Calm me down? I am perfectly calm.
I am merely pointing out some uncomfortable facts that most people don’t like having pointed out to them.
You, in fact, started your OP by labelling one group of people as AI “haters”.
This is a derogatory and grossly misleading label applied to a group of people who are skeptical of the rhetoric around a damaging technology.
Yet I merely point out facts like: (1) the data used to train these machines is stolen from all humanity, (b) the cost of running them is astronomical, (c) they are being used as an excuse to destroy the labour market, (d) they are being consumed by the mindless masses to make them ever more mindless, (e) nobody even understands how they work and peoples’ efforts to do so are often comical and amateurish, etc etc.
When a mathematician like Tao (or yourself) says something like “I am not interested in the technology per se, only the tool and the results it can produce” you yourself are contributing to the careless promulgation of a catastrophically damaging mind set and technology, which I see as causing untold harm to humanity.
There is a food chain of profiteers here, at the top of which sit the uber rich tech bro grifter billionaires.
This type of “person” will lie and steal and commit all manner of crimes against humanity to achieve their goal of attaining more power and money.
Tao has chosen a path that ultimately benefits these profiteering grifters.
So if you’re gonna post uncritically about that, then yeah, I’m gonna come down hard.
I would’ve expected more critical thought from you, a person who has admirably dedicated the latter part of their career to tackling problems of environment and society.
