These “generates e-waste” articles are political hit pieces. I hope we’re all intelligent enough to recognise the absurdity of the statement. In case it is unc

These “generates e-waste” articles are political hit pieces. I hope we’re all intelligent enough to recognise the absurdity of the statement. In case it is unclear, a similar article was going around the Internet a few years ago complaining about the “tons of e-waste created by Apple Airpods”. Yes, that’s true in the sense that Apple was producing “tons” of e-waste annually… two of them. One ton wouldn’t be “tons”, you see, so the article was technically correct in the dumbest and most nakedly deceptive way possible. Waste is about inefficiency. It implies no or negative utility. There’s a hint of huge landfills and truck after truck of bulky stuff filling that up. AirPods and AI chips are the opposite of inefficient! They’re some of the smallest, densest, most concentrated and space-efficient products ever made by man. To invoke the word “waste” in juxtaposition to these things is so absurd, so contrary to their essential nature that it’s clearly a deliberate falsehood, signalling membership in a group by its absurdity. It’s like the official statements on RT that yet another oligarch “fell out” of a window. Everyone knows what really happened there. The claim of defenestration is a coded signal telling the listeners a very different message to the verbatim text. Someone who is scared of AI wrote this article or had it written on their behalf. It’s the product of a Luddite, or someone whose job is about to be replaced. “Stop the efficiencies! My career as a copy editor is at risk! I mean… it’s surely wasteful to optimise my job away with a chip that’s a mere square inch in size and weighs a gram!”