Artificial Intelligence is dumber than you are

Why not try a hands-free search and use your voice to chat with our AI bot! That’s a prompt that’s been coming up as I’m logging into my laptop. I have yet to have that chat, as I have zero desire to converse with an AI chatbot. I do dozens of searches every day, and dumb non-AI platforms are perfectly adequate for my needs. Besides, I’d feel like a complete dorkshit sitting here talking to my computer. If you have to have a conversation, that’s what people are for, not chatbots. Then there’s the matter of the extravagant energy consumption of Artificial Intelligence applications. A simple question, such as “how did Canada vote at the UN today?” can use 30 times the energy as your standard non-AI search. And the non-AI search will be more reliable because it’s not smart enough to make stuff up. If you think 30 times next to nothing is still nothing, you’d be wrong. All the big players are trying to find long term deals for cheap electricity. Alberta is offering cheap energy and tax breaks specifically to lure the industry to that province. This is a massive increase on the demand side, at the same time as we’re hoping to transition to electric vehicles. We have nowhere near the generating capacity or the grid to make either one of those dreams into reality, let alone both at the same time! In my view, reducing carbon emissions is a greater good than talking to chatbots.