Statement on AI

On LLM-assisted writing

LLMs generate stastically likely sequences of words. But a statistically likely sequence of words is one that a well-informed and fluent reader could almost have worked out for themselves. To present the reader with such an artifact is to give them something they almost already possess.

What I treasure when I read, and what I aim for in my own writing, is the unlikely series of words: I want every sentence to be surprising, at least a little bit.

My current position on the criticisms of AI

This deserves more consideration than I honestly have time to write down right now, and I’m not sure anybody will pay any attention to this — I fully expect that

Water usage: Datacenters’ global impact on human water usage is overblown (compare, for example, datacenters with almond farms or golf courses). However, there are legitimate local concerns about water usage and the impact on human access to water. I applaud when local communities push back on the construction of data centers that would adversely impact vulnerable communities’ access to water. Plausibly new datacenter buildouts in arid regions should be forced to consume net zero water. Show me the bill or political lever which can plausibly force this to happen, and I will support it.

Energy and climat: Datacenters are just another energy consumer. As a civilization, we obviously have the capacity to provide enough energy to support realistic projections of datacenter buildout. The main problem is political: the United States is a petrostate, at least in the sense that our current leadership class has been captured by the fossil fuel industry, and therefore our energy mix burns too much coal and oil. Notably, this is mostly a local problem: China’s datacenter buildout will eventually be powered by solar and batteries. But all other energy usage in the US suffers from the same problem. I do not believe the political solution is to single out datacenter energy usage; the solution is to somehow decouple the US from fossil fuels generally. Blaming data centers for carbon emissions constitutes an extremely convenient distraction from the point of view of the fossil fuel industry. And, again, show me the political program for accelerating decarbonization in the US, and I will support it.

Cognitive hazards: These are obviously real. Thoughtful technologists should be pushing back, wherever possible, against deployments of AI that cause cognitive hazards.