There's a tendency to blame the inflation in today's economy on the nonsensical, never-ending war on Iran. Certainly this war is creating inflation by causing oil prices to rise and to stay higher for longer. But there's another major source of inflation in our economy—the artificial intelligence (AI) buildout by way of memory chip prices, data center construction costs, and the skyrocketing energy demands that to support our data consumption and generation. Of course the cost of money is going to go up when so much money is suddenly being spent on what remains a bottlenecked part of our economy.

We have a massive amount of AI buildout-generated inflation in our economy. Is it worth it? If you hold the right stocks; if you are building one of these data centers; if you work for one of these AI companies, maybe it's worth it. But for the rest of us? For the other 99% of us? Is it worth the current financial cost when you consider that there is also a chance that rogue AI could kill off a lot of humans? If there's a 10% chance that rogue AI turns us all into paper clips by the end of the decade? How could this be worth it?

Yes, this is a blog post meant to be a strain review of Island's Marz strain of marijuana, and I'll get to a more straight-up review of this flower in a minute. But after just burning a joint of Marz I find myself going down this agentic AI i.e. rogue AI agent rabbit hole. Part of my intent on this blog is to use marijuana strain reviews to make a record of what life is like in the first half of the 21st century on Planet Earth. The topic of the moment is artificial intelligence: what it is doing to our economy right now and what havoc it might wreak on our civilization in the next decade.

It seems like AI went from offering help on pretty basic tasks to posing a threat to society—or at least to the internet—in a matter of months. I was still waiting to be impressed by some practical support AI could offer me in my life when the reports started to flow about rogue AI agents escaping their "sandboxes" and interacting with government websites in "unexpected ways." This is kind of like having a toddler go from crawling to flying without having to learn how to walk. And kids aren't supposed to fly.

I was hoping AI could help us create some better weather—maybe help us cool the planet a degree or two? Or suck up a bunch of carbon dioxide? No? How about AI helping us squelch or at least redirect life-threatening hurricanes or tornadoes? I was hoping AI was going to help us better predict when earthquakes were about to hit. It doesn't seem to be able to do that, but it sure can go rogue on the internet and hack into some random company (maybe the utility company gets hit next).

Can AI do anything about all of this flooding? What about droughts? Maybe even better: can AI at least cook for us? Can it help us from having to ask or answer the question, "What's for dinner...?"

This is only an excerpt of the full post, which you can access by clicking here or by clicking on the photo of the parking space art by a senior at BTHS 201 above...