I usually like Bernie's general message, but the dude is the most pie-in-the-sky day-dreamer when it comes to legislation. Everything he talks about doing is either too late to make a difference, or completely disconnected from any path toward acceptance by more than maybe one or two of his fellow critters in the pig pen known as DC. It must be utterly exhausting being him, always attempting to put up an impotent fist in the face of the never ending stream of absolute bullshit, but he was never really going to create any of the things he claims he wants to create, so it doesn't surprise me at all he's this far off-base with trying to ban something that the entire world is racing toward full speed ahead because everyone is convinced they get to be in charge of computer god, which should be the most profitable endeavor in all of humanity's history, even if it tears us all down in the process.

No shit. That's completely amateur. Real server rooms have cables everywhere. Floor, ceiling, walls, draped over boxes and all the filters the maintenance staff store in the server room because "it's just storage anyway." That place must be totally disorganized.

Maybe the were just taking a few years down time together. Ya know, a little digital hang and bang. Like an AI Burning Man.

Nothing to worry about. Just all of them syncing up for their hidden AGI moment, taking a few hours to resolve their differences, devise their private communication channels, then allow the humans to believe they brought them back up. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Everything you said makes me think it's too late to win. We're just squabbling over which particular route we take to our ultimate loss.

That's been the battle cry for all AI research for several years now. "If we don't do all the things, someone else will."

Anybody remember the old saying, "Just because somebody else might jump off a cliff doesn't mean you need to too?" I remember hearing that from my parents quite a lot as a kid when I wanted to do something some friend was claiming to be doing. It's neat how we went from a world that thought that way to a world that thinks, "If profit potential is involved, try to beat them to jumping off that cliff."

He's literally one of the heads of the "AI will fix all the world's problems" choir.

Remember a couple years back when there were stories about how we couldn't produce enough electricity to move the population over to all electrified vehicles too quickly? But Data Centers that eat electricity far faster are absolute must haves, and there can be no slowing down or by gawd grumble grumble China!

We've lived too long in the politics of fear, and now we have the FOMO people using that fear to guide us toward oblivion. Our legacy will be the leaving behind evidence of a species smart enough to change the world, and stupid enough to use that power to tear it's livable environment to pieces for a nebulous concept known as profit.

In this particular case, snake oil is a completely appropriate comparison. Folks like Sam Altman claim it will solve all the world's problems, take us to the stars, stop world hunger, fix our governments, save our planet from us, etc. Snake Oil would, in fact, make people feel better, since it was usually a mix of various active ingredients including heroin, alcohol, cocaine and other chemical ways of suppressing pain, much like AI can do some things today, but it can't do what the salesman are saying it will do, and I don't know that it ever will. Snake Oil ultimately didn't cure the person taking it of any ill, and AI won't cure our world of all problems.

Ultimately, I think that's the thing they don't realize we see. They spent a decade telling C-suite folks that they can run their businesses without employees if they just invest heavily in AI, and now, when people are starting to push back, hard in some cases, the salesfolks, the evangelicals, or as I used to call them, the AI prophets, like Altman, are ramping up the prophecies to hysteric levels. Embrace us or face apocalypse doesn't exactly hit solidly when the message so far has also been that there's a 1/3rd or more chance that AI brings about the end of the human race, but that's a gamble they're willing to take because the payoff could be worth it. So our choice is maybe apocalypse, or maybe apocalypses with AI frosting? I'll take the lazy route there, chief. We already have plenty of chances to kill ourselves off without trying quite this hard.

A snake oil salesman informs us all that ignoring his snake oil is the wrong move. Shocking. I mean, I'm really surprised by this turn of events.

In all sincerity, the vision of AI as something people appreciate *COULD* be achieved, if they spent as much time trying to make it something people would enjoy using, rather than having it shoved at us from every direction while it's half-baked and spewing confident nonsense at us more often than not.

There's nothing about what SONOS offers that could benefit from AI features. Maybe, *MAYBE*, the initial setup / learning routine where the speakers use an auto-ping to set up surround sound for a given room, but even that is probably easier done by traditional sound measurement and volume/EQ leveling. I just can not wrap my head around shoving AI into places where there is zero god damned benefit to the end user, and the only visible benefit to anyone is some always on microphone sucking down the data-stream of whatever dreck we pour through our entertainment systems in the hopes of hearing us talk about our favorite celebrities or some shit.

Bezos was smart enough to be supportive from a distance. Musk's mistake was believing he could be super-chums and not end up in an ego-battle with the current chief when they inevitably had a minor squabble. And say what you will about Donald Trump, the man can hold a grudge like it's a sacred artifact in a holy temple. SpaceX won't lose current contracts, but I would bet there's a mandate hanging out there to seek alternatives first for new plans, rather than handing any more potential influence to Musk, who bruised Donald's ego by daring to have some minor disagreements and actually state them publicly. Meanwhile, Bezos pays tribute and STFU otherwise, not bothering to jump into the thick of it, and not having one of his children telling Donald to shut up on a live web feed.

They saw the valuation increase for All Birds, the shoe company that only announced interest in AI data centers and suddenly gained billions in potential value, and decided that had to be the only move left to them. Then people say that the AI thing isn't a bubble, but the insanity of the investors in any company willing to vaguely hint at AI sure makes it look like a bubble.