And you think the fact that carbon dioxide has steadily increased over the past 150 years or as we pump a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is a coincidence? You honestly believe that there is zero connection between pumping gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and there being gigatons more carbon dioxide in the air than pre-industrial times? Completely unrelated events?

Eh? This is incorrect. Perhaps most fictional murders are premeditated, because that makes for a more interesting mystery to solve, but in real life, the vast majority murders are impulsive, spontaneous acts that happen during arguments, fights, or emotional outbursts (often with the help of alcohol and/or readily available weapons).

You're right, they'll run the numbers and take whichever path maximizes their net profit -- but shuttering (or even heavily modifying) a facility that they've just invested $$$$ into is unlikely to be found to be their most profitable option. More likely they'll try to sell memory chips at a profit of +$.25 per chip in large volumes, because when you've got is a giant hammer, hammering lots of nails is what you can do best.

I wonder if anyone will start selling home systems capable of using cast-off data center RAM? It might be worthwhile if there's lots of that sort of RAM floating around for cheap.

How 'bout if I buy now and pay after I die?

Sure, a company could use an increase in productivity to allow their workers to work fewer hours while getting the same amount accomplished... but capitalism doesn't work that way. Instead, the company will use the increase in productivity to get more work done in the same amount of hours as before... or if they don't, their competitor will, and thereby obtain a competitive advantage over them.

This is especially true for salaried employees, where the cost of the employee to the company is the same regardless of how many hours the employee works, and it is therefore in the company's financial interest to maximize the return on its salary "investment" by getting as much output from the employee as possible in any given pay period.

sounds like the plots of a cheap SF movie.

I've got a co-worker like that; every email I get from him is just him copy-and-pasting text from his pet AI, and when I reply, he forwards my email on to his AI to read and generate the next reply for him.

Which raises the question... exactly what value is my co-worker providing there? Sooner or later management will notice that they are paying six figures of annual salary to what is essentially just a very slow meat-based email relay, and they'll lay him off and just have me communicate with the AI directly instead. There's a fine line between "all in" and "all redundant".

It all depends on one thing: Will your speech-driven AI agent reliably accomplish the tasks that you told it to do? If so, great, we've entered the glorious Star Trek future. OTOH if it screws up, even just 5% of the time, it'll be kicked to the curb, because a "timesaver" that you have to stand over and supervise to make sure it doesn't go wrong is no timesaver at all.

They shouldn't be trying such a desperate solution without trying chlorox and ivermectin first.

Just don't leave the country after you participate.

For that matter, you may suffer remote retaliation even if you stay home. I would leave this to the military or other government branch.

Also there is the question of legality, government operation or not. It sounds to me like vigilante justice. And countries who like their anti-American cybercriminals will certainly treat it as illegal. (Hence the advice not to leave the country.)

We certainly need a way to stop cybercrime, international or otherwise. But this doesn't strike me as a good way to go about it.

Finally a prediction: in the not too distant future, one or more offshoots from this will turn into unmanageable domestic criminal organizations.

Even Batman's job is threatened by AI.

It's just ET trying to phone home. Probably dialed the wrong number.

Ideology vetos reality, news at 11.

A lot of people behave pretty ghastly when it comes to money.