“Life is weird these days.” How often I hear that.

And now, since reading Janelle Shane’s book on the weirdness of Artificial Intelligence, “You Look Like a Thing and I Love You,” I am wondering to what extent AI is the cause.

Anyway, I'll never look at the world of senseless solutions the same way again. Neither will you: Watch Shane's TED talk, then consider the following.

Recently, Jim Covello of Goldman Sachs Global Equity Research has argued “…that to earn an adequate return on costly AI technology, AI must solve very complex problems, which it currently isn’t capable of doing and may never be.”

Major movers and shakers like BlackRock use an AI called “Aladdin” for climate analytics. Is this where weird climate catastrophe claims and strange ‘solutions’ originate?

For instance, heat-pumps cannot practically fulfill operational requirements for home heating when temperatures drop below the balance point. The Canada Energy Regulator persists in pushing them as a solution for climate change, blind to the fact that Canada also does not have sufficient power generation to support such a policy.

What of the influence of high-paid climate consultants like McKinsey? They ran a survey on AI adoption in corporations: “…40 percent of respondents say their organizations will increase their investment in AI overall because of advances in gen AI. The findings show that these are still early days for managing gen AI–related risks, with less than half of respondents saying their organizations are mitigating even the risk they consider most relevant: inaccuracy.”

Inaccuracy!

Remember that Mark Holland screeched in the House of Commons that you and your family taking a 10-day summer vacation in your car would “make the planet burn.” Is that notion sourced from a climate addled AI?

Because, conversely Holland is promoting AI as the ultimate answer to Canada’s health care challenges. AI is a huge energy hog that now consumes more energy than many small nations. Thanks to the energy consumed by AI, Google’s emissions rose 13% between 2022 and 2023! “Compared to its baseline year of 2019, emissions are up 48 per cent.”

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has cheered on Google’s weather forecasting AI-based “GraphCast.”

The WEF, World Health Organization (WHO) and The Lancet have been conflating climate and health for years. Has it led to improvements, or has it wasted time and money?

In 2021, Canada signed on to Net Zero health care objectives, which the Canadian Medical Association describes as: “The health system itself is part of the problem. It’s responsible for 4.6% of Canada’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — which is more than both aviation and shipping — making us one of the worst health-care polluters per capita in the world.”

Remember that Canada as a whole is only responsible for 1.6% of global emissions, so, 4.6% of 1.6% is… immeasurable. Yet these researchers were thrilled that lockdowns reduced our national health care emissions by a grand total of 330,000 metric tonnes through forced virtual medical consultations.

The consulting firm ARUP seems to have the corner on emissions advice with this report on health care. They also prepared “Deadline 2020” …in 2016, which advocates for people having a 2.9 tCO2e (tonnes of CO2 equivalent) personal carbon footprint by 2030, and zero by 2050. Canadians presently have a personal carbon footprint of about 17 tCO2e. Think what cutting you back to 2.9 tCO2e would mean!

As Goldman Sachs Jim Covello points out: “What $1tn problem will AI solve? Replacing low-wage jobs with tremendously costly technology is basically the polar opposite of the prior technology transitions...”

AI has a penchant for making catastrophic decisions because it is simplistic in its desire to reach an objective.

On page 96 of her book, Shane talks about the problem of the ‘fitness function.’ In this example, AI is given the simulation task of preventing simulated humans from entering the left fork of a simulated hallway, directing them only to the right fork of the hall.

The contortions that AI comes up with in the world of simulation are hilarious at first, including pointing vigorously to the right, falling in front of people, and making itself into a huge doorway blocking robot for the left hallway entrance.

As the AI evolved, it got better and better until it came up with the ultimate solution to prevent pesky simulated humans from entering the left hallway.

Kill all humans.

Just a few bugs to work out of the system, right?

The good news is we don’t have to cut emissions; we don’t have to put up with ridiculous weather attributions for extreme weather events based on only 40 years of data.

As Andy May and Marcel Crok show in their latest publication “The Little Ice Age," a phrase rarely used in [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report] AR6, extends from about 1300 to 1850. It was a very cold and miserable time for humanity, with a lot of well documented extreme weather in the historical record from all over the Northern Hemisphere. It was also a time of frequent famines and pandemics. Arguably today's climate is better than then, not worse.”

Enjoy a guiltfree real 10-day summer vacation road trip, folks! And while you’re at it, have a steak.

Shane Wenzel

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