Mordikan

It has gotten to the point where devs are just being asked to disprove a negative, though.

“Ok, well you didn’t use AI in what you showed but you used it somewhere else.” Short of devs wearing body cams to try and prove literally every step in every process, people are going to have to have some faith that developers aren’t using it.

There is a game that is upcoming that I was interested in that clearly used generative AI in a gameplay trailer. I should say I’m not pro/anti generative AI. I’m right down the middle, I see the issues and the potential, so the presence of AI itself for me isn’t a deal killer (Crimson Desert for example).

But, the issue is that this game falsely represented what is going to be in the game. The lighting isn’t planned to be that good. The model rigging isn’t meant to be that fluid. Etc, etc. The problem is a matter of dishonesty.

If a developer uses generative AI for test assets and placeholders, I don’t see that as an issue (especially if they admit to and own that fact). If they use that material for trailers to showcase their work when that will not be part of the work, then that is a different story as that introduces that dishonesty.

You can but the effectiveness is debatable. A good question might be how are you seeing that Google still knows it’s you? They more than likely are, but how are you determining that?

From an adtech perspective, switching to different distros is not going to make any difference. Google does fingerprint activity that is not tied to user accounts and can easily associate you. If not to specific user, then to household, if not to household, then to family group, etc. That doesn’t make it less private though, just not anonymous (which isn’t really a thing on the Internet anyhow).

Your only real option is to just not use Google. There isn’t any magic bullet to use their services without providing them details they can then ID you with.

As someone with adtech engineering experience, oh we know what you are doing in there! We aren’t looking at you, but we know! lol

I’m curious though, what would I have to be doing for you to believe that I’m… I dont know, “allowed”? to talk about AI’s water usage impact?

I would say you are starting to approach an opposing view as treating yours as “wrong thought” when confronted. That is an absolutest method that is only ever used to justify what you think is right and vilify all else. It isn’t a matter of what is “allowed”. There is no restriction to that. But if you put out an idea or belief that can be deconstructed and proven incorrect/incomplete, then people have the right to speak against it.

There are lots of points you can make that are completely valid and evidentiary by nature, but AI water usage isn’t one of them. It has been debunked to point that I would bucket it into the same group that “vaccines cause autism” fit into.

EDIT: Actually I wanted to point out something about the trending mention. You say you don’t try to sway opinion on the meat industry but you do for AI because you get more traction. That’s called audience alignment and is part of shared identity signaling (used algorithmically to define what is currently trending).

AI datacenters do not cause drought. There is no evidence to support that claim. And if you think you do have evidence, I would love to see the source.

And you totally can contain multitudes. People should be like that. But they in practice aren’t. They follow what is trending. For example, if you look through your comment history how many comments will be pertaining to the US meat industry? How many to datacenters?

I would argue that you care a great deal more about one than the other. Which, going back to my original point, why is that 1% more important than the remaining 99% (or specifically the 50% that you care so much about)?

“they’re doing bad so I can too”

I don’t think you understand that the “so I can” part implies you. By virtue of even posting, YOU are pushing datacenter demand. These comments don’t just live in the ether. The whole point is you are cherry picking what you are upset about based on what is trending (as you even mentioned). The point being you are MORE upset about the lesser evil, not that one is justified evil and the other isn’t.

If you enjoy the Two Wrongs Make Right fallacy, then I think you’ll love the Special Pleading fallacy.

I would say their writing is also absolute shite. The whole concept of a “dragon break” in Elder Scrolls is just a mechanism to retcon their own stories because they’ve been making them so long that it’s too much work to make them consistent and avoid stepping all over previous storylines.

I find the environmental argument is always a weak one to make, though. CO2 emissions for non-AI datacenters peaks currently around 210 million tons, with AI datacenters peaking currently around 100 million tons.

So why is more pollution from subject A acceptable, but less from subject B isn’t? I’ve seen people say because A gives “something of worth”, but then that just undermines the whole point of being harmful to the environment. Destruction of the environment is kinda an absolute in that instance, the source shouldn’t be the deciding factor in whether or not we accept it.

The same for the water usage thing (which was debunked). AI datacenters use 68 billions gallons annually (at least by 2028 projected). People are upset about that, but not about the 26 trillion gallons that US agriculture uses. All because “something of worth”, but if it’s that big of a deal why are people focusing on less than 1% of the total consumption? How is that 1% needing protected but the remaining 99% totally disposable?