Ah. I see you must not be familiar with our AG.

I live in Arkansas where we have 6 data centers currently under construction. Clarksville, a town of ~10k people about 1 & 1/2 hours west of Little Rock, agreed to issue up to $55 Billion (with a “B”) in municipal bonds to pay for the data center being built there. They’re so excited about the [very temporary] sales tax revenue from construction workers and the promise of “up to 200 full time permanent jobs”. I think the final bill will be more like $7B but that remains to be seen.

Now, Clarksville has significant challenges. Like much of the rural US, they are experiencing a population decline. They have no real major industries, and they have to compete with a larger city 20 miles down the road for basically everything. I get why they would be looking for good high paying jobs.

But the city will own the data center, along with its construction debt. If the tenant it is being built for folds or walks away, the city will be on the hook for it. And I still can’t figure out what kind of fuzzy math supports a city with about $13 million in annual revenue taking on $6 billion in debt under any circumstances, much less 200 jobs that may or may not materialize.

Just another case of privatize profits, socialize losses.

Concerned about its workers losing brainpower as they outsource work to artificial intelligence, Dropbox is considering using cognitive training tools, like memory exercises and attention-span training, to keep them mentally sharp.

I’m very concerned about the future of The Onion. We have reached a point where the actual news is more absurd than satirical “news”.

“AI” is as much, maybe more of, a political tool in the corporate environment as it is a technical tool. Outright refusing to use LLM’s will result in you being replaced with someone who will get on board and you will find yourself wedged in a very narrow career path that is increasingly difficult to get out of.

LLM’a are not going to replace programmers. Not in the long term anyway. It’s really hurting opportunities for junior devs right now. There’s no denying that. But any idiot can write code. And LLM’s are just one more idiot in a long line of idiots, shelling out code without having one iota of actual knowledge around the problem its supposed to be solving.

I’m not saying there aren’t hills to die on and I’m not saying there won’t be negative long term consequences to the current “AI” craze. I just don’t think this is the hill. And just wait until management teams everywhere finally realize that, in order for LLM’s to be even remotely successful as a business tool, they have to do one thing that programmers have been trying and failing to get them to do for the last 50+ years: give us the goddamned fucking business requirements. Executives everywhere will backpedal so fast they’ll pull their collective hamstrings. “WhAt Do YoU mEaN its NoT a MaGiC box tHaT jUsT tElLs us hOw To MaKe mAkE mOrE mOnEy???”

At least Wisconsin learned something from the Foxconn scam.

You’ll get a one time $1,200 check and 5 years of your employer using it as an excuse to not give you a raise while they rake in record profits.

“OMG. Our product is so ‘smart’ that it ‘escaped’ containment and hacked other orgs completely on its own.” – OpenAI

“We made version for your kids. It’s totally safe.” – Also OpenAI.

Hmmm…