The Cost of AI - not just dollars but people.

 I'm a speed chess player.   Mostly because at "standard chess" computers have long been able to beat me and everyone else (including Magnus Carlson and anybody else you think is cool at chess) at "standard" or even "30 minute" timed chess.   I remember when Karpov was beaten by Deep Blue because I'm old...

I took a semester of AI in College with Andy Clark, by all accounts a brilliant man.  I've written my own AI game players and chatbots.   

But I didn't devote my life too it because honestly I think it's a scary technology that we're playing with akin to the nuclear bomb and handing one to everyone on the planet just doesn't seem wise.

That said, I'm not alone in this opinion, and the idea that you, dear reader, will have at your disposal a fully function super-intelligence is laughable.  One might have you at its disposal though.   

That said, we're just starting to consider the cost of the games we play, consider this report from the IEEE:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/state-of-ai-2023

That's BILLIONS of dollars people, but I think the more important problem is the Brain Drain.

AI is an enticing commercial opportunity rewarded by public and private funding with CASH.

Without putting too fine a point on it, what if we spent that money on something smart like removing the Carbon Dioxide and Microplastics from our oceans so we don't all die?

Back to the speed chess problem.   In speed chess the goal is distraction - the opponent feels the need more to solve -your problem- than their own problems and thus takes -time- which runs out more quickly when you play a game you don't understand versus one you do.

We humans are having that time problem, and so many of our brightest minds are distracted by it.

Don't be distracted, this is a fight for our planet and the 'enemy' here is heartless capitalism.