I tried to post this to Reddit but for some reason it keeps getting removed by filters. I normally just lurk on Lemmy but I decided to make an account because I’m so over that stupid platform.
ANYWAY
Last night on my flight home I noticed that the person in front of me was using ChatGPT. I got nosy so I looked closer and found out that they were actually using ChatGPT to write the content for a program of a sustainability and climate conference. They specifically included a section about “dirty” energy sources and the harm that results from energy producers supplying data centers. I was floored.
I am not sure if this was the final product or just a draft, but I find it pretty gross and ironic that the AI that is fueling the climate crisis and responsible for the rapid development of data centers that are doing irreparable damage to local communities and ecosystems is being employed to create the materials for a sustainability conference. Maybe start with looking in the mirror first?
I looked up the company, and turns out this program might be part of a Keynote Livestream that is featuring the Mayor of San Fransisco lol.
Adding greater possibility of virtual attendance could be a cool change assuming it is viable from a cost perspective
But folks who are not able to use VR in some way or another, be it disability or technological illiteracy, are still valuable parts of the conversation on climate change, so trying to do it all that way seems iffy to me
On the discussion more broadly, personally I find communication via video call about a million times harder than in person. I get that thats not the case for everyone but the communication is literally the entire point of having a conference like that. Trying to do it all over zoom seems like a good way to handicap thw effectiveness of conferences on a really important subject.
Maybe thats cause I have some auditory processing issues, maybe its because of social anxiety or neurodivergence and feeling dependent on lots of social information thats hard to read via video call to understand what people are communicating, but I think that kinda just adds to the accessibility being functionally important point, I imagine there are lots of neurodivergent folks in research. But maybe video calls are much easier for other people 🤷🏻♂️