Me + Viv The Pause
18 snips
Nov 19, 2025 
Karen Hao, a journalist and author of 'Empire of AI,' delves into the dark side of generative AI. She discusses the staggering social and environmental costs of AI, from the trauma faced by contract workers to the environmental toll of data centers. Hao critiques the scale-at-all-costs mentality of tech leaders and suggests that this 'inevitability' narrative serves their interests, not society's. She encourages listeners to be mindful of their technology choices and the impacts of AI on communities, emphasizing the need for moral accountability.
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Lifelong AI Raises Value Alignment Questions
- Sam Altman's vision of lifelong, proactive AI feels inevitable but raises deep design and value questions.
- Viv worries about who decides when the AI is overstepping as users' values and needs change.
Scale-First Strategy Shaped The Industry
- OpenAI pursued scaling existing techniques aggressively rather than new scientific directions.
- That choice reshaped the industry toward brute-force scale over curated research approaches.
Scraping Over Curation Created New Harms
- Moving from curated datasets to internet-scale scraping created new behaviors and harms in models.
- That shift forced companies to invest heavily in content moderation and controls.
