AI vs. Humans as Processors in an Environment

[jack action]

@BillTre , you keep putting skeptical reactions to my comments. Regarding the point I want to make:

All I want to make clear is that AI systems don't have needs to be fulfilled. They don't work for their own survival.

Do you think AI systems have needs to be fulfilled and that they work for their own survival?

It's already doing much of what you hope it will never do.

They do what humans want them to do. If they do something humans don't want them to do, it is considered a bug, and they are shut off. To see otherwise shows a remarkable abundance of imagination.

 

[BillTre]

@BillTre , you keep putting skeptical reactions to my comments. Regarding the point I want to make:

You are equating not having competition with a lot of things that are irrelevant to whether competition exists or not. This weird redefining makes me skeptical of your arguments.

You also claim that AIs don't have needs for some reason while they obviously require certain things to function. This does not inspire confidence.

 

[Swamp Thing]

I learned from past experience, something new on the horizon small companies jump in to sell add-ons or consulting.

That reminds me of the sad tale of someone who built a career and a small enterprise, based on his deep knowledge of "Terminate and Stay Resident" ( TSR) programs for MS-DOS. You can imagine what happened when Windows 3.1 was released.

 

[jedishrfu]

Yes MS destroyed many promising companies in their rise to dominance.

Zip tools when MS introduced a compressed filesystem. I don't think users responded well to this new os since disk failures become unrecoverable for text files that looked encrypted.

OS/2 when MS repackaged the code to sell Windows NT. IBM made sure MS didn't get access to the networking part of OS/2 and also sold separately as a product. When Windows NT would have a system fault the error would say OS/2 error.

Lattice C initially resold by MS until they expanded their compiler portfolio with multiple languages including C. Lattice faded away a few years later.

 

[jack action]

OK, let's go over the OP:

Humans and AI systems have the possibility to be competing systems in an environment of limited resources. Where the use of both people (as communities) and large energy and water consuming sites in the same areas (areas supplied by some economically available source), competition will ensue.

I don't get where the competition is. Do you really think that if there is a server farm somewhere that uses water for cooling (or any other industry using water for that matter, for any manufacturing reason), and that the local population has trouble finding water for themselves, that humans - including the officials and even the owners of the business - will end up rooting for the machines and accept that people have trouble finding water? Maybe with a small population under the control of a larger outside group (that would be humans competing with other humans), but never as a whole, within a society. People will burn the plant before that happens.

The only competing needs are both for humans: the need for water and the need for AI systems. If their AI systems require water, then it is not a competition; at best, it is resource management.

And this is where it is important to see that there are humans behind the AI systems. Not only do they need water, but they also run the AI systems. How could anyone possibly think that humans would deprive themselves of water to run their machines? That makes no sense.

Here, I am thinking of humans as a form of computational mechanism. They are in competition with individual AIs as computational processes.

AIs may have more of some computational ability, than the average human.

You seem to reduce humans to simple, inefficient machines. Is computing really the end goal of human survival? Are you saying that humans would somehow sacrifice themselves to ensure AI systems survive because computing is so important?

It is not clear to me how one might determine if some change would be considered as good or bad.

People not having access to a water source is definitely bad. Not having access to enough energy to heat their homes or cook their food is also bad.

 

[jedishrfu]

!!! SECOND PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT !!!

We aren't here to debate issues of competition for resources between humans and AI. It's real, but it is more about the conflict between consumers vs. big business, a dynamic exacerbated by the rise of huge data centers for AI products.

Let's have a lighter discussion and identify the pain points brought on by the advent of AI, data centers, and the mega corporations who build them.

---

From my experience living in Texas:

Data centers require vast amounts of electricity and water to run their server farms. They may generate increased heat or pollution depending on the type of resource. In Texas and elsewhere, data center electrical bills are sure to raise homeowners' electric bills.

Why? Because of the tiered structure of the electrical grid, with free but intermittent resources of wind and solar, then the almost free nuclear and hydro, then not-free resources of natural gas, older gas plants, peaker turbines, and emergency generation.

To mitigate day-to-day rate increases, electric grid planners add capacity, which means building more plants for the future. Consumers pay in either case.

Homeowners concerned about their electric bills will make the hard decision about whether to add solar panels to their homes and get a payback of a few days per month.

In Texas, it was particularly bad because peak usage led to rolling blackouts, or businesses agreed to voluntarily reduce electricity consumption.

The same goes for water: in Texas, we pay for it, and the more we use, the more we pay. Baked into those rates are the total demand and demand for sewer services. Sometimes, water districts sell water to other districts because of need.

The effect on consumers is tiered pricing and the water-monitoring notion of measuring usage in the winter months, assuming that usage primarily goes into the sewer, whereas irrigation and other activities go into the ground.

---

Bottom line, consumers pay higher water and electric bills, and they pay for AI subscriptions.

 

[jack action]

In Texas and elsewhere, data center electrical bills are sure to raise homeowners' electric bills.

The AI users should pay for the resources they use, but are you saying that you expect all consumers to pay more in the future for electricity, even if they don't use AI (directly or indirectly)?

The same goes for water: in Texas, we pay for it, and the more we use, the more we pay.

But what happens if there is a water shortage? Will data centers be seen as just another customer, or will drinking water be prioritized?

 

[BillTre]

You seem to reduce humans to simple, inefficient machines. Is computing really the end goal of human survival?

Are you having trouble with abstracting an aspect of human behavior, or are you just trying to force a point?

People not having access to a water source is definitely bad. Not having access to enough energy to heat their homes or cook their food is also bad.

The question is the OP was about a more nuanced situation concerning the balance between the effects of different factors that could have good or bad effects. How to decide the goodness or badness is the issue I raised. Sorry, its not simple Are you only focusing on good vs. bad?

 

[jack action]

The question is the OP was about a more nuanced situation concerning the balance between the effects of different factors that could have good or bad effects.

Could you define those factors and effects you are thinking of instead of letting us guess?

How to decide the goodness or badness is the issue I raised.

Are you only focusing on good vs. bad?

These seem to be saying pretty much the same thing. Define what you consider goodness and badness.

Going back to the OP, in the following statements, define what you are referring to with problems and change:

One effect is that some communities have been afflicted with water and cost of power problems.

It is not clear to me how one might determine if some change would be considered as good or bad.

In the OP you begin with:

Humans and AI systems have the possibility to be competing systems in an environment of limited resources.

and end with:

Economic progress always has an impact on individual's economics (like the buggy whip manufacturers).

Discussing about limited resources and economics are not the same things. The former implies that priorities will have to be made (if drinking water is rare, you don't wash your clothes with it) and the latter implies that every choice is possible, they just don't have the same value (there is nothing wrong with manufacturing buggy whips today, the demand is just not what it used to be).