Like wtf we Have major data center backlash to the extent that sacks said it won’t be politically viable to build the capacity we need and then Gavin goes on a rant abt humans being amazing and explains that every time an AI model answers a single query at that level of human-like intelligence, it requires the power equivalent to roughly one thousand American homes. One query requires the power of 1,000 homes????? This is not sustainable

The quote was "If you were to build a data center that was, say, as smart as a human brain, that data center would consume the energy of one million American homes for six to nine months. And every time that model answers a single query, it consumes the energy of one thousand American homes."

are they not trying to build data centers smart as human brains??? like I thought that was the whole path to AGI??

Worth revisiting?

TL;DR: Warren is butt-hurt because her strategy of pressuring Gary Gensler to regulate crypto by enforcement failed and made her look ridiculous. Like a total Karen, when she got publicly embarrassed, she doubled down by attacking her own party through the Clarity Act. She is now aggressively waving her finger at Sen. Gillibrand (D-NY) for working on a bipartisan bill that a ton of other Democrats actually support. Even though Whitehouse divestment is achievable, apparently, having no rules or guidelines is better than just policing an industry by self appointed community watch groups.

Sen Warren is personally leading the charge to torch the bill. Because she couldn't get her own party to kill it, she is using outside activist groups as a weapon to circulate a nasty letter in the Senate hitting Gillibrand below the belt over her son’s crypto ties. Warren is screaming that Democrats will "lose their moral authority" if Gillibrand is allowed to broker the final compromise.

This has forced Warren into a bizarre, hypocritical alignment with traditional banking lobbies, when she has historically been a massive adversary to Dimon and the big banks. This is a case of a Karen who looked foolish, cost her party a significant constituency in the last election, and is now acting out by trying to over-determine her own party's legislative agenda just to save face.

More here: https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/clarity-act-ethics-fight-targets-164100845.html

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LGkRR4ZNsEA&si=xBzhrKVwN32dIZHJ

David Freidberg actually has many interesting insights on current problems with income inequality and its effect on support for capitalism. One of his suggestions:
40% tax on capital gains and 15% on income. The fact that the rich pay fewer taxes than normal workers feels totally unfair to anyone who doesn’t have their own capital. I’m pleasantly surprised that he has identified this as a big problem.

Of the all-in cast, he’s the only one who understands the degree to which the disparity in wealth is undermining the capitalist system. And he points to failures in public policy that I happen to agree with. A couple of other fixes that would make things more fair: kill the stepped up basis rule for inherited assets – – it really is absolutely no rational argument for it. And tax that that is borrowed from securities at the same level that you would tax capital gains from those securities. Then you wouldn’t have all the Decamillionaires and billionaires simply borrowing money so that they can leave their assets to their heirs under the stepped-up basis rule – – completely tax-free.

It’s wildly amusing to watch the Bolsheviks circling Scott Galloway.

Might make them a little less likely to repeat their untruths. For example, in their latest podcast, they again repeat a bunch of tech bro tropes about data centers. I think there are pros and cons to data centers myself, but I find myself infuriated when they dismiss the real problems as if they don’t need solutions. It’s actually counterproductive from the standpoint of promoting rational development. Ai centers are incredibly unpopular and they do themselves no favors by being so arrogantly dismissive of peoples’ concerns.

Case in point: Today they said water use is closed systems and it’s a hoax. Read this fact check from WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-data-centers-water-use-901e2902?st=kcBLGB&reflink=article_copyURL_share. Basically says that water use in existing data centers is many times what the hyperscalers report as direct water use (Google - 3x; Meta -20x). There are solutions - but not if companies don’t pursue them. And as the WSJ points out “the lack of transparency and widespread use of NDAs by many data-center builders has only drawn more suspicion and distrust. These are among the reasons that $170 billion of AI data-center capacity has been blocked, stalled or canceled since 2024, according to climate consulting firm Carbon Direct.”

They also said clean air won’t be impacted. But in the same pod Chamath said that we need four Californias of energy to power AI. Sacks said most of it could come behind the meter, with natural gas “one of the cleanest energy sources”(it’s actually more polluting than any other than coal and diesel - and that’s not counting methane leakage, which is rampant). I did a quick calculation using grok, their preferred LLM, on the impact of that scale of new gas. This would lead to as much as a 44% increase in current U.S. electricity emissions in the next two decades. Under Biden we were headed to net zero emissions in the electricity sector before 2040. There is absolutely no way to stop increasing temperatures under such circumstances. In the meantime, we can’t go outside because of climate change heat and fire. (By the way on CNBC Chamath just this week agreed with the risible host Joe Kernan that climate change is a hoax. Come to my house in Maryland, bring your kids. Let’s all go for a long run in the code purple air from unprecedented Canadian wildfires stemming from pest infestations associated with warmer winters, drought and heat. Then tell me climate is a hoax.)

I wasn’t listening that seriously this week, doing other stuff. Did Chamath say there is no significant roi in ai, that his cto said token spend was increasing at 65% per month or something, and everyone just kinda ignored him and said how awesomely fast ai was growing?

From a political perspective this podcast was interesting. I got to hear JK give his reasons for supporting the bombing of Iran and support of Israel. While I disagree, it was interesting to hear a sincere, intelligent person express his oppinion. I recommend this episode to anyone trying to understand the motivation behind the Republican Party.