Strong Correlation Between the Slop Ponzi Scheme (or Bubble) and Major Disasters
BitCoin ruins the planet; so does slop
Last month: 'Crypto' 'Currencies' Are a Ponzi Scheme. So Is "AI". Both Destroy the Planet, Not Just the Economy.
Slop (which many call "AI" but we won't) is a big problem. Setting aside the propaganda or falsehoods (or fakes/deepfakes) that it generates and disseminates, there are considerable energy requirements, which are associated with both input and output (e.g. training text and prompting in the case of chatbots or LLMs, which lack intelligence, they spew out words). "Nuclear power plant restart botched," a reader from Japan told us. Why nuclear? Why in Japan? No lessons learned 1.5 decades ago?
"Tokyo Electric Power Company's attempt to turn on its first nuclear reactor since the multiple meltdowns of March 2011 failed after a few hours," we got told.
There are news links about it: Japan suspends world's largest nuclear plant hours after restart (BillBC); Alarm halts Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant restart (The Asahi Shimbun)
"The Kashiwazaki Kariwa power station has seen many incidents," we learned, "including a significant fire following a strong earthquake in 2007."
"Fire at Japan nuclear plant" happened in 5 Mar 2009 (2 years before Fukushima Daiichi crisis). To quote: "It is the eighth fire to occur since the nuclear plant, the world's largest, was closed after being damaged by an earthquake in July 2007."
So why pursue what we already know to be so unsafe or so risky (things go horribly wrong for a very long time when accidents or natural disasters happen)? Slop. That is their excuse anyway.
"Is there a software issue at stake here?" I asked.
"Many Japanese feel uneasy about industry efforts to restart nuclear power plants and even build more reactors. The government supports expansion of nuclear power usage," I was told. "One reason heard often recently for restarting idled nuclear reactors is that "AI" data centers consume great amounts of electricity and nuclear power is necessary to fulfill the demand."
So put slop in the bin and start prioritising energy usage based on what is actually useful to society. BitCoin, which had allegedly been created by someone in Japan, was binned by that same someone. It was a failed experiment that he knew would not work in practice, only waste a lot of power because it does not scale.
We know who stands to gain from a giant waste of energy; the same as those who sponsor the slop bubble. █
Image source: Japanese Wall Map of Japan