Bibliolater 📚 📜 🖋 @bibliolater@qoto.org

I see that Trump has utterly capitulated on his China tariffs. Perhaps this pattern has something to do with it.

Trump talks tough, but China has all the cards.

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2025/05/04/the-half-life-of-empire/

The data centers are coming. In super, secret secret. Under no circumstances can the community be let know how much water and energy will be used.

"Residents in and around Bessemer are furious over Project Marvel, a plan to build a 4.5-million-square-foot data processing facility on 700 acres of wooded land. Public officials have been sworn to silence."

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11052025/bessemer-alabama-proposed-data-center/

Most #AI spending (64%) driven by FOMO, not ROI, CEOs tell IBM:

Only ~25% of AI initiatives have delivered the expected return on investment, according to an IBM survey of 2,000 CEOs.
#econsky #finsky https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-05-06-ibm-study-ceos-double-down-on-ai-while-navigating-enterprise-hurdles

As tensions between #India and #Pakistan embroil their agreement to share the Indus River, this might be a good time to remind everyone that half the land area of the Earth is in an internationally-shared river basin.
The US shares 20 river basins with Canada; 4 with Mexico.
The Nile is shared by 11 countries.
And violence over #water is growing.

https://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Water-Conflict-Chronology_Fact-Sheet.pdf

After decades of solar PV deployment, the world crossed the 1 TW (a million MW) line in 2022. Just two years later, after adding 0.6 TW in 2024, we already crossed the 2 TW mark too!
#SolarPV #solarenergy #renewables

This article is both validating and infuriating.

Validating because it speaks to the lie that generative models are "the worst they'll ever be."

One popular leaderboard...indicates some “reasoning” models – including the DeepSeek-R1 model from developer DeepSeek – saw double-digit rises in hallucination rates compared with previous models from their developers.

The myth of incessant improvement needs to die.

Infuriating because it concludes that "We may have to live with error-prone AI." We really, really don't. This technology has one primary purpose: driving the data and compute hoarding of the oligarchy. It should be considered a tool of the oppressor, and as such should be resisted, confounded, and broken.

We do not have to accept this.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2479545-ai-hallucinations-are-getting-worse-and-theyre-here-to-stay/

"#GoogleSearch was the gold standard—a product born in a dorm room during the #internet’s early, idealistic era. But when internal emails surfaced they revealed a deeper conflict inside the company: was Google making Search worse, on purpose, to boost ad revenue? Google says its changes are benefiting users. Critics say it’s all part of a bigger pattern—one that host #CoryDoctorow calls #enshittification: the slow, deliberate decay of platforms in the name of profit."
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16144078-dont-be-evil

Teachers Using AI to Grade Their Students' Work Sends a Clear Message: They Don't Matter, and Will Soon Be Obsolete
https://futurism.com/teachers-ai-grade-students?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into All About Artificial Intelligence @all-about-artificial-intelligence-Futurism

@bibliolater @ianb

“It's not just that students aren't attempting to write their own work, what we're also starting to find is that students aren't even attempting to read the work."

There are students only interested in the credentials. Others care about learning. Looks like soon the two types will stop sharing educational paths. Their present entanglement serves the current university financing system via common fees. The disruption of this arrangement will reshape universities.

#HigherEducation #academia

Mexico sues Google over 'Gulf of America' name change
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yk5nj7p7ko?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Top Stories @top-stories-BBCNews