Once upon a time, a brilliant man came up with an equation that changed everything. You know the simplified version, E=MC², I'm sure. What did it do? It ushered in the Nuclear Age, bringing with it a promise of near-infinite power. Sure, there were risks, but ultimately, if respected and improved upon, it promised to be far better than alternatives (e.g., continuing to burn fossil fuels, for one). However, it could also be used to build a horrifying new kind of bomb. And thus, the man who discovered this potential ran from his home country, who threatened to abuse his work for that end.

And then the place he ran to used it to make and deploy the Bomb anyway, thus forcing the world into an era of living under the specter of nuclear annihilation.

I use this example to describe AI often. While there's an element of comparing apples to oranges here, the general gist remains; we have something here that could be used to revolutionize the world for the better, but it's immediately being ushered toward abuse by just abut anyone who can do so. And this could get bad. REALLY bad.

To be clear--and I've said this before: I'm not against the idea of AI being used, within reason. I very much see potential in it when it comes to helping with tedious phases of doing my artwork like cleaning up lines (something I suspect powerful art programs already do without us really knowing) and helping generate components for backgrounds for my images (not the entire background or image). I admit I've toyed with these things and see some value as part of my workflow, but draw a line at making it my entire workflow. That being said, due to the consternation in the community about how others (like DeviantART) have abused AI, I've had to avoid using it even in that capacity for fear of being out of line with the well-intentioned rules against AI like we have here at Sheezy. I'll admit, this is kind of frustrating, but I get it... idiots ruined it for the rest of us. We live in a society, etc., etc. And to that extent, I am still very much against the use of AI for generating and flooding the market with AI slop, particularly for the purposes of buying and selling and inflating the market for those that actually put the real sweat and tears into their work (f*** you, DeviantART).

But folks, it's worse than that, I'm afraid.

Micron/Crucial, a company that makes a SUBSTANTIAL amount of our solid-state flash memory and computer RAM, just announced they are going to stop selling that stuff to end-user customers like you and I. Why, might you ask? Because they have deemed the massive corporate interests that are building AI datacenters everywhere as a more lucrative source of revenue. We're already seeing a shortage of these components for ordinary computers and devices that you and I use every day because AI bros are buying it all up... it's driving the prices for these things up to ludicrous levels over just the past few weeks. Now, the producer of about third of all of these components has decided to sell ONLY to them. Never mind our power and water bills going up because of these datacenters--they're making EVERYTHING cost more.

Honestly, at this point, I'm not sure what can be done. I'd love to see the AI bubble pop, but the AI gold rush morons have put everything on the line to shove AI down our throats, because if it does implode... whoo boy, there's going to be a LOT of very broke people. They're doing everything they can in desperation to keep it afloat, and we're starting to see the consequences of it in everyday life.

Incidentally, I wrote a short story about one of the possible outcomes of going all-in on AI two years ago that might be enough to scare you as it is. But even that didn't address this possibility. Sheesh....