If people think the big risk of AI is fake nudes... man, I wish that was the worst that could happen.

"stuck on it" is an egregious hyperbole, they just gave it as an example.

The Aral Sea is essentially gone and it was killed by poor Soviet planning. Capitalism was not the driving factor rather ignorance was and ignorance is held equally by all sides.

Capitalism isn’t the only thing driving environmental collapse. It’s industrialization

They don't disappear if capitalism disappears. I agree with you capitalism needs to end in order to deal with them but there are hard issues that we have to deal with even with capitalism gone.

Even if the causes ceased we would still be left with residual emissions and degraded natural systems to try and deal with and a lower EROI society to do it.

I mean building out renewable energy still has a negative impact on the environment, whether it be silicon for solar panels or concrete for hydro electric dams. Not to mention all the water that gets used to cool the massive data centers or the materials needed to create the computer components used in the data center. So sure you could lessen the environmental impact by shifting to renewables but it would definitely still be there. Reducing usage will always be the best way to help the environment, there's a reason it comes first in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Great you ignored my other issues with that, but also you don't think people would collectively be using those resources? Also the water used for those ai servers isn't great.

There is nothing in socialism that requires central planning. There are specific branches that do, but market socialism would, if anything, use it less than the current system.

I think you have to pick the low hanging fruit and go from there. For instance, we are here and already have made a small, but measurable dent to Reddit traffic. Imagine if everyone came over here, Reddit would no longer be viable as a profit company. Google would collapse if we all supported Peer Tube. Of course these are not going to change the world, but I am convinced if/when decentralization gets traction, we will find ways to implement it everywhere it makes sense. It is about balance as there are benefits to centralization and I am not suggesting everyone is decentralized, but right now the scales are out of balance and we have some tools to start to rebalance. We just have to want it. Well maybe need it which seems to be coming.

Text and image generation are the ones that upset me. C-suite types (and their pettier, aspirational counterparts) don’t care about “art” - why publish a few good novels that you have to pay royalties on, when you can generate thousands? Even if they’re shit, there was zero effort on your part.

If you lack aesthetic appreciation - why would you bother hiring an artist for anything?

The wealthy of this era don’t seem to value art. Midjourney can make Kinkade knock offs faster than even Kinkade himself could. There’s not room in their world for Twombly’s and Motherwell’s - except perhaps as investment schemes.