OpenAI says China ran a covert campaign to turn Americans against data centers, but used facts that happen to be true
5d 22h ago by discuss.online/u/VetOfTheSeas in nottheonion from www.techspot.com
Damn the evil CCCCP and their nefarious plot to *checks notes* tell the truth
The best propaganda is always the truth.
Genuinely why I hate anti-america/anti-capitalism propaganda based off lies. You don't need to lie when just telling the truth is damning. The lies just undermine everything when they're exposed, makes people question even the facts.
I've said this to people so many times, and they get all up in arms making strawman arguments about how I'm supposedly in favor of the thing they're against.
Like, no, if I thought you were flat out wrong and I had a differing opinion then I would tell you that. If I critique your argument on the grounds that it weakens itself by relying on misinformation, then chances are I probably agree on the bigger picture.
Some people, man...
Don't feed the trolls... or the psyops either I guess. I don't care which category of people who abuse logical fallacies are, I just know that some people go out of their way to not fall into those traps and their statements are much more worth my time engaging with.
Don't feed the trolls
For whatever reason, I have such a hard time following that advice...
You aren't fighting the trolls - you are struggling against yourself.
Someone who helps bring out the best in you is by definition not a troll, but conversely someone who brings out the worst probably is.
Watch Innuendo Studios The Alt-Right Playbook series. You will be glad that you did. It applies to tankies as well since they use identical argumentation styles. Trolls are not merely the other side, they aren't even playing at the same game as you, which is why you will be eaten alive unless you understand what's what. Like you are trying to "convince", they aren't. You use facts and references, which you actually bother reading, while they use pithy sayings. Their end goal is for you and everyone you've ever met to be killed, as Western culture ends, so that the more "pure" communism can come in - such as obviously exemplified by the likes of Russia, China, and North Korea.
They aren't trying to "convince" you - they are seeking easy prey, and trying to bully you into shutting up so that they can find others. Seriously, watch that video series if you truly want to understand. It's long, but very worthwhile.
Sometimes you just have to have a non exclusive relationship with the truth. /s
So that's why they call it a POLYgraph
On one hand yes, on the other I'm sure we'd all have dismissed people talking about a network of pedophilia linking every important statesperson and billionaires, before all the Epstein stuff came out
They were (mostly) attributing it to the wrong people. Also, the biggest accusers were running that network.
The best propaganda is always the truth.
When they shut down the RT America studio under the foreign agents law and direct TV intervention, they did interviews with the ex-RT dissident-esq reporters who were working there. I don't remember who, and who was interviewing, so take this with a grain of salt. When they were asked on the lines of how they felt working for Russian propaganda and information campaign. They said along the lines of that of all the networks they had worked on, they were never felt as free as when they worked on RT, and they were quite open that it was all part of bringing up narratives that would disrupt the American mainstream ones and create political disruption and doubt. Their handlers in Moscow knew that the best way to achieve this was just to give them reach and mostly uncensored platform and let them do mostly whatever they want, because they knew that just bringing out the truth was the most damaging thing to American establishment.
they were never felt as free as when they worked on RT
I assume these reporters were not the ones reporting on the state of russia
It was RT USA, I assume that they still never felt that they had a freedom to bite the hand that fed them, but that was not why most of them were there, to focus on dunking on Russia. But not biting the hand that feeds you is the reality for every reporter that isn't totally independent.
Russia and China have a surprising method of psychological warfare: find the dirt-seekers of the world, and make sure they're busy enough finding the uncomfortable truths from their ideological opponents, so they don't bother digging their party's
John Kiriakou, former CIA officer who blew the whistle on the US's torture program, had a RT podcast/radio show where he could say anything he liked.
dint TRUMP immediately brought back RT, at least thier propagandist reporters to WH as part of press conference.
RT America doesn't exist anymore. RT is still alive and well.
Honestly, it's the last thing anyone would have predicted.
ChatGPT confirms
They're Chinese Truths, which make them instantly suspect.
"Facts that happened to be true"
Please, shut the fuck up. Fucking shut the fuck up. I am at the end of my wits with this place.
As opposed to, what, facts that aren't true? Those aren't facts at all.
"Alternative facts"
As opposed to just calling them facts because they are.
Facts without context are just words.
So... So they ran an information campaign?
They educated us for free
Well, someone has to.
Sigh... no, they don't actually.
Anyone saying anything true about the american tech industry, or about anything at all, could be a secret asset in the employ of the Chinese government. They can't be trusted.
The only ones running a campaign is a scummy company that is working closely with the U.S. military and Department of Defense of the US regime.
But you can believe them if you want.
OpenAI has published a report
Into the trash it goes.
Free toilet paper 😃😃
Don't use that toilet paper, it's bad for you.
From trash to trash, dust to dust
Garbage in, garbage out
The real story is not about Chines influence on data center opinion.
Its openai reading conversations of their customers.
I mean we all already assumed they do before but this is so blatend, it smells like manufactured consent. You need to go from “suspect it happens” to “its normal to be like this”
If anyone, ever, at any point, expected OpenAI to never use anything in their chatlogs... I don't know what to say.
Those evil Chinese propagandists! How dare they… *flips through notes* tell the truth!?
Eh, propaganda isn't about truth or fiction, it's about manipulating media to push a narrative.
Like every CEO and corpo does every single day, they don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore.
Yep, like most commenters here have been manipulated by this media and blindly accept the claims of there being a Chinese campaign in the first place.
You should definitely take that scummy US fascist defense contractor's word for it.
"facts that happen to be true" aka facts
Their proof is a couple accounts in China asked the chatbot how to convince Americans to not want datacenters in their backyard...
If I asked a chatbot how to convince someone to not like getting punched in the dick, them not wanting to get punched in the dick doesn't mean there's a grand conspiracy and that's why Bob got mad after being punched in the dick.
Bob didn't need anyone to tell him not to like getting punched in the dick to have that response.
If you think Bob is a person with his own opinions and autonomy, yes. If you think Bob is just a nameless cow in the herd with no capability of autonomy and actualization, Bob's dislike of being punched in the dick couldn't possibly be anything except the neighbor farmer trying to fuck with your profits.
They don't have to do anything. This is a rare case where the nimby are the heros.
Sam Altman seems to be a massive cunt
He raped his younger sister
Sam Rapeman.
What, sauce?
I was curious too. Ended up here. The link title is a little misleading to me
The previous comment (not mine) is not how I would have put it, but: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-altman-sexual-assault-sister-annie-abuse-lawsuit-b2950916.html
Really?
misinformation campaign
Aka "News"
Why the fuck make up lies for your propaganda when you dont have to.
The vast majority here take the word from a scummy company closely working with the U.S. military and Department of Defense.
Bunch of suckers
They asked ChatGPT about how to influence Americans views on AI, apparently.
Sure thing.
Imagine how fucking dumb our world has gotten that the discussion is, "china used our specific software to plot the destruction of our specific software using propaganda that accidentally turned out to be true" and not, "company uses VPN to blame China for their shitty practices."
Thanks China
"Facts that happen to be true" what kind of orwellian speak is this?
Welcome to the future, it's post-truth here.
PRC ain't good but this is absurd. Fuck ClosedAI
Wait. So china pointed out why data centers are bad and were right about it and people agreed?
That's a really weird ass "covert campaign".
"These dirty commies! Making everyone woke with their factually correct propaganda! They just want lil ol me to not have my american dream!"
Yeah data center bad, but what kills me is the water use thing.
It really seems to rankle peoples bungle, and in both directions, that yes data-center water use is bad, but its just utterly dwarfed in comparison to forms sources of water use. And this is something I can speak to with a fair bit of expertise, in that I've worked extensively in developing water-use analyses for water districts, cities, counties, states, etc. Its just a scale issue and like with that recent Hank Green video about recycling, people truly don't understand how many people there are.
For example, take the MAWA equation (mean average water allowance). Typical indoor water allotment (and there is alot of data to back this up) is about 200 gallons (750 liters) per person per residence per day. That includes toilets, showers, cooking, washing clothing etc..
So lets take the recent number from that NYT article about its data centers water use. I think the number was 2.5 billion gallons?
73,000 gallons would be the average per-person-per-structure indoor only water allotment, which again, is pretty well established.
2.5 billion divided by 73k is about 35k, which is a bit of an over estimate but makes no matter.
All of Amazons datacenters combined "used", and I use "used" lightly here because its not like the water disappeared, but it used less water than a small American town. All of their datacenters combined.
Using duckduckgo to get numbers on this..
Just.. put it into context. Say 1lb of beef takes about 2k gallons of water to produce. The average American consumes 50lbs of beef per year. So an average town of say.. 35k people would go through 3.5 billion gallons of water in beef consumption alone, annually.
And the same equations are going to hold for practically everything else humans consume. Its just... its all a matter of scale. And I agree, datacenters are not good. But the water-use argument is weak when you consider just.. something basic and well established like beef consumption, or golf courses. 2.5 billion gallons is like, 120 golf courses worth of water. Its practically nothing.
120 golf courses is a fuckload of wasted water. That isn't as persuasive as you seem to think it is.
There are 16000 golf courses in the US.
I agree about golf courses being a bad metaphor but only because they feed into the same issue. They're something people see and comprehend but which completely fails to capture the scope. It only seems like a bad metaphor if you don't have any context and most people don't.
I'm not doing it to be convincing, but your reaction feeds into my point. It's back to the Hank Green point. To the ley audience it seems like a lot because "number big", but it's utterly meaningless amount, if you have just look at like "one small suburbs worth of front yard".
I can eat a beef.
I cannot eat a datacentre, no matter how much I try it doesn’t digest.
I agree about golf courses.
completely agree, always thought the water use argument was weak, we are terrible at internalizing large numbers
there are way better arguments against datacenters, like the fact that onsite natural gas generators are now the norm for new datacenter builds where the grid can't supply the load needed, those things are fucking terrible for people and the environment
Data centers typically use evaporative cooling, so the water is consumed (released into the air). If they used closed loop systems it would be different.
Typically? Maybe in some arid climates without humidity but try using evaporative cooling during a thunderstorm and you'll find your data center shutting down from overheating.
70% A large part of water usage in industrial nations comes from electricity generation. That's where data centers consume most of their water.
Edit: 70% is only true for Canada, globally agriculture consumes more. The US for example has ~40% each for agriculture and power generation.
Could you elaborate on the 70% figure? A quick search returns multiple hits suggesting the 70% number is actually related to agriculture, not electricity production. See e.g. here.
Or did you mean 70% of the water used be data centers?
Oh, you're right. I used the Wikipedia article as source and it said:
Distribution of this use among sectors was: thermoelectric power generation 66.2%, manufacturing 13.6%, residential 9.0%, agriculture 4.7%, commercial and institutional 2.7%, water treatment and distribution systems 2.3%, mining 1.1%, and oil and gas extraction 0.5%.
Yet the previous sentence said this was about Canada. Whoops.
Though in Europe and North America, where a big chunk of data centers are typically built, agriculture tends to have a lower share with industry (including but not limited to power generation) having a bigger one:
Data centers typically use evaporative cooling,
Yeah so do lawns.
Clearly, the solution is to develop a breed of astroturf that doubles as an AI datacenter. /s
Oh christ don't give them any ideas.
Ever heard the idiom: "The straw that broke the camel's back"
Water is not the only issue but to ignore it or minimise it in isolation does nothing but weaken the overall argument which is completely sound. I will aree that it shouldnt be the sole basis for argument.
Datacenters consume absurd amounts of finite resources for no definable return, but at substantial definable environmental, economic, and social costs.
Ahh yes. Let me just use idioms to explain to a state government how much water is being used in a given sector. SURELY they'll appreciate that I focus my analysis on whatever clearly uninformed talking point has bubbled up through social media.
My point is that a lay understanding won't get you there.
I don't think China cares about US that much ngl.
I mean, in the context of AI development itself, there's the possible angle that China/Chinese AI companies would do this to attempt to slow down American based AI development in an effort to surpass them, but...yeah seems pretty goofy tbh.
They're clearly trying to claw at anything to redirect attention from data centers fucking everyone over.
China already won the game. Their models are on par with Americans and much cheaper.
We can't compete based even just on energy costs.
I use deepseek API and honestly I just don't care about token costs cuz it's so cheap.
China said they didn't want those chips the article is talking about used by their companies out of fear of espionage and Huawei made ones 3x faster.
There's no way the US could catch up with them, they have nothing to fear.
This article is propaganda in itself.
Fair enough. I don't disagree, I was just playing devils advocate. The entire premise is quite ridiculous.
Honestly I wouldn't doubt that they do, supposedly leaders both ours and theirs see us as being in a sort of cold war space race style AI race, and I guess that effectively means we are.
But I for one didn't need their campaign to hate what I can see for myself is an issue, murderbots, surveillance, and dumbing down people further have always been things that I think are "bad."
Yet you can't see for yourself that this article is in propaganda in itself and blindly believe OpenAI's claims there is a Chinese campaign.
Ugh, people with those pesky facts, very inconvenient! /s
Another beacon of truth from the company of Sam Altman, known for his honesty and forthrightness
OpenAI still acts like there are absolutely none Chinese LLM. Sounds more like a fever dream. I wonder if they also did the exact checks on American user accounts and I am quite certain you will also see hundreds of Americans prompting the same thing.
Fun Fact: the American Govt. has okay'ed giving China GPU's now that they get a cut of the profits. 🙄
fun, and even non-fun facts are sourced.
You got a source on that?
So they're not giving but selling.
They were specifically designed and produced for China.
Nothing special or some state secrets as your comment implies.
And the Chinese said no because of spying concerns. LOL
They use Huawei that is triple the speed of that H20 of the inferior USSA regime.
Ok got it. You're a CCCP shill.
Ok got it. You've been factually proven to spout nonsense and propaganda.
You're a US fascist shithole shill.
I think this just shows that it's not stopping. They can say the most ridiculous statements in their defense and everyone just moves on.
We need a radio free America paid for by the Chinese.
Like the free Brittany campaign
at least it beats the russian propaganda that use lies that happen to be false
You would be banned on a tankie instance for this take.
yes, that famous communist country, post USSR russia.
Yup, yet for some reason the MLs are always talking about how brave Russia is in standing up to western imperialism by invading Ukraine.
Almost like they cant see further than "west bad, therefore anti-west good".
Or you know, dobry much for the rubles.
Uhm, you can run covert compaigns with true facts?
Yes, 99% of propaganda relies on contextualizing true facts so the audience accepts a favorable narrative and believes they're informed so they'll reject any counter-programming.
Also you can lie to people with facts. Using facts is not the same as facts existing but people don't seem to understand this more often than I'm comfortable with
Open ai doesn't understand propaganda or this was their half hearted attempt to say "well the CCP wants you to think like that"
well the CCP wants you to think like that
That is exactly the vibe I got from this. "What they say is true, but you should be OK with it"
So we wre listening to OpenAI on this one? Sure prove any of this you lying sack of shit Sam Altman. All these pyschos running companies.
#stoplisteningtoceos
Image generation tech in the open source world has skyrocketed in the last few years, and yet OpenAI still has some of the worst image generation models out there. It continues to produce the most generic infographic bullshit that takes any human with half a brain 0.25 seconds to recognize as AI generated. The bias is so heavily-skewed towards this "obviously AI generated" style that I don't think their engineers even give a shit about improving their image model.
If you aren't even going to take the time to actually produce something that looks halfway decent, and you know, doesn't fucking look like AI, why the fuck should I bother taking this "report" seriously?
Yeah this is why everyone hates sam altman and not because he's just going around saying that AI companies are worth more than the entirety of planet earth combined.
I’m sure it was China and not the fact that AI is causing layoffs, increased prices, and harm to our communities.
Can I just say that the fact openai just reads our chats....
It is just that I feel like the general public does not fully comprehend it
classic
True or not, I, a canadian also agree that excess data centers are bad for our lives. I don't know if that's a chinese propaganda or me realizing the water & electricity costs of it
Its funny because you can use any number and people are shocked because how how its framed. When i compared the numbers vs other industry I was like oh its a nothing burger and Americans are being brainwashed again.
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Were they the same accounts that were active during the election? Curious that they're only a problem now.
This 'propaganda' definitely happened if the Open AI scumbags tied to the fascist regime say so
Everything they told us about capitalism... turned out to be true.
I didn't need some Chinese campaign hatred was my gut reaction.
Actually, at first, for like a week, I was OK with it. Then the affects started piling up. My boss (warehouse middle manager) is AI coding apps to FUCK ME at work (figuratively fuck me ofc, but he's a dickhead. Claims to be communist too [and I'm not even, as unpopular as that is here] and meanwhile he's like "here's some anti-worker bullshit that will help strangle you, isn't it neat, I made it with AI! The same AI that for some reason I think won't replace me first." Fucking kys. I work with the actual product, he tells people "do this." His precious AI will take his job 2y before mine.)
I'm not even on the environmental side of it, though that is a big concern and useful ammo to me being in the anti- position, I cannot stand the dumbing down of humanity, and the murder robots that are officially now a deployed reality as of last week, and the enhanced surveillance. All of that is a reality in my daily life (besides the murder robots but OH BOY if you don't think that's coming to a town near you..), I do not need propaganda to hate what I can freely observe that I hate.