These days one can’t log into Facebook without seeing a post showing AI-generated toddlers fashioned as a pop culture icon “lip-syncing” previously recorded soundbites. For instance, just this week our father shared with us an AI-generated video of the Sling Blade scene in which Karl Childers asks for a large order of “French-fried potaters.” Cute, we replied, but proceeded to caution our old man that it takes an awful lot of electricity to generate these pointless videos for society’s dying attention span. To our dismay, Artificial Intelligence isn’t going away, but it’s worth pointing out, when we can, that it comes with environmental impacts. Nature.com’s Kate Crawford wrote in early 2024 that “a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search.” So how much is too much? The same article pointed to the fact that the San Francisco-based ChatGPT was already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes, and within years large AI systems could need as much energy as entire nations — and that article was published more than a year ago. Now, it seems, any country bumpkin with a laptop can request AI to create a video that looks fun at first glance — but what does creative AI really contribute to society? In full disclosure, we occasionally use the AI built into our hosting service, but only for headline suggestions — and even then we use our own brain and journalism training to craft the headline as we see fit. Think twice before you hit that like button on the next clip of Theo Von as a mullet-wearing 2-year-old; you’re only giving a thumbs up to a potential energy problem.
Got a late start posting news today. Our excuse: in preparing for a big Memorial Day weekend, we got our vehicle stuck on a steep hill, with mud and an even steeper hill behind and a downed tree in front. Fortunately our neighbors at camp have a chainsaw. A tool we need to invest in.
Ozzy the Chocolate Chihuahua sez: One kitty kat in our house learnt how to open drawers in de kitchen, and she eatin’ bred and makin’ my Diddy real mad. Hims ready to git rid o’ dat kat.
The Arkadelphia Aquatic Park opens this weekend.
School is out for the summer.
We can’t help but laugh at media reports of public swimming areas being closed due to high levels of E. Coli — mostly due to too much goose poop, according to the Arkansas Department of Health. We swim in the Ouachita River downstream of Maddox Branch, even post-2020: We’d be happy with just some organic goose poop!
That rotten sore on the face of Mother Earth gets bigger. — Rage Against The Machine
Joel Phelps is publisher and editor of arkadelphian.com. Opinions in this column are his own. Contact Phelps by emailing editor@arkadelphian.com.
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
