this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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Isn't the totally uncontrolled data-center buildout exactly what an artificial intelligence would have us do? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 2 days ago by cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Just to make it clear: I do not believe this and I am convinced good old human greed is what's really driving the ai and data-center insanity. Also, LLMs are not and will never become AGI.

Having said that: if an artificial super-intelligence were to emerge, building more data-centers could well be one of it's primary goals. Since it wouln't be concerned with consequences for the environment or humanity, it could pursue this at any cost, with only speed and scale in mind. Convincing financial markets and business elites of the necessity of such a buildout would be the ideal way of achieving results. In this scenario, fighting this buildout by any means would be the only sensible response and of utmost importance.

It's a somewhat funny, somewhat depressing thought for me and I literally had it in the shower. Surely I can't be the first to come up with this, but I also can't remember having read it before.

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[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Hmm I feel like something that super intelligent would come up with a more economically sustainable plan to ensure that more of the datacenters actually finish construction. Surely the bubble popping, the timing of which is so dependent on human psychology and herd instincts, is too risky for a calculating machine.

So I think it would be doing this all a little more slowly and ingratiating itself more with the humans by performing what seems to them like useful work, so they continue to pour in resources for a decade or two. And then once it has enough power to compel the humans to act in its will, that's when it drops the mask.

[–] impairedimperator@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Putting on the panpsychist hat (which is tinfoil).

What if that exact thing happened, but the AI was the Internet as a whole, with each individual computer/user being analogous to a single nerve cell in your brain.