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Tens of billions spent on AI data centers. But people still starve across the planet. Amazing.
by asim 11mo ago
Tens of billions spent on AI data centers. But people still starve across the planet. Amazing.
- dolphinscorpion 11mo agoAnd many spent hundreds of dollars on a dinner when they could feed x poor people. Slipery slope
- all_factz 11mo agoWe need dinners, we don’t need AI
- kcaseg 11mo agoLast time I commented something very similar thinking it was the least controversial no brainer thing and multiple people reacted as if it was some Leninist ragebait lol
- OhioMan2943 11mo agoConditioning- America is a capitalist social experiment and I mean that literally
- edm0nd 11mo agoSeems pretty successful then no for being such a young country. America is literally where all the major tech and internet companies are.
- molteanu 11mo agoWhere I'm pretty sure that the definition of "successful" that you have in mind is one given by America itself.
- OhioMan2943 11mo agoYep- this is my point- it's becoming far more obvious how the game is being run now everything is going to shit and they're pulling the plug.
- gherkinnn 11mo ago"Hub for all the major tech companies" isn't the only metric that matters, not in the face of its current administration. It so is not.
- GolfPopper 11mo agoLike TSMC and ASML?
- yugioh3 11mo agoBoth of those were funded by and built off of American technology and investment. TSMC as an outsourcing of American made chips and ASML as a direct result of DoD research.
- piva00 11mo agoASML is responsible for all the engineering side of the research from EUV LLC, painting it as "direct result from DoD research" as to minimise the achievement is way backhanded. Without ASML the whole EUV LLC research would be dead in the water, it's a symbiotic relationship, and the amount of engineering R&D that ASML had to do to actually deploy the technology shouldn't be understated like that. I don't think ASML was "funded" by American technology, it's actually ASML who has to pay for licencing...
- no_wizard 11mo agoA young country that inherited old values, cultural norms, traditions and ethos. It’s not like the US rose in a vacuum. It sees impressive on its face and to some extent I believe it is, but it has more to do with being a resource rich nation (lots of plentiful raw material within our borders) and the fact the last time we had a foreign invasion was during the war of 1812. We aren’t some near unbelievable anomaly of history, we built on our British roots
- mmooss 11mo agoThat is partly attributed to being by far the largest single market for much of the 20th century - European countries have at most ~30% of the population - and being the only major economy not destroyed by the end of WWII, which resulted in the US producing half of world GDP at the time. US businesses have had a much larger market to sell to, and that attracts investment and talent.
- CamperBob2 11mo agoOne great thing about America is that we won't shoot you at the border for trying to leave.
- senordevnyc 11mo agoIt's also one of the countries with the highest percentage of people who give to charity and volunteer, fwiw.
- piva00 11mo agoPeople in the USA have to volunteer to provide social services not provided by the government though, stuff like food banks which many other developed countries have services in place to take care of their citizens. Charitable donations follow a similar pattern, the USA is a different system so not really comparable to some other developed countries which have public systems in place to cover these cases.
- ivape 11mo agoTechnological innovation veils our failed morality. I don’t ever see this resolving without God literally showing up to Earth.
- CamperBob2 11mo agoAnd there you are with your fancy computer! Sell it and feed the poor.
- steve_adams_86 11mo agoTheir fancy computer's value is a mote compared to the billions of dollars being poured into AI software and infrastructure. It's a dead horse that shouldn't be beaten anymore. Individual choices are so insignificant as to be effectively meaningless in contexts like this.
- CamperBob2 11mo agoTheir fancy computer is the tip of a trillion-dollar spear, forged by our precursors who were trying to invent new and innovative ways to blow up half the world while keeping that half from blowing our half up. There are no clean hands here. Any attempt to claim the moral high ground by dictating how other people should spend their money (or their machine cycles) will meet with the usual degree of success.
- asim 11mo agoWhat if what I donate every year is 100x the value of a laptop I've owned for 5 years? Your logic is illogical.
- CamperBob2 11mo agoWell, you know, we're all doing what we can.
- anon291 11mo agoPeople in other countries starve because the people in charge of them are evil not because the people with resources lack benevolence. If you've ever tried to do charity in a foreign country with a foreign culture and language you would be aware of the issues. No amount of outside money in the world could fix these problems. In fact they will make it worse. People need to grow up. In the United States, starvation doesn't exist so we've expanded the definition to include more people because we really care to feed people. If you've been to countries where actual starvation is a possibility, you'd understand. So tired of this self hating unaware self flagellation.
- bombcar 11mo agoThis is seen in that starvation is effectively solved in the USa (and now runs the other direction; the poor in the US often tend toward obesity instead of starvation). The “solution” to countries with starvation today is likely massive full-scale invasion and domination; something the modern world doesn’t have an appetite for.
- anon291 11mo agoYeah America has no ability to colonize other countries. We are not unified enough as a culture to do that. Look at the debacle of Afghanistan. Like right now there is starvation in Nigeria because Islamofascists from the north are hunting Christians in the south. Exactly how will any amount of American money convince religious zealots to stop being zealots? If anything, a large influx of money from infidels will just make the clerics claim that their victims are foreign operatives. There is nothing we can do other than pray or stage a full scale military invasion. At that point we can either choose to fully administer the place (unsustainable) or we would have to destroy the apparatus that made the situation possible, which is going to look a helluva lot like a genocide. An impossible situation and only one of many across the globe.
- mmooss 11mo ago> there is starvation in Nigeria because Islamofascists from the north are hunting Christians in the south Can you provide some evidence that that's a cause of hunger problems in Nigeria? It's such a politicized claim onw, it's > There is nothing we can do other than pray or stage a full scale military invasion. Warfare doesn't solve any problems, as anyone who knows its history or experiences it will express. It's the worst problem for humanity. Are you really claiming that problems aren't otherwise solved? It's absurd. Your plan is almost never done and the correlation, between peace (and the outlawing of war) the growth of freedom and prosperity - including in West Africa - is the opposite.
- chii 11mo agoi think a good counter to this sort of argument is : https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/ https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...
- frm88 11mo agoWow! This has aged really, really badly. 50 years and many billions of dollars later and we're neither on the Moon or Mars or have significantly enhanced the distribution of food to those in need, let alone international cooperation. Higher food production through survey and assessment from orbit, and better food distribution through improved international relations, are only two examples of how profoundly the space program will impact life on Earth. As good counters go, this underperforms.
- tim333 11mo agoI agree the space program was a bit of a flop but food distribution and poverty stuff has improved Extreme poverty from 45% to less than 10% https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief Famine deaths about 1/3 https://ourworldindata.org/famines https://ourworldindata.org/famines
- JuniperMesos 11mo agoIt didn't age badly at all. This prediction was dead-on accurate. The widespread use of satellite monitoring of the Earth's surface has paid huge dividends for humanity in all sorts of ways including better and cheaper food production. Also the GPS system alone has been hugely important for every human system that involves navigating from one place on the Earth to another, which of course includes food transport as well as many many other things relevant to people's lives and health.
- wewewedxfgdf 11mo agoNo doubt you have a nice bike or computer or you spend money on something often like movies or board games or something. Do you argue that money should all go to feeding the hungry?
- consp 11mo agoPoor argumentation. If I spend 25 billion on movies and still have enough money to never care you should ask me again.
- ic_fly2 11mo ago[flagged]
- asim 11mo agoI donate part of my wealth to the poor every year and whatever more I feel is adequate based on a code of law e.g religion. I am just an individual. If I was a multi billion dollar conglomerate that incentive would be much higher. To bring the world out of poverty is to enrich all of humanity and my work would benefit from that as more people would benefit from the technology I built. But if the incentive is to spend everything and borrow more to build data centers to fuel addictive services and exploit people then this is quite a disservice to mankind.
- ponector 11mo agoHumanity is enormously rich. Compare to the state of humanity 200y ago. Pretty much everyone was struggling to survive, to get food and some heat. Nowadays even the poorest countries are not starving, unless there is a war going on.
- baubino 11mo agoYou’re demonstrating the problem of averages. While what you are saying might be true on average, it doesn’t negate the point being made, which is that millions of people continue to struggle to survive and live without adequate food, heat, water, healthcare, etc. Also, there are multiple wars going on across the world that are making the problem even worse.
- krona 11mo agoCapital misallocation do be like that, but I don't think that capital would be feeding children in the Congo if it wasn't for Facebook's latest folly.
- loeg 11mo agoThe issue is mostly the corrupt elites that control these impoverished counties, not foreign aid or lack thereof.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- spwa4 11mo agoThe real issue is far more controversial than that. The issue is not even necessarily the corrupt elites but the culture. And specifically that any new elites that might displace the existing one would just do the same. Think of Afghanistan as an example, where the US really did create a modern tolerant state ... for a while. Locals didn't want to keep it going, or at least, not enough. Because the idea that there aren't very wealthy Afghans is just wrong. There's entire neighborhoods in Kabul full of luxury villas with people going into fancy restaurants constantly. That's effectively what the Taliban are fighting for.
- tim333 11mo agoMaintaining a modern tolerant state is probably harder than it looks. Like in the UK we take it for granted but it's the end result of centuries of sometimes bloody trial and error fixes. People think it's silly we still have a king but look what happened to Russia, France, Germany etc after they got rid of theirs. Afghanistan might have worked out if the US took a king like role sitting in a fort somewhere and saying ok, you're prime minister to some Afgan after each election. The king role may seem like nothing but if a UK prime minister says sod this I'm ruler for life then the king doesn't endorse them and the king is the head of the armed forces which makes it difficult to do such stuff.
- loeg 11mo agoMichigan has plenty of water. But California still has droughts sometimes. Amazing (if you're 14).
- ponector 11mo agoGambling market in US has $100bn+ revenue. Tobacco sales in US is $70bn+ People starve and (almost) no one cares.
- asim 11mo agoYes also huge problems and many other industries to speak of. Unfortunately as technology dominates and the most valuable company in the world is producing GPUs we know where it's all headed. I think while gambling and narcotics are very addictive and terrible we have overlooked technology and it's crept up on us in a bad way. Screens are horribly addictive. Maybe even worse than those things mentioned because you can be indoctrinated from birth. Because the cost is almost zero and continuous and the advancements are only trying to drive further addiction e.g Meta's heavy investment in AR and VR. AR/VR plus AI is basically the recipe for virtual worlds which people will prefer over real life. So we'll become even more disillusioned to the worlds problems because we'll prefer to escape to some virtual reality where all our desires are serviced.
- fvgvkujdfbllo 11mo agoThere is no shortage of food anymore. Unless genocide, no one is starving.
- ehnto 11mo agoIn their own country, even. Even just to save face, I would have expected one of the billionaires to have started a foundation tackling the problem in some way.
- lenkite 11mo agoBirth rates are >4 in most of those starving regions. Family planning needed first.
- wussboy 11mo agoThat is the cart before the horse. Families, and women specifically, need stability and reasonable guarantees that fewer babies will be more likely to survive before they will stop having 4.
- lenkite 11mo agoNo, it is definitely the cart after the horse - kindly check basic facts. The babies are surviving thanks to declining child mortality - population of regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa has grown from 434 million to ~1.3 billion in the last few decades. Basically your assertion that "reasonable guarantees that fewer babies will be more likely to survive" is completely and utterly wrong. Desperate family planning is needed, but religion stands in the way. No amount of international aid will fix this fundamental problem.
- solumunus 11mo agoClimate change will sort that out.
- pfannkuchen 11mo agoPopulation numbers in all areas where this is widespread exploded after the introduction of efficient agriculture from outside. Like if lack of food was the root problem, we would expect population in these places to be decreasing, not increasing, right? Something other than food scarcity is at play here.
- sigmoid10 11mo agoThat's a logical fallacy. Population growth can outgrow food supply thanks to high fertility and access to better hygiene and medical treatment from outside combined with a lack of birth control. So you would still see population growth, but a growing fraction of this population could be malnourished. That being said, the most common reason is simply war. If you look at the famine in Sudan right now, it is a direct consequence of the civil war (which also happens to be the biggest and bloodiest war by far in the world right now). Lost crops from weather or diseases can also restrict local food production, but it only ever really turns into a problem when armed groups prevent outside food supplies from moving to affected areas like the military in Sudan does right now.
- pfannkuchen 11mo agoYou are telling me that every infomercial I’ve ever seen about starving children in Africa was from war? How often are these people at war?
- sigmoid10 11mo ago>How often are these people at war? More often than people like you realise apparently. But it's not really your fault. If you only consume western news, you might believe that Ukraine or Israel are the worst wars of our time. But that's only because western news doesn't really report on the current situation in Sudan at all, despite it being much, much worse than anything else that's been going on in the world recently.
- chistev 11mo agoIt won't give them profits