feats >>> tweets

artificial intelligence has served as a lightning rod for some of the most hysterical debate imaginable. when I say hysterical, I mean it both in the sense of it being hilarious, and it being completely detached from reality.

No amount of staff-level Google engineers expressing shocked disbelief at the productivity gains they experience from AI will convince those who believe AI is a full-on grift.

AI has now divided nations as Europe begins to investigate xAI and Twitter for enabling the production of (alleged) CSAM and non-consensual adult material using Grok's capability to generate images based upon primary image and text input. Some people, almost always men, argue that this is an unimportant sideshow to the inevitable and preferable acceleration of generative AI.

"Who cares if women are victimized on the largest social platform in the world, as long as I get my xAI goonbot, I will sing the praises of Elon."

The Great Data Center Water Debate has ignited BlueSky and other liberal echo chambers full of the misinformed, uninformed and Ed Zitron, the penultimate combination of the two. Trying to convince them that water usage in data centers used by AI is comparable or significantly less than the water usage in traditional data centers serving video streaming sites is a non-starter. Instead of targeting their ire specifically at those doing us harm, they target the technology that could save us if applied properly.

Whether it be AI Doomerism, AI Consumerism or AI Goonism, AI seeks to ignite (almost entirely pointless) debate everywhere we look. The participants of these debates are as partisan as most participants in online debates are, more tech/anti-tech cultists than information connoisseur's, and their minds are being fed by hyperpartisan corporations on both sides of the debate.

The AI Divides. My argument is that you should stay quiet and build.

The battle is over, but yours can start now

There is no point in online discourse. Now is the post-discourse era. Debate on the typical online mediums is as dead as the internet threatens to be, full of bots, disinformation operations and bad actors. There is much debate and discourse to be had in The Dark Forest, but in the barren plains of the internet, it is as pointless to argue your points at length as it is to empty the ocean with a thimble.

We can influence change, obviously. But the levers are constantly changing, and we must pay attention to the ones we have available and the efficacy of the ones we are leaning on now.

Being an anti-AI clicktivist on BlueSky is doing nothing more than furthering your neuroses by screaming at a wall. Nobody cares, and you absolutely will not influence change there. This is not an endorsement of activity, but the people seeking to damage data centers and factories supplying arms and logistical support to the IDF are a better blueprint for anti-AI action than your favorite podcaster.

Being a pro-AI clicktivist on X is just as pointless. Instead of making Elon Musk fancams and preaching the heroism of Sam Altman as you dump your life savings into NVIDIA calls, you could be seeking to solve the multitudes of problems in artificial intelligence that could help push the scene forward, namely the power consumption problems, the centralization of foundational models, context and prompt engineering, etc. These problems are significantly easier now in a post-AI era, and you could be part of solving them instead of arguing with someone with a blue wave in their bio.

My point here is not to just laugh at people being stupid on the internet, it's to tell you to go do something useful. Go campaign for change and stop leaning on the laziest lever in history (social media discourse) to hopefully inspire someone else to do the hard work for you. If you think data centers are poisoning your water, it sounds like you should be out in the streets protesting, writing your congressman, campaigning for local office where you can prevent the construction of more infrastructure, or actually doing something in your community.

If you think AI is going to bring about a post-scarcity world, there are thousands of people dying of scarcity related issues every day. It sounds like you should be upskilling to build a startup relying on AI to save lives, working your ass off to work at a big lab or at the very least burying yourself in free research papers on arXiv instead of @'ing Elon and Sam Altman 30 times a day trying to get a retweet.

Go do something. Anything. Push the world forward. We need far fewer tweets and far more feats.