After I lost my mother before I turned twenty, housekeeping gave me focus. I learned to take care of myself-- to cook, keep a garden and compost kitchen scraps; to make remedies for ailments and keep a (relatively) clean living space.
I might say I need housekeeping like some people need meditation.
This Samsung commercial for an AI that will keep your house in order therefore baffles me.
Who would want a robot to take care of them?
Then, "Apple wants you to start sleeping with your Apple watch." While your body rests, an iWatch will measure your heart rate, skin temperature, respiratory rate and blood oxygen levels. Around the time that I wrote books about natural birth control and gauging gynecological health by charting a woman's waking temperature and cervical fluid, people started selling menstrual cycle-tracking apps. Why read an app's interpretation of menstrual cycle charts when you can read your body? Plus, digitally-recorded cycle info (including pregnancies) can get hacked and sold.
When last week's CrowdStrike glitch shut down airlines and hospitals, many people realized how much the electronic technologies we depend on are beyond our control.
In her May 10 lecture, "AI and Political Responsibility," British political scientist Jude Browne illuminated AI's promises and perils and proposed citizen-assemblies for determining how society might use AI. If cultural change happens in groups of seven (think of the Women's Movement), I'd welcome assemblies that inform us about AI's ecological, social and economic impacts; help us assess what about it is within our control-- and support us as we join groups to move forward, realistically and humanely.
Recent stories about AI's energy use
A.I.'s Insatiable Appetite for Energy by David Gelles, NY Times, July 11, 2024. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta have all recently announced plans to build new data centers in Indiana. A consumer watchdog group says that Indiana does not have enough power to meet the data centers' projected energy needs.
Microsoft and OpenAI plan to build a $100 billion data center. Initial reporting suggests it may require five gigawatts of power, or roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors. Google and Microsoft both claim that A.I. can address the climate crisis, and that they work to reduce their carbon footprints and bring more clean energy online. Microsoft has a $10 billion plan to develop renewable energy to power data centers. Amazon claims it used 100% clean energy last year. These Big Tech calculations make no sense to me since manufacturing any energy system requires fossil fuels, extractions, water and so much more. Plus, because solar and wind provide only intermittent power, operating them requires backup from (highly toxic) batteries or the fossil-fuel-powered grid.
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