Bursting Through the Guardrails
JAN 30, 2026
The AI hype train is here and is speeding ahead like the fastest Japanese bullet train. It’s a “revolution,” and AI is going to change everything and/or doom us all. Or maybe it’ll usher in a glorious utopia? New technologies always seem to mobilize both the doomsayers and the utopian dreamers.
Amazingly, ChatGPT is already recording 800 million weekly active users. Meanwhile, investment in AI races ahead—not without serious implications. Today, I noted these two stories at the New York Times:
Technology
How the A.I. Boom Could Push Up the Price of Your Next PC
OpenAI in Talks to Raise as Much as $100 Billion
So, the demand for chips may inflate the price of your next computer even as investors in AI continue to throw money at its promise.
Given the nature of the corporations and governments making decisions about AI and its future, I’m not optimistic for an AI-driven utopia. Count me among the (guarded) pessimists.
Why? Here’s one snippet I gleaned from the New York Times the other day:
28,000,000,000
— That’s how many liters of water Microsoft said it would use for its data centers in 2030, according a report obtained by The Times. The company had promised to cut its water use, but big tech companies are guzzling water during the A.I. frenzy.
That’s an enormous quantity of water when water scarcity is a major issue for our climate change-driven future.
Along with that, I saw where the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to nuclear Armageddon. In their statement, the scientists cited the rise of AI and its application to weapons and war as one reason for the clock’s creep toward midnight.
So, what gives with this “AI frenzy”? My guess is that AI is being harnessed by the powerful for their purposes. They’re not investing big money to help the little people. This is not to say that every AI application is nefarious and evil. But I think the general trend will be AI-driven “efficiency,” meaning lots of people losing their jobs, along with AI-driven surveillance and control, in the name of greater “safety and security,” naturally.
One thing is certain: we shouldn’t blame the technology. Whatever AI is or becomes, it will be a manifestation of us—but, more worryingly, a manifestation of the agendas of the capitalists, the corporatists, and the warmongers among us, those who are always seeking dominance, even “full-spectrum” dominance, including AI and everything it’s capable of, “guardrails” be damned.
Readers, what do you make of all this?
Bracing Views 
See also this article from The Conversation: “The world is in water bankruptcy, UN scientists report – here’s what that means” https://theconversation.com/the-world-is-in-water-bankruptcy-un-scientists-report-heres-what-that-means-273213
LikeLike
AI should be stopped from further development. It will be said that technology cannot be stopped and that is precisely why we need to stop this one. What it offers is tremendous profits for the wealthy, a huge increase in fossil fuel consumption for the energy required and most of all a direct threat to not just manual labor but white-collar labor as well.
The billionaires who decide on what to pursue are the very ones who will not be affected in any way (except for global warming) to this rush to AI. Man-to-Mars and Space Tourism are pure stupidity, total waste when so many problems face us. Far from stopping them, where is the criticism?
I went to Wendy’s to buy a Frosty and was greeted by AI. This is in keeping with the move to force customers to use kiosks to order even when they go to the counter in the stores. No human order takers needed and kitchen automation is coming.
Labor is a great expense for any business which is why capitalists have always sought to get rid of employees and why union busting has been an obsession since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. AI will expedite this with unions effectively gone.
In the broadcast TV industry where I made my career, the workforce is a small fraction of what it once was. Digitization has eliminated jobs, permanent employees are gone replaced by daily hires. An insider told me today that the TV reporters were called together and told they will have to take a 15% pay cut. Studio cameras are robotic, producers and directors are gone, everyone automated away. AI will increase this across all industries.
Why would a boss want to deal with people when he/she can have AI access the world of data instantly, suggest improvements to what is proposed, never call in sick, operate 24/7 and what I have certainly noticed, pile on flattery at every opportunity? Add in the ability to produce graphics, to seek out photos and videos, do outlining, produce blueprints, to do all the things we humans in great numbers have long been doing.
The benefits of AI to Joe Average are minimal. Yes, Joe might say, “look at all the stuff it can do!” My dear Joe, it can do anything you can do but faster and better. A Google search was perfectly adequate providing answers, considered phenomenally good just a few years ago, students certainly don’t need a convenient way to have a homework robot, so little do they learn to think as it is. The perfect English of AI and the ever-improving ability to mimic, nay, to exceed the ability of an ordinary American to express him/herself should leave nobody uncertain that this tech is out to get us not by its own agency but by that of the 1%.
Once it was hoped that we would be freed of work so we could pursue meaningful paths for our lives. This has been completely debunked. People are anxious about not having a job, independent of the pay, having to think or being left alone to think about our lives is feared and avoided with the constant worship of the smartphone. Jobs keep us back from the edge of a psychological precipice. AI will take that away.
Humanity has reached the inevitable point to be expected from the time technology took off, particularly with the coming of cheap energy. We have outsmarted ourselves with our tech that only a decreasing minority understand (even AI experts admit ignorance and anxiety about AI).
Thoreau was on target when he said, “we don’t ride the railroad, the railroad rides us”. AI is here and ready to run us over as it has invaded our last refuge for our identity, our intelligence. Tech first stopped the natural world from the impact it had keeping human population down and we see our numbers overwhelming the planet. We have proven we can’t restrain ourselves and do not allow nature to do so. Now tech confronts us directly.
Can we stop what so obviously and directly threatens us when we have a history of inability to stop any “progress” and we can’t even rein in the 1% who prey on us? I doubt it. It is turning out that Judgement Day is not a day, it is extended over a period of time of multiple and increasing threats closing in on us. We see them all and are paralyzed, but we will all be watching the Superbowl this year and the next and the next until…
LikeLike