Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
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@drahardja @GossiTheDog I'm a third-generation atheist (possibly more), and I genuinely miss mostly having to butt heads with the kind of apocalyptic cult who didn't think they'd have to build God themselves first.
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@drahardja @GossiTheDog I'm a third-generation atheist (possibly more), and I genuinely miss mostly having to butt heads with the kind of apocalyptic cult who didn't think they'd have to build God themselves first.
@drahardja @GossiTheDog (also, I sometimes find myself wondering whether modern-day tech cultists - most of whom are nominally atheist - are an example of people who haven't really been able to find comfort or make meaning in a godless world. The exact kind of nihilism that Nietzsche warned about 150 years ago.)
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog what is this, an episode of "Captain Planet"??
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog tbh I feel like everybody is pretty much in alignment that we need to choose between ai and a livable planet, people are just making their choices
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog I find it weird that Politico has an image in the article showing heat pipes from a cooling system of a datacenter. This has nothing to do with the actual topic.
And the main issue is not if we have the power to run the datacenters, but the needed emergency generators, which currently all are based on gas turbines, the most convenient solution. Imagine having a gigawatt datacenter, how many gas turbines would you need to run it in case the main power drops down?
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog considering the AI industry is a trillion dollars in debt and solar is profitable, the ethics don't even really need to be considered. Don't do things that don't make sense. Simple.
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog
They don't have an real choices any more - with nuclear power an AI they must be content to live as beasts of the field. -
Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social You'd hope tactics like this would be self-defeating, but unfortunately that "hope" is bearing rather a lot of weight I'm not sure it can support.
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@GossiTheDog
I'm still astonished that no one has kicked the AI designers back to the drawing board, to only come back when they can provide a normal, power-efficient implementation of their tools...@retrocomputing @GossiTheDog There are lots of ways to make tools that do things with much much less power, but there are no incentives whatsoever for these companies to use them. Their answer is always to throw more power at the ”problem”.
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social dipshits
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@GossiTheDog He's absolutely right though. You can either "go green" to "save the plant", sanction Russian gas, fall behind the USA, and let China win. Or you could try to catch up on computing power by increasing energy production as much as possible. You can't do both. The EU must choose. I'm sure that it will make the wrong choice, as usual.
It'd be pretty hard to fall behind the US in governance and science policy, so we needn't take any positive lessons from them. Europe is full of people, and people need a livable environment more than they need China not to "win" something left unstated.
Catch up on computing power or catch up on computing sovereignty? Not the same thing. The "more gigawatts is better computing" approach is gallons-per-mile thinking.
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@GossiTheDog He's absolutely right though. You can either "go green" to "save the plant", sanction Russian gas, fall behind the USA, and let China win. Or you could try to catch up on computing power by increasing energy production as much as possible. You can't do both. The EU must choose. I'm sure that it will make the wrong choice, as usual.
@bontchev @GossiTheDog
"ICEBERG, DEAD AHEAD!""THIS TECHNOLOGY IS INEVITABLE, FULL STEAM AHEAD!"
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog
Especially odd to even think of considering this trade off given that over the next 20 or 30 years climate change will hit Europe harder than the USA, Russia or China.
I'm sure it hasn't occurred to any of the interested parties that increasing the number of damaging weather events would hit the European economy, demoralise its people, and raise support for authoritarian governments to "sort it out, whatever it takes". -
@bontchev @GossiTheDog
"ICEBERG, DEAD AHEAD!""THIS TECHNOLOGY IS INEVITABLE, FULL STEAM AHEAD!"
@dec23k @GossiTheDog In fact, if the Titanic had hit the iceberg dead ahead, it wouldn't have sunk. But trying to steer around it caused the iceberg to shear the ship's side, flooding several waterproof compartments.
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@dec23k @GossiTheDog In fact, if the Titanic had hit the iceberg dead ahead, it wouldn't have sunk. But trying to steer around it caused the iceberg to shear the ship's side, flooding several waterproof compartments.
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog
The following applies here:https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/#eyes-on-the-prize
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@drahardja @GossiTheDog clearly you've never talked to a "longtermist" or other tech cultist.
(or you've successfully repressed that sad experience).
I've worked with one, who genuinely thought humanity should commit collective suicide after building AI, to leave our resources to the "successor intelligence".
@datarama
I will wait impatiently for his Behind The Bastards episode.Or even better, Respect The Dead (A Podcast Where They Don't).
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog "if we don't accelerate global warming then China will build bigger server farms than us," wow, that's a really convincing case. obviously I'm being sardonic here but the wretched thing is, European (and American) politicians respond reliably to Sinophobia
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@GossiTheDog He's absolutely right though. You can either "go green" to "save the plant", sanction Russian gas, fall behind the USA, and let China win. Or you could try to catch up on computing power by increasing energy production as much as possible. You can't do both. The EU must choose. I'm sure that it will make the wrong choice, as usual.
@bontchev
I've got a surprise answer for that sinophobic trope: China has already won, being the world's factory. As in real, material things.The “West” looking for a new grift has found “AI”. A ineffective, anti-intelectual, technology, that cannot generate a cent of ROI, except for the shovel seller, which needs to finance it's clients.
(And even then China, with bans on chips, has developed a less resource-wasting model.)
So are you a TEACREAL cultist?
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Truly evil lobbying example https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-choose-ai-climate-goals-data-center-chief-warns/
@GossiTheDog
It could be worse, they could power it from the Polish power grid \s(~75% coal and oil + 20% gas power mix)
