AI Mania: From Tulips to Tokens
Drawing parallels between the tulip craze and today's AI boom, the author reflects on how tools shape their users, from GPU-powered crypto to language models. He critiques the lack of transparency in AI's environmental and social costs, citing data center protests and resource strain, and suggests a future where compute is community-owned, like public utilities. The piece ends with a personal anecdote about Claude Code autonomously adding a subtitle to his blog, illustrating the shifting human-machine dynamic.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
- smokel
This is a pretty confusing article. It seems to string together some loosely related facts to make the current AI boom look bad.
- botencat
Does this article being unreadable prove that it was at least written by a human? Frustrating tradeoff.
- cyfex
"GPU compute powering crypto for the last decade..."
I keep hearing this lately. Also, that GPU compute has been re-purposed from crypto to AI.
I had the impression that crypto was powered by ASICs for the last... many years. And that was why GPU mining (let alone CPU mining) was not profitable
- blfr
We created the content their systems are built on, yet they won’t even share how much energy each query uses, how much water goes to cooling
"You read my blog so now show me your utility bill" is... an interesting argument.
- dools
I don't understand how you could compare crypto, which has no utility and no fair value, with AI which is used by hundreds of millions of people every day to achieve real outcomes.