Remmelt 🛑

AI takeover stories often foretell human extinction but miss a scientific basis. In contrast, the sixth extinction is ongoing, and linked to human use of technology. Artificialization of the planet is ongoing. Technomass has doubled every twenty years, beyond all biomass. Graph by Elhacham et al.

Peaceful anarchism

Fuck this.

The Government™ has made an ad about all these protests happening around the world, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative.

Really glad to put out the book ‘Ape Trap’ It’s about the historically accelerating artificialisation of the planet. Let me know if you want a copy

Exactly why in speaking to @theteamyriamf.bsky.social I said that I refuse to call Jacob Coxon a "whistleblower." Because since when do you have your top execs be like "yes we agree with this whistleblower" 🙄 That's not how whistleblowers are treated. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EY2...

She's spot on in describing why these CEOs agreed with Coxon (vs how they treated people like me or @mer__edith ). "Their valuations will depend on how sophisticated - and, in the case of AI weapons systems, how lethal - their models are." www.equator.org/articles/aru...

People overestimate what technology can do in a year and underestimate what it can do in ten. In 1996, despite AOL’s popularity, you’d struggle to show how the internet boosted profits at Coca-Cola or P&G. Today, neither could function without it.

A depressing trend I’ve seen since the rise of AI agents is people outsourcing emotional connection to AI. People are delegating how they communicate with their kids, spouses and parents to AI agents. AI should handle our work so we can spend more time with friends and family, not vice versa.

holy crap

Energy extraction and use has gone up at a crazy rate. Two graphs from Goliath’s Curse (a book I can’t recommend enough):

I’ve historically mentored people early in their tech careers, but as that pipeline dries up due to AI, I’ve spent more time with mid-career professionals. It’s a challenging time because it’s now clear that AI agents can do a decent chunk of the technical work people were hired to do.

The FT reports 47 major US data center projects delayed or blocked in 2026. It’s estimated only 35% of the pipeline is credible. Microsoft also pulled out of Nscale’s UK project amid power delays stretching into the 2030s. Some AI infrastructure companies may not survive these delays.

Neoclouds build or lease data centers, buying Nvidia GPUs to rent to AI firms. Nvidia circularly finances some of these same customers. With rising debt, power shortages, construction delays and uncertain demand, industry insiders expect many to fail, costing Nvidia both customers and investments.

What want to call your attention to is this quote from David Friedman, an anarchocapitalist who signed that weird manifesto Mark Andressen wrote recently. He's in deep with Scott Alexander and the rationalist/EA crew, and here is what he has to say about race "science" (what he calls HBD)

I bang this drum a lot, but the people interested in preserving social and racial hierarchies really want you to believe that those hierarchies are immutable facts of nature rather than choices made by us, the humans organizing our society.

Kroger plans to lay off 37% of its corporate employees over the next three years. Its CEO believes AI will help eliminate duplicative work, allowing the company to cut prices and invest more in store employees. Whether or not you believe in AI productivity gains, your CEO does.

Hey remember this

the dumbest men-who-look-like-thumbs in the world are being absolutely intellectually ravaged by the sudden arrival of consumer AI. gazillions of similar men doubtless now agree with this

We are soon going to have to come to grips with the fact that this shit is asbestos for the mind

What’s next? Maybe Hewlett Packard will announce that being mean or cruel to your printer will now be considered a violation of its terms of service. No more yelling at your printer for refusing to print black and white documents because it’s out of cyan ink.

(7/8) Markets are interfaces: a boundary between the constructed reality of capitalist inputs (rents, property, entitlements) and the world. Just as a browser, controls what you see and can do over network states, profit-maximizers build interfaces routing to slices of reality favoring them.

Years of marketing efforts coalesced into this.

Yes we must keep AI limited to narrow tools that are designed and orchestrated by humans and keep automation limited to siloed systems that are built and maintained by humans. And under capitalism we need to resist *all automation* until we have certain key reforms.

well, if he'd quit because of "rogue" agents, his story would have received massive media attention

No, no-one's building 'God'. I'm so frustrated by this. No machine can gain omniscience – we should worry about giving over our lives to increasingly automated industry.

Small ask. Can you help Annie Altman get the truth out on what she said about Sam in her lawsuit? Just sign this petition:

“These have always been… glorified parlour tricks to keep people distracted while the bosses pick their pockets.” – Luke Kemp, Goliath’s Curse

Agreed.

You know what's funny, Sam Altman commented exactly like this on one of @xriskology.bsky.social's tweets lol. It has already happened. Cope.

“Right now, you have an economy where people are getting choked out because they don’t have the basic means for a dignified life because we are more focused on allowing a billionaire to make another billion” - Abdul El-Sayed ~~ No lies detected.