The Joe Heller cartoon of Sept. 18 (Opinion page) portrays an AI robot angered by dire warnings of disaster followed by a robotic smile when congress smiles regulation. Apparently the robot recalls how the same warnings were used to scare people with nuclear annihilation then saved by treaties.
This AI robot could not exist without being fed the food from data centers. Robots and data centers seem to have a brain/body connection.
The Guest View (“How CA can do data centers differently and win back trust”) continues the conversation because two out of every three Americans oppose data centers. The writer of this piece, on the same Opinion page, thinks when secrecy is eliminated and renewable fuel powers the centers, people’s minds would change.
Nothing is mentioned concerning the huge cost of data centers.
Tech billionaires currently pay that cost with borrowed money by building over 800 data centers in the country. Economists tell us that we are in an AI bubble fed by data centers. Data centers gobble money and produce no profit. Another way of conceiving this dual relationship might be as two sides of the same coin.
AI, artificial intelligence creation, takes an infinite amount of programming on an infinite amount of integrated circuits on infinite amounts of silicon chips by infinitely talented programmers anchored by infinite financing. Apparently tech billionaires want government subsidies to ease burdensome financing.
Somewhere in the human database exists an example of benefit for humanity over profit when Dr. Jonas Salk invents the polio vaccine, saves millions of lives and refuses profit.
Could be the reason for scaring the public is the promoted need to avoid catastrophe. Anthropic has already sold the most advanced chip to China with government cooperation proving that profit motive reigns supreme.
However other humans like Jonas Salk exist. AI needs to find them and allow humanity to blossom and grow.
Mary Zanger
Hollister
Who Watches the Watchers?
AI is giving governments powerful new ways to monitor citizens, by analyzing behavior, tracking patterns, and processing enormous amounts of personal data.
America has long relied on FOIA, journalists, inspectors general, and public records to expose corruption and misconduct. AI could make those efforts dramatically more powerful by allowing citizens to analyze government spending, contracts, lobbying, and decisions at unprecedented speed.
The concern is that regulations designed to control AI could unintentionally restrict those very tools of accountability.
If AI can be used to watch us, Americans should also have the right to use AI to watch those who govern us.
Transparency cannot become a one-way street.