AI is making you poorer, whether you realise it or not. I've gone over the ethical problems with AI-generated visual art, which now of course that has also extended to AI-generated videos and AI-generated music. All of which are taking the hard work of original content creators and essentially running it through a blender to match a text prompt. Approximately 50000 AI-generated songs are now uploaded to Spotify every day, and unlike more ethical sites like Bandcamp, Spotify does not care (they also invest in military arms companies, so that fits). Ignoring the fact that AI-generated content is both making human-generated content less-visible by sheer volume, and the fact that many artists will no longer be able to work since it's easier for a company to just generate a photo, video or song, there are more insidious ways in which AI is robbing us.
The first is tech sales. AI companies have been buying up as much RAM (temporary memory) and solid state drives (permanent storage) as they can to expand their neural network's speed and capabilities. The ongoing effect of this is that both RAM and drive prices have doubled in the past 6 months. This will also affect laptop and desktop computer pricing. Like everyone else in the world who isn't working on AI, I hope the AI bubble pops sooner rather than later. And when it does, prices will likely come back down to normal. Trends are that consumers avoid AI products and preference products without AI over those with it. However this hasn't stopped the big contenders (Microsoft, Google and Adobe) from trying to shove AI down everybody's throats as much as they can - gotta get that return on investment somehow, right?
The second is electricity. AI generative tools consume vast amounts of electricity for relatively simple tasks so, much like cryptocurrency, it is set to become the next large carbon emitter. This also means you pay more for electricity. Why? Well the electricity companies have to supply the power, and they have to build new power stations to supply it in some cases, but regardless, it's all supply and demand. When demand is high, they can afford to charge more for the supply. In an ideal world this would not happen, and AI companies would pay a premium for using so much more power than the rest of us. But that is, unfortunately, not the way things currently work. Expect to see higher electricity prices globally over the next few years until the bubble bursts, but even then it won't entirely return to normal.
It's a shame that the tech bros of the world want to drown us in unasked-for rubbish. It's a shame that we have to put up with it, and have settled on supporting monopolies out of convenience. All I can suggest is, where there's a will, there's a way, and there's plenty of alternatives to the main players in the software field, as described in previous articles. Get out there and look for better options. BTW, don't know if you noticed, but this is my 100th article since I started writing them. Yay me!
- written entirely by Matt Bentley