315
modern fascism
(quokk.au)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
315 points (100.0% liked)
People Mastodon
359 readers
229 users here now
People tooting stuff. We allow toots from anyone and are platform agnostic (Mastodon, BlueSky, Twitter, Tumblr, FaceBook, Whatever)
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
Man i hate that automation is getting lumped in with AI these days. Fuck "AI" and all its clammy grifters.
Automation is things like your dishwasher, or basically every bit of manufacturing these days. You can hate aspects of it for sure, but unlike AI it's very clear to see automation is a thing that exists.
Yup, in a theoretical, say, socialist utopia where nobody has to work, most of the work would need to be automated. Anything where people need to work less demands automation to replace what currently needs to be done by humans. Automation does cause problems, both temporary ones by taking people's jobs, and more long-term ones when replacing the jobs people want to do, but it seems like an inevitable and necessary step into the future.
Yup, but a lot of those problems are problems with capitalism not the actual automation. Like it should take work away from us, but that shouldn't mean we suffer
I do suspect suffering might be unavoidable in a transition period, it feels inevitable that as less work is necessary society will take time to adapt to the situation. It's not that it's impossible to adapt in time as the situation changes, but it seems implausible to actually implement that, and I feel like we should be accounting for it when discussing implementing automation.
In that context, I feel that automation and innovation are inevitable, and fighting them feels foolish (like by forcing coal mines and coal power plants to continue running), and we need to focus on improving peoples' lives if they're negatively affected.
I will also note that I'm negative towards GenAI, considering it unethical and (relatively) impractical. Though I'm also biased since my profession is affected :P
Yup, fighting that feels like fighting clean power or digitalization or a number of other advancements. But a lot of those weren't well adapted to by many societies (US especially), and automation (which has been around for many decades now) has been pretty well adopted and poor adapted. Tech moving much faster than society
I mean, even AI isnt as bad as people make it out to be, people have GROSSLY overexaggerated the consumption of it to fit their narratives
If you crunch the numbers, a few hours of using even the most hungry of LLMs uses less water than washing your hands once >_>;
People don't wanna hear it though because it doesnt fit their "AI bad" narrative
Millennials need to take a very long look in the mirror and realize this is their "phones bad" boomer moment and take the initiative to grow up. Its cringe and most of their gripes arent backed by reality.
Do LLM datacenters eat up power? Are they bad for the environment? Do they use a lot of water?
Yes... but they arent even in the top 10 of worst offenders that have been around for way longer and per-capita fuck shit up way worse
My fellow Millennials are only hating on AI cuz they are scared of it, or deeply deeply misinformed.
Id honestly be really curious to see a pool on how much water people think 1 convo with an LLM actually takes, Id bet the answers are so incredibly far off.
(The reality is its only a couple mL of water or so, depending on the model, if you wanna know)
How about the water usage of energy for data centers? Or for that each query there's tons of pre and post training usage?
How about the fact that it's just a grift that doesn't do much and even environment aside it funnels wealth to the richest people?
Hank green has a nice little video of it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
Yes, I included that.
The usage is incredibly low "per capita"
If you think AI is special, its not. This same problem is present when you watch Netflix or order from Amazon.
People have a very warped idea of how much power/water AI uses.
You should go look up how huge the datacenters that power everything else are too.
But again, like Netflix provides something now (albeit not my favorite thing). I am not convinced LLMs provide a damn thing of value.
I think AI is special for being a waste and very negative socially without providing any positive back.
I work as a software developer and the sheer increase to my productivity makes it extremely valuable for me on numerous fronts.
Id estimate Im about 4x as productive, give or take.
And most of that productivity isnt coding, most of it is what LLMs are good at:
Its really good at fuzzy searching huge datasets, finding needles in haystacks. When Im trying to find something specific in a codebase with thousands of files quickly.
While I agree most people are using it wrong or poorly, if you do know how to use an LLM, it becomes a huge productivity boost.