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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[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The structure of a neural network, in terms of how it mathematically produces qualia, is a tool in our environment we don't fully understand. We don't know why neurons in this particular shape produce qualia.

And then we made artificial neurons and tried putting them in similar shapes. Some parts are different, some parts are the same. LLMs definitely share our language skills and produce language the same way our Wernicke's area does. But they definitely don't have the same critical thinking skills. So clearly we copied some functions of the brain, but not all of them.

We don't know if we copied qualia.

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

No. Llms do not produce language like humans do. I don't know why you would think that.

There is nothing in the brain that is akin to llms.

Children can acquire language words and rules faster than even computers can.

We do not pattern match. We do not only regurgitate what we heard or read somewhere else. We are creative in our word generation.