Paris Marx is joined by Sasha Luccioni to discuss the catastrophic environmental costs of the generative AI being increasing shoved into every tech product we touch.

Sasha Luccioni is an artificial intelligence researcher and Climate Lead at Hugging Face.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Sasha published a paper looking at the climate impacts of generative AI.
• Paris wrote about the increased emissions at Google and Microsoft, and the consequences of the growing data center buildout.
• Google’s emissions are up 48% in five years, while Microsoft’s are up 30% between 2020 and 2023.
• Bill Gates is telling governments not to “go overboard” with concerns about AI energy use. He’s been much more active in Microsoft’s AI strategizing than he’s admitted publicly.
• Microsoft President Brad Smith says its carbon “moonshot” is much farther away because of generative AI. The company is accelerating its data center construction plans.
• Sam Altman says we can geoengineer the planet if we can’t develop an energy breakthrough to power AI.

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Paris Marx is joined by David Gerard to discuss Jack Dorsey’s decision to leave Bluesky, his obsession with Bitcoin, and his contributions (or lack thereof) to modern technology.

David Gerard is the author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain and Libra Shrugged. He also makes Pivot to AI with Amy Castor.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• David wrote about Jack Dorsey abandoning Bluesky on his blog.
• Business Insider reported on how Dorsey gave money to the far-right founder of Nostr.
• Dorsey was interviewed by Mike Solana on Pirate Wires.
• Dorsey has posted in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the response to it is why he deleted his Bluesky account.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jason Koebler to discuss the AI-generated spam filling Facebook, how the platform seems to have given up trying to stop it, and where the internet goes from here.

Jason Koebler is the co-host of the 404 Media Podcast.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Jason wrote about his theory of the zombie internet and what he’s been seeing on Facebook.
• Back in 2018, Motherboard reported on the rules Facebook gave its content moderators.
• Users of Facebook Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero in Angola found out how to make their own video streaming service for free.

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