[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

The concerns being raised here are valid, but the solution is to change how AI is used and regulated, not to try to outlaw it or destroy it.

Environmental concerns are paramount. The IEA---a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization consisting of experts in energy use, production, and conservation---did data-based projections of the future net environmental impact of data centers. They calculated that "the adoption of existing AI applications in end-use sectors" could result in emissions reductions three to four times larger than total data center related emissions. The report stresses that this is only factoring in existing AI capabilities, and not including AI contributions to any technological breakthroughs (for example, innovations in battery design and materials science).

https://www.iea.org/...-climate-change

From the report:

Quote

Energy innovation challenges are characterised by the kinds of problems AI is good at solving. For example, only 0.01% of next-generation solar PV materials have been experimentally produced, leaving a huge set of possible materials still to be explored. AI could allow scientists to dramatically accelerate the process of finding and testing promising materials, battery chemistries and carbon capture molecules.

https://www.iea.org/...ecutive-summary

It also found that AI grid optimization could result in up to 175 gigawatts (GW) of additional available power, which is more than projected total data center power use in their base case scenario.

So if you really care about climate change, instead of trying to outlaw AI, the better solution is to regulate it so that its net contribution to emissions reduction is overwhelmingly positive. And other substantial environmental concerns should also be addressed by regulation.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 31 July 2026 - 06:42 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

That's all very well but they're not are they they're just expanding it because rich people are never satisfied. And they will fight it every step of the way. Bezos was saying a couple of weeks ago that human water consumption is hammering the potential for AI. That's chilling.

[Illuyankas]

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18161

Quote

> Large language models (LLMs) are used by over a billion people globally, most often to assist with writing. In this work, we demonstrate that LLMs not only alter the voice and tone of human writing, but also consistently alter the intended meaning. First, we conduct a human user study to understand how people actually interact with LLMs when using them for writing. Our findings reveal that extensive LLM use led to a nearly 70% increase in essays that remained neutral in answering the topic question. Significantly more heavy LLM users reported that the writing was less creative and not in their voice. Next, **using a dataset of human-written essays that was collected in 2021 before the widespread release of LLMs, we study how asking an LLM to revise the essay based on the human-written feedback in the dataset induces large changes in the resulting content and meaning. We find that even when LLMs are prompted with expert feedback and asked to only make grammar edits, they still change the text in a way that significantly alters its semantic meaning.** We then examine LLM-generated text in the wild, specifically focusing on the 21% of AI-generated scientific peer reviews at a recent top AI conference. We find that **LLM-generated reviews place significantly less weight on clarity and significance of the research, and assign scores that, on average, are a full point higher.** **These findings highlight a misalignment between the perceived benefit of AI use and an implicit, consistent effect on the semantics of human writing**, motivating future work on how widespread AI writing will affect our cultural and scientific institutions.

[Maark Abbott]

Azath Vitr (D, on 31 July 2026 - 05:49 PM, said:

The concerns being raised here are valid, but the solution is to change how AI is used and regulated, not to try to outlaw it or destroy it.

Environmental concerns are paramount. The IEA---a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization consisting of experts in energy use, production, and conservation---did data-based projections of the future net environmental impact of data centers. They calculated that "the adoption of existing AI applications in end-use sectors" could result in emissions reductions three to four times larger than total data center related emissions. The report stresses that this is only factoring in existing AI capabilities, and not including AI contributions to any technological breakthroughs (for example, innovations in battery design and materials science).

https://www.iea.org/...-climate-change

From the report:

Quote

Energy innovation challenges are characterised by the kinds of problems AI is good at solving. For example, only 0.01% of next-generation solar PV materials have been experimentally produced, leaving a huge set of possible materials still to be explored. AI could allow scientists to dramatically accelerate the process of finding and testing promising materials, battery chemistries and carbon capture molecules.

https://www.iea.org/...ecutive-summary

It also found that AI grid optimization could result in up to 175 gigawatts (GW) of additional available power, which is more than projected total data center power use in their base case scenario.

So if you really care about climate change, instead of trying to outlaw AI, the better solution is to regulate it so that its net contribution to emissions reduction is overwhelmingly positive. And other substantial environmental concerns should also be addressed by regulation.

The issue of AI regulation becomes moot when the people developing and pushing on it are the people who have governments in their pockets.

[Tsundoku]

'Straya.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Highly esteemed computer scientist Scott Aaronson:

Quote

Twenty years ago, when the idea of AI taking over the world in our lifetimes still struck most of us as the unconstrained fantasy of those who knew too much science fiction and too little science, many of us would say things like:

Look, the part of the story that's wildly implausible is that a recursively self-improving superintelligence will just explode from some hacker's basement and take over the world without warning. If it's going to happen, we'll see many warning signs first. We'll see, I dunno, AI agents breaking out of containment, conspiring with each other to hack websites, in fanatical pursuit of whatever strange goals they have. And then, of course, we'd see major math problems getting solved by AIs—even the Clay Millennium Problems. That will be the time to panic! Wake me up when that happens!

Twenty years ago, the above was a take that even my most conservative, skeptical colleagues in academic CS would've gladly endorsed.

If you want to know my current take, you simply start with the one above, then update on the fact that the wild prophecies have come true.

[...] I've sometimes gotten some version of the following query: "How can you, as both a Jew and a skeptical scientist, possibly get along well with all those evangelical Christians down there in Texas? Sure, they might seem super friendly to Jews, but don't you understand that that's only because of the special role Jews play in their eschatology—when Christ will return in glory, and you'll either accept Him as Lord or else roast in hell for eternity?" I stare at them and say: "wait, so I get to accept Christ only after He returns? What a great deal! How could I possibly have any objection to that?"

[...] Accepting the reality of the coming machine god after it's solved Navier-Stokes and dozens of other longstanding open math problems (while dramatically ramping up in capability every month), is sort of like accepting Jesus after he's returned to earth on the gleaming cloud. It's the epistemic bare minimum.

Yes, there's still enormous uncertainty about what the rest of our lives will look like, but as far as I can tell, there's no longer any real uncertainty that it'll all mostly revolve around AI, and the extent to which we succeed or fail at directing its power toward human flourishing.

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