Escaping the Singularity: Why Artificial Intelligence Will Not Save the
Planet
The National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act became law on the first
day of 2021, opening a backdoor to Americas largest corporations to shield
their commercial interests behind the full might of the US government.
by Raul Diego
January 14th, 2021
Mint Press News
By Raul Diego
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Artificial intelligence has been touted as the next frontier in
technological innovation by the worlds brightest minds and celebrity CEOs
like Elon Musk, who predict a hyper-connected future where big data, smart
infrastructure, and biology all fuse into what futurist Ray Kurzweil and
others call the technological singularity.
In his 1999 breakout best-seller titled The Age of Spiritual Machines,
Kurzweil takes the concept first developed by mathematician Vernor Vinge
about the merger of technology and human intelligence to an absurd
conclusion based on a superficial understanding of mankinds spiritual
nature, in which machines achieve consciousness and co-exist side by side
with living organisms in a bleak universe bereft of any connection to
natural reality.
As we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, the ideas
Kurzweil brought into the mainstream are being aggressively pursued by Big
Tech outfits like Google, which currently employs the author as a director
of engineering, and have been enthusiastically embraced by important sectors
of the global economy.
Reflecting this trend, the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act
(NAIIA) became law on the first day of 2021, officially bringing the full
power of the U.S. government to bear through the National Science Foundation
(NSF), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the
Department of Energy, whose already considerable spending on AI research and
development has now been codified into law.
US and China Give Very Different Answers on Who AI Will Serve
China and the US, through Google, Amazon, and Facebook, are taking two very
different paths in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development.
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The passage of the bill follows a pattern begun in the Reagan years, when
the Republican icon signed National Security Decision Directive NSDD 145
making intellectual property a matter of national security, effectively
opening a backdoor to Americas largest corporations like IBM and Pfizer to
shield their commercial interests behind the full might of the U.S. federal
government.
The NAIIA is a continuation of the undeniable symbiosis between government
and corporate America, who are together leading us into Kurzweils AI
dystopia, cloaked behind pseudo-environmental marketing devices like the
green economy or sustainable development on the commercial end and tired
concepts of technological primacy vis-à-vis China on the geopolitical end.
But, scientists and researchers are finding out the true cost AI will have
on the planet, belying the claims made by the captains of industry and
owners of capital who are moving full steam ahead in their campaign to
implement an AI-driven socio-economic paradigm, which is at once designed to
rid them of troublesome and expensive human labor while, at the same time,
rescuing a mortally wounded capitalist system.
Shocking realizations
A recent study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
revealed that the energy required to train a number of AI models would far
exceed those of current technology, and carbon emissions from such a massive
energy consumption would dwarf those of what we now consider modern
lifestyles.
Among their findings, the researchers calculated that at the pace AI is
being trained across industries, CO2 emissions from this activity would
equal five times the lifetime emissions of an average car or 626,000 pounds
of carbon dioxide.
Microsoft datacenter
An aerial view of construction site for a new Microsoft datacenter in
Middenmeer, Holland. Photo | Shutterstock
Experts are warning that the risks to the environment as a result of AI and
related emergent technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and
machine learning systems, are simply not worth it. Roy Schwartz of the Allen
Institute for Artificial Intelligence characterized the conclusions of the
as shocking and stated that the larger you make these models, the more
energy they consume, cautioning that if we continue on this trajectory, we
will see a much more significant negative impact on the environment.
Schwartz stresses that such massive energy consumption doesnt stop at the
stage of AI training and that it is practically impossible to quantify how
much energy will be consumed across the world by AI models running in
different countries and urged better use of data to substantially reduce
energy consumption.
Behind the curtain
Brilliantly covered for years by independent journalist Cory Morningstar and
others, the ruse undertaken by the worlds most powerful corporations and
their interlocking interests through international organisms like the World
Economic Forum, is becoming increasingly clear.
Despite making public pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% in
ten years and similar, largely meaningless promises, companies like Amazon
and Microsoft continue to make enormous investments in AI and so-called
renewable energy infrastructure like wind and solar, which, along with the
manufacturing of their consumer products, require as much or more mineral
extraction and exploitation of labor in Global South nations than
twentieth-century fossil fuel-based methods.
Tech Companies Seeking New Markets Beyond Reach of US Antitrust Laws
Tech companies are snatching up rivals so fast that they've now set their
sights on new markets outside the reach of US antitrust laws.
MintPress News | Raul Diego | Jun 22, 2020
The explosive growth of the technology sector and all of its gadgets in
tandem with the illusion of achieving a technological singularity through a
digitally interconnected planet only pushes us further into ecological
catastrophe. A true renewable energy paradigm and reduction in CO2 emissions
cannot come through an economic paradigm predicated on consumption and
waste. It requires a culture of conservation and localized subsistence,
which the proponents of the singularity have no intention of abiding.
