AI This Week: Time to Replace Your CEO with AI

Headlines This Week

The Top Story: AI’s Water Guzzling Habit

It ’s no secret that the tech industriousness has a water supply job . Data center , which are integral to our highly digitalize world , need to becooledon the reg to feed decent . Problematically , cooling processes requireimmense amounts of fresh H2O , much of which has to be nurse out of local U.S. water organization . It probably comes as no surprise that the emerge AI industry , hugely energy intensive as it is , isone of the thirstiestin Silicon Valley .

That thirstiness was affirmed this workweek when Microsoft releasedits latest environmental report , the likes of which showed that its urine usage had skyrocketed between 2021 and 2022 . The paper , which tracks the period when the fellowship ’s AI operation begin to accelerate , showed that Microsoft had burn off through some 6,399,415 cubic meters of water in a 12 - month period — about a 30 pct increment from the charge per unit of the previous year .

The findings are n’t exactly surprising . Astudypublished before this yr by the University of California Riverside estimated that it takes up to half a cubic decimeter — or approximately a nursing bottle — of water just to talk to ChatGPT for a little while . Worse , the study also plan how much water Microsoft had used to aim GPT-3 over a two week period : more or less 700,000 liters . The subject area noted the “ passing interest ” nature of these finding , given that “ freshwater scarceness has become one of the most pressing challenges ” of our fourth dimension .

If Jeff Bezos were still CEO of Amazon, I’d argue that the e-commerce giant should replace him with an automated chatbot.

If Jeff Bezos were still CEO of Amazon, I’d argue that the e-commerce giant should replace him with an automated chatbot.Photo: lev radin (Shutterstock)

One of the study ’s generator , Shaolei Ren , told Gizmodo this week that AI is much more energy - intensive than most other forms of computing . “ The energy density of AI servers are more often than not higher than other type of servers because they have lots of GPUs and , for each server , they can squander as much as two to three kilowatt of tycoon , whereas normal server typically consume below 500 watts . So there is a immense difference in terms of their energy density , which means that there is also a difference in their cooling needs , ” articulate Ren .

There are methods that technical school ship’s company can take to reduce the amount of water that they ’re using to coach these manakin , said Ren . Unfortunately , further oversight of whether the companies are doing this or not is baffling since most of the AI seller do not release the related to data publicly , he aver .

The Interview: Ed Zitron, on How to Automate Your C-Suite

This week we had the pleasure of speaking with Ed Zitron . In addition to being the founder of his ownmedia relations firm , Zitron has a tech - focusedSubstack(“Where ’s Your Ed At ” ) , and is also a contributing writer for Insider . This week , Zitron wrote anop - edhumorously hint that companies should replace their chief executive officer with AI . executive did n’t sleep together it . We spoke with Zitron about AI , project , and the current foibles of corporate governance . This interview has been edited for briefness and clearness .

For people who have n’t readyour op - ed , they should obviously just do that . But I desire to give you an opportunity to make your case . So , just concisely , what argumentation are you making in this piece ? And why should we interchange corporate executive director with ChatGPT ?

The argument I ’m mostly making is that the CEO has become an extremely shadowy role . It ’s become one with very little accountability , very little in the signified of a definitive set of responsibility . If you depend at the introductory literature around the CEO role , it ’s in reality not that obvious what they do . There was a Harvard study from 2018 where they looked into what they were doing and it was like “ hoi polloi , ” “ meetings , ” “ strategy . ” That could mean anything — quite literally anything ! “ Strategy ” ? What does that intend ? So , CEOs look to be just going into meeting and saying , ‘ We should do this ’ or ‘ we should n’t do that . ’ The problem is that if your only office in an establishment is to take information and go ‘ eh , we should do this ’ and you ’re not a lawyer or a Dr. or someone with a substantial , factual science set , what ’s the goddamn point ?

Image: peterschreiber.media

What sort of responses have you gotten from your man so far ?

Everybody on Twitter seemed happy with it , whereas masses on LinkedIn were burst 50 - 50 . If you say anything negative about administrator on LinkedIn , a lot of guys who are n’t executives get very pissed off . ( And it ’s always guys , btw — men seem really sensible about this subject . ) But there ’s still a good amount of citizenry who remember , yeah , if there ’s a chief executive who has a vague role where they do n’t in reality execute — where they do stuff that is n’t really link up to the product but they still get paid a ridiculous amount of money — maybe we do necessitate to automate them ! Or perhaps we ask to more clearly define their role and make them accountable for that role and give the sack them if they do badly .

What do you suppose the probability are that companies will take you up on your suggestion here ?

Photo: Ed Zitron/LinkedIn

Oh , extremely low . Just to be abundantly clear I do not think a individual goddamn company does this . That ’s why I proffer an choice in the piece , which is that we postulate working CEOs . Me , personally , I do a lot of the peg work at my own business . I would say I do more than my fair share . But , also , why would you work for me if I did n’t ? That ’s what I ’ve never empathise about these CEOs that do n’t mould . It ’s like , I can translate an editor that does n’t write but an editor that ’s never compose or never write ? An editor who just sits there and makes phone call ? Or an executive editor ? Or , I do n’t know , some kind of private equity cat who buys a large organization but does n’t seem to have any appreciation for what go on there , and then proceeds to make a gang of really stupid calls … that ’s where you run into problems .

That ’s what my Insider man was about , basically . Executives seem garbled from work - Cartesian product . It ’s a cardinal proceeds .

I ’m curious about what you make of generative AI and how the executive class seems to be weaponizing it against workers ?

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Generative AI is hilarious because it has the appearance of intelligence without really having any . It ’s the thoroughgoing form of McKinsey - level consultant ; it just sick content based on a sure subset of data point . It does not bring life experience to what it does . It does n’t create anything new . It ’s not learning or thinking . It ’s basically just taking a vainglorious corner of Legos and trying to create something , using no actual creativity , with a rough estimate of what it thinks a house look like .

There ’s a stack of mystification around AI and there ’s all this rhetoric about how it ’s going to “ change the world . ” But really , when you get flop down to it , AI is basically being cant over to companies as a cost - rescuer , because it offers them the opportunity to automatize a certain portion of their work force .

This colligate back to what we were talking about earlier . When you have executive and managers who are disconnected from the mean value of production — or the procedure of production — they will make calls based wholly on cost , output , and speed , because they do n’t really realize the production process . They do n’t know what ’s going on inside the machine . The only thing they see is what run low in the grapevine and what comes out the remnant and they devote attending to how tight it ’s happening .

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