Another gold rush is underway. Recast as the AI tech boom. Yet, AI is power hungry, a voracious beast consuming vast amounts of electricity. And water. And those gas-fired power plants … Generative AI data centers are expensive to build, expensive to operate, and tax the electric grid and our limited water resources (like the… Continue reading The darkside of AI – outages and shortages
Rabbit holes of misinfo – keeping critical thinking in play
Who likes being fooled by a con? Scams are one thing, and there’re tips to avoid those, whether via USPS (paper) mail, phone, email, text, etc. Whether obvious or not, the business model typically is about money – monetizing your personal data, either directly or indirectly. But what’s the business model for misinfo, disinfo, and… Continue reading Rabbit holes of misinfo – keeping critical thinking in play
Generative AI sans horse sense – unreliable narrators by design?
I like the way that I can do a Google search using a photo – drag & drop it into a search box – to identify its content. I like the way I can extract text from a photo (providing the photo has sufficient resolution on that content). And Amazon uses AI to summarize the gist… Continue reading Generative AI sans horse sense – unreliable narrators by design?
Spending for AI’s pot of gold – powering profit?
High hype … trippy chips … gooey guardrails … pending legislation … the electric grid … pay, pay, pay, payday … cloudy cloud forecasts … • Washington Post > “Big Tech keeps spending billions on AI. There’s no end in sight.” by Gerrit De Vynck and Naomi Nix (April 25, 2024) – Much of the… Continue reading Spending for AI’s pot of gold – powering profit?
‘Nutrition’ labels for Internet services – better transparency?
Consumer transparency Examples: promo rates, monthly cost bumps after first year, extra charges for exceeding monthly data quota, “typical” Internet speed caveats. This is something that’s always bothered me about high-speed Internet (broadband) service providers. All those promo solicitations in the USPS mail and online – rates which only are for new customers and for… Continue reading ‘Nutrition’ labels for Internet services – better transparency?