待翻译：Nobody Asked for AI

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The Big Tech companies have spent $1 trillion on capital investment since the start of the artificial-intelligence boom. Pretty much all that investment has been used to build data centers, purchase the chips that power those data centers, and construct the energy systems that fuel and cool them. That $1 trillion could have been used for anything. It could have been invested in renewables. It could have been used to develop lifesaving new drugs. It could have been used to build housing, public infrastructure, or anything else human beings need to survive and thrive. Instead, it has been channeled into constructing energy-draining, water-absorbing data centers that power large language models (LLMs) built on the theft of millions of people’s creative work, which consistently produce incorrect responses and drive many users mad in the process. It’s hard to think of a worse use of society’s shared resources. Now, you may argue that we live in free-market societies, so investment takes place according to the laws of the market. All that money and investment is flowing into AI because it is simply the most profitable use of resources. And when society maximizes profits, it maximizes efficiency — ensuring that, on aggregate, everyone is better off over the long run. There are a lot of problems with this story. First, we do not live in free-market societies. We live in capitalist societies — that is, societies dominated by capital. Capital is not distributed into lots of little businesses each producing widgets in perfect competition with one another. Capital agglomerates until it is concentrated within a few massive, monopolistic corporations, controlled by a few powerful men.