February 11, 2025
Dear editor;
It has been on my mind to write about my concern online technology is taking our resources of personal time, taking resources of electricity, and is re-allocating capital and private investments into computers instead of humans.
I have never felt accepting of telemarketing calls. Advertising can be done in a way not to intrude on one’s time; aren’t written advertisements more effective? The U.S. Post Office is still in business and they do bulk mail at lower rates. I have communicated to all who will listen about recent telemarketing calls (two of them started January 21 and again around January 25) which try to give the idea they come from the County. The opening is, “Are you satisfied with your assessment?” The voice sounds like a real person, someone on the staff in Building C. I jumped to the conclusion one of those real estate “we buy houses for cash” is now doing telemarketing and to keep the potential customer on the phone, opens with the familiar voice; how did the marketeers get this familiar voice? It could be Artificial Intelligence at work, if all they need is a voice sample. Think about the harm this technology could do. We know the Mayor’s voice. Probably other officials could be used to lure potential customers into a scam. I would guess in this instance, the marketing company simply hired one telemarketer who has a familiar voice and accent. They might not even need AI. I have to wonder how a company can afford to pay people to make calls that usually are not picked up, or hung up immediately. Is there profit in getting consumers to give out information such as whether they are planning to sell their home, own a home, are satisfied with what their home might sell for?
Telemarketing is just one bad result that might get worse with A.I. and voice sampling. My bigger concern is that AI just takes resources of electricity that are better used on the normal grid, water purification, manufacturing, agriculture and even the manufacture of batteries. The Stargate project is the best example of possible AI excess. Although it is three principal private investors, this money is being diverted into computers instead of human beings (doing work such as agriculture, manufacturing, teaching in-person, etc). I attended a one-hour presentation on AI January 22 given by a PhD student who already researches cybersecurity and has his own consulting firm.
In the AI Arms race, US leads over China; UK, Germany, and Canada significantly lower when measured by the Number of AI Publications. When it comes to research, US is on top of the race. When it comes to numbers of data centers, US leads again. Here are the numbers: The World has 11,800 data centers and of these, USA has 5,381 of them. The “rest of the world” has 1,469 and specifically Canada has 336, Germany 514, China 449, Japan 219. No single country I saw on the diagram have numbers much different than countries in EU. These data centers are what concern me because they require so much electricity. They take land for what could be otherwise used for agriculture, roads, and infrastructure. Electricity is a resource that ought to be conserved rather than squandered. Of course, it is only my opinion that computers are not good use of resources!
I close with another recent encounter with computers: Facebook denied me access as of January 30! The error message I received was the same as what Gmail sent me December 2021 when they, too, required people to have their “own device”. It is par for the course this is still another nudge to force people to have Internet at home. For readers in the same predicament (wanting to use public computers rather than buy their own device), I can tell you what I did: Protonmail is a less well-known email service that does not require a phone number or device to set up an account. The disadvantage (?) is it does not have a spam folder and also does not separate out social media notifications. I decided not to re-set up Facebook using my new email. Without the Social Notifications folder, it would be way too much email. What was life like before Facebook? I still have plenty to do and I’m sure you would find other socialization to take the place of Facebook. It is a caution not to become dependent on computer, period. Where would we be if a greater power decided to control everything?
I will close with my opinion there is no communication more important than the printed page, the post office-delivered letter, and books. If the Post Office is taken away, we will be reliant on,,umm, computers. I refrain from using the “D” word.
Mary Goetsch, Aurora