just dangerously intelligent animals. Like imagine a polar bear that can drive and trade stocks. That’s the average person.

Given all the cute sentient animals humans gleefully consume, your words ring true.

data centers are like a meat processing plants

…which cause ecological devastation at an unimaginable scale and give poor communities cancer. This comparison is apt.

purify wastewater and generate their own clean energy

These are jobs for other facilities.

Not anymore. Townships cannot be made responsible for the pet projects of billionaires, nor is it their job to subsidize the internet. Get your own water and clean energy or fuck off.

I want to emphasize that this is a massive compromise since my first choice is [redacted].

That poor rural communities should subsidize data centers’ water and electrical consumption so that random websites can be cheaper to maintain is a weird argument but okay.

Data centers are currently unregulated, inefficient, ecologically destructive resource pits parasitical on poor communities. That’s the problem. A simple solution would be to sell them water and electricity at 1000x the cost per gallon of a regular household. If that doesn’t encourage innovation, just require data centers to purify wastewater and generate their own clean energy! Problem solved.