Post #1490974

I've worked in tech for ~30 years and have been building software one way or another for ~15 more. For almost all of that time, optimizing your code was a core required skill. Does your software run well on available hardware while using (reasonably) minimal resources? If the answer was no, you weren't done - you had to figure out how to make the answer yes, or you had failed. One aspect of the current AI madness that I don't see being discussed (not saying it's not discussed, just that I don't see it) is the radical shift away from this mindset. The default assumption with AI that no one seems to be questioning is that if the software doesn't run on available hardware we will LITERALLY DESTROY EVERYTHING to make it run. We'll destroy the economy, the environment, our whole society to throw more hardware at the problem we made. What the actual fuck. How did we get to this horrific end state? What can explain it other than the death cult of late-stage capitalism eating its own tail?