Holiday Chat: Local AI datacenter activism, AI can't substitute good taste, and more - ESW #439

For this week's episode of Enterprise Security Weekly, there wasn't a lot of time to prepare. I had to do 5 podcasts in about 8 days leading up to the holiday break, so I decided to just roll with a general chat and see how it went.

Also, apologies, for any audio quality issues, as the meal I promised to make for dinner this day required a lot of prep, so I was in the kitchen for the whole episode! For reference, I made the recipe for morisqueta michoacana from Rick Martinez's cookbook, Mi Cocina. I used the wrong peppers (availability issue), so it came out green instead of red, but was VERY delicious.

As for the episode, we discuss what we've been up to, with Jackie sharing her experiences fighting against Meta (allegedly, through some shell companies) building an AI datacenter in her town.

We then get into discussing the limitations of AI, the potential of the AI bubble popping, and general limitations of AI that are becoming obvious. One of the key limitations is AI's inability to apply personal experience, have strong opinions, or any sense of 'taste'. I think I shared my observation that AI is becoming a sort of 'digital junk food'. "NO AI" has become a common phrase used by creators - a source of pride that media consumers seem to be celebrating and seeking out.

Segment Resources:

• Kagi absolutely did NOT sponsor this episode. I have become a big fan of paying for search so that I am not the product. There are other players in this market, but I've settled on Kagi.
• We mention Ira Glass's bit on taste, which is a small bit of a longer talk he did on storytelling. The shorter bit is here, and is less than 2 minutes long.
• The full talk is split into 4 parts and posted on a YouTube channel called "War Photography" for some reason.
• Part 1: https://youtu.be/5pFI9UuC_fc
• Part 2: https://youtu.be/dx2cI-2FJRs
• Part 3: https://youtu.be/X2wLP0izeJE
• Part 4: https://youtu.be/sp8pwkgR8
• Finally, we also bring up a talk we also discussed on episode 437, Benedict Evans' AI Eats the World

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Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-439