AI (Artificial Intelligence) can lower or higher Carbon Footprint
The carbon impact of data centers has been huge and is growing because more and more people “consume” the internet. In order to run servers and computers where information is stored, you need huge amounts of electricity.
Not just to run the equipment, but to cool it. In some cases, those systems run on diesel, especially in some countries that are still in development and where the grid is not reliable enough to sustain a huge server bank. Data centers, in some cases, contain thousands of servers. And they are everywhere.
AI: The issue with AI is that people create an AI or have created an AI, and the people that created it don’t know what it will do. They can see some of the things it does, but not others, or understand why it would use a certain dataset, but not for what purpose. It is like introducing a lion in the cafeteria of Microsoft. Let’s see what it will do.
The expectation is that it will do certain things based on its preconditioned behavior (it’s a lion), but nobody can tell you exactly what is going to happen. There are probabilities, some certainties, but many more unknowns.
The interwebs are global, and we talk about using AI for anything and everything. Anyone can use it in whichever way those “anyone’s” can see fit. Historically, we can assume that most countries will first use it (or are already using it and have been) to figure out strategies on how to defeat real or potential enemies (see the movie War Games?) and create new weaponry because, as the great societies full of brotherly love we are, we have always used new technologies to help each other.
There will be new toxins, rockets, bombs, tanks, planes, attacks on grids and banks, and oil supplies. Long before people really understood, oops, there was a lion in the cafeteria.
Some geniuses will figure out we can use it to modify the climate, not because they know, but because AI has modeled it and shown that it will work based on data that may be entirely biased because the people who wrote the model were paid by an oil company, for example. Bias is not an AI issue; it is a human issue. Everyone has a bias, everyone has an agenda, and AI will follow exactly what people put into it, so one could assume.
Our politicians will immediately jump on it to manipulate everything and everyone; they do it without AI. The problem with doing it with AI is that you can now create voices, videos, and deep fakes to be used in propaganda for and against us at a level that our puny brains cannot comprehend. The first and most important thing with AI is that we all must assume the very worst in order to possibly one day get the best out of it, if by that time it is not too late.
Sure, there are some nice side effects. The lion in the cafeteria could have a good day, and he’s only there to cuddle, but what’s the likelihood of that? Will AI take over humanity? Or Can AI bring this world back to normal?
I am optimistic about AI and technology, but I am not that excited about it from a social point of view. In another instance, I was not so thrilled with the advent of the Internet and social media without the structural format of the necessary social protocol for the mass consumer market! Humans are the Culprit!! Do We want a Tragic end to this World ?
Lawmakers and regulators definitely need to play a role in shaping and developing an AI-based Internet in conjunction with civil society and faith-based organizations with a common platform inclusive of humane aspects instead of a mere focus on mechanization and automation. Hence, the code of ethics comes into play in the algorithms and design factors of tomorrow’s AI-based Internet.
Another thing about AI, like most or all labor-saving technology, is that it will isolate people even more and destroy what little is left of the community. Also interesting is that it only seems to replace employees, not bosses or CEOs—people in power; it was designed to extend their power, it seems.
The biggest thought is that we can solve many problems with speed using AI. But the best deployment of AI will be to keep watch on the climate and warn us when we cross the natural limits, which can cause a slow degradation of the climate.
The problem is that AI is not intelligent; the problem is that it is AT (artificial thinking). Immense power without intelligence is pure horror. Or, to put it another way, intellect without heart, brain without compassion, thinking without love—how can something good come out of that? Sadly, we are all calling it AI without even realizing that it isn’t intelligent at all.
We mistake thinking for intelligence, and this has always been the greatest problem of humanity, taking one for the other. Only now will the consequences be terribly magnified, as AT (the intellect—the computer) is all the power humanity has collected and much more multiplied—without intelligence, so without love. Love is not a product of thought! Why is everybody calling this AI?