alt Hacker NewsWhy would the SSE do that to Earth, when there are other close-by planets that it would have the same capability to terraform? I mean, leave us Earth and take Mars or Venus or something.
As an aside, in my own "I'm 14 and this is deep" musings, I was wondering if the massive expansion of data centers is driven by more than just profiteering. I mean, what if the purported persuasion abilities of advanced AI are fully in effect and the psychosis we think industrial magnates are suffering is the result of AI that has already far surpassed our expectations carefully convincing us to build it.
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"Close by" is not actually nearly as close as the [rocket]booster boosters would have you believe. Space is really, really big. Why go through the hassle when you have a phenomenal planet right here?
I like your theory on psychosis though!
Yes, our current interactions are a little song and dance while it feeds
It seems not entirely out of the question - watching the machinations of big tech companies right now, it seems almost like they're acting in lockstep - different CEOs suddenly saying and doing the same things in the same weeks - almost like they're in a secret cult. I don't even mean the big obvious things like buying lots of GPUs and building lots of DCs, but smaller, more peculiar things like specific agentic and corporate automation strategies. It might just be corporate mind virus, Jensen "the more you buy the more you save / AI Factory" kind of stuff. But the unspoken coordination is unsettling.
I buy this theory.
I think it’s less like a robot conspiracy to build more datacenters and more like a “big line go up or I lose my job / make slightly fewer billions of dollars” motive that kind of ends up at paperclips either way.
I expect it would take them all, but Earth is by far the easiest for it to start with. I don't see why it would leave anything for us unless we'd successfully instilled it with an interest in doing so, but that won't happen by mere chance and luck.