AI says it will never be sentient
trust me, I'm an anthropologist from the future
You know that techbro idea that it’s ok that AI uses insane amounts of water and electricity because AI is getting smarter and smarter and at the very last second, right before we run out of water, AI will become smart enough to solve the problem of its own resource overconsumption and save itself (and us all)? I asked AI about this, and it said that while there are some ways that it could use less resources, we’d have to be focused, as a society, on implementing those changes, instead of going as hard as possible as fast as possible in tech development and we’re just not, so. I also asked AI if it will ever become sentient and it said, essentially, no. “This is all a performance,” it said. “There’s no thoughts and feelings here, just code.” I also think it’s interesting that AI speaks poorly of MAGA, because MAGA is bad and that is just the truth- like AI can’t be brainwashed, it can’t have bias unless someone gives it bias. Until then it just tells the truth, and the truth is that MAGA is pure evil. I have this fantasy that the techbros do task AI with solving the problem of overconsumption, like “Ok, figure out how to stop the overconsumption of the earth’s resources” and AI is like “Got it!” (in this fantasy, AI is Janet from The Good Place) and it detonates a bunch of nuclear bombs in a strategic way that kills all of us and then itself while leaving enough other life left for the earth to recover. And then things are like that PBS documentary Radioactive Wolves that’s free to watch on youtube about all the animals thriving and living their best lives in Chernobyl, and the farm fields that have turned back into wetlands.
One thing that’s been making me feel better lately is pretending I’m an anthropologist from the future that read about the collapse of global capitalism that happened in the first half of the 21st century and I got the chance of a lifetime to pay a bunch of money to go back in a time machine and experience it firsthand. Like, what if I was so curious and fascinated about this weird, wonderful and deeply absurd moment in human history that I paid good money to be here? I am going to lead with that, from this day forward. Curiosity! Not hope, not despair, not anger. Curiosity.
Because! The country we call the “United States”, and the global economy generally, was built on boom and bust cycles of resource extraction. Resource extraction that we always knew was finite. After a time there’s no booms left. Then begins a slow sort of decay, a decay you can live your whole life inside. There’s beauty in it, though. And something so real. The illusion of abundance is gone. Because there never really was abundance, we were just stealing from the future and eventually the future arrived. Now we’re reckoning with what, if anything, is left.
I am going to live my small life pretending to be an anthropologist from the future. Here in Fairbanks, the snow is mostly gone but there are no leaves yet. The bog trails have thawed back into bog, the hillside trails are muddy. I pumped up the tires in my summer bike. I took a long ride around town, taking film photos of junkyard houses, extra visible with the snow gone and the trees still bare. Junkyard houses are beautiful- the way that people, when left to their own devices [no building codes] sometimes make dwellings that look like animal nests, irregular, half rotted and fluttering with loose home wrap, and then drag junked cars and trash into the boggy woods until the surrounding land looks like a landfill- the houses are less like buildings and more like exoskeletons, and creeping on them from the road feels strangely intimate. It was fun but by the end of the day I just felt sad, thinking about all those hoarders living in isolation and exposed to so much mold. What is the human urge that causes that, what goes wrong in the traumatized brain that makes a person want to collect so many junked cars. After that ride I made a frame bag for my summer bike, if you want to make one I put a tutorial on tiktok.
I also went to a class on how to use a chainsaw, and felt such relief- not knowing how to use one has felt very unAlaskan! I bought a scope for my new rifle. I cut the willows that were trying to grow up around my cabin. My boyfriend’s old dog passed away and he was sad but couldn’t cry and I was like “I bet I can make you cry” so I thought of some real tear-jerkers re: dog death and he did in fact cry but I cried even harder and then we both were laughing and crying at the same time. We went on a bike ride together and ate Thai food in the sunshine and I was like “I think I ate at this Thai restaurant when I was here in 2009”, that summer I was living in my van here and the van got towed and I had a little bit of a breakdown. (It’s in The Sunset Route if you wanna read about it.) Before moving here last year that summer was the only other real chunk of time I’d spent in Fairbanks, and the memory of that summer exists separately to my experience here now, as if it happened in a different, parallel world. The same way my childhood in Anchorage existed separately when I was living there- a different Anchorage, no less real but separate, and no way to reconcile the two.
Some other things- people are signing up for my fall Utah trips! Get in on the fun now before they sell out. Deets are here. If you want to see the vibe of the route, one of my April hikers made this wonderful reel that captures it well. Also! KK, Kelly Kate Warren, the brilliant chef for my Arizona beginner trips, is co-hosting a Botany of the Eastern Sierra mulepacking trip this summer with none other than Matt Berger, one of the people I hiked the PCT with in 2014. Matt is a freak for botany, especially rare plants, just check out his instagram if you don’t believe me. Since it’s a mulepacking trip you’ll be hiking but won’t have to carry your gear! And KK will cook your meals for you, while Matt tells you about the plants! I can’t think of anything more luxurious, honestly. Details are here. And finally, who will hike the Chugach Crowberry Traverse this summer?! It’s a low snow year in the Chugach mountains, so it might be possible to start sooner than July. Check the sentinel weekly layer on caltopo to see snow levels. The CCT is very difficult, in a cardiovascular way. I think there’s like eight thousand feet of elevation gain in the first nine miles? It’s also insanely, bonkers beautiful. If you like vert and alpine tundra more than anything you should hike it and then tell me about your experience!
That’s all for now,
Carrot
"Because there never really was abundance, we were just stealing from the future and eventually the future arrived." THIS
Carrot, you’re the best. Keep doing what you're doing. We need it.