The End of AI

Let’s leave aside the unreliability of the current LLMs that are often called “AI.” Leave aside the carelessness with which the label “AI” is attached to many things. Leave aside the expectation that AI will put millions out of work. The damage done by AI pictures and videos. The mass plagiarism and the exploitation of workers.

Let’s leave aside that AI has killed people, given others bad medical advice, and exacerbated mental illness. Leave aside that its promoters hang onto weird apocalypticism and want us to love them, or else!

Here’s what will kill AI. The multitude of enormous data centers necessary to the project are being rejected by more communities. They are dirty and noisy. They employ few people. They drive up the price of electrical power.

The tech bros’ solution to the power problem of data centers is to push for new, experimental nuclear fission and even fusion reactors. Those reactors will have to be proved over several years. Many will fail. Others will be rejected along with the data centers.

The processors necessary are another resource constraint, as is the financing scheme, which is circular at best, fraudulent at worst. Some enormous percentage of world finances would be needed for this enterprise.

It’s not going to happen. The only questions are how much wasted money it will take to convince investors and whether the AI crash will spread to the rest of us.