“don’t ever be the first one to stop clapping“
During the Stalin era standing ovations often lasted beyond 8 to 10 minutes. Once, during a conference for the Communist Party in 1937 a particularly robust crowd leapt to their feet while clapping enthusiastically. The thunderous applause lasted minute after minute after minute.
Not because of the impact of the speech but fear among the crowd. Who would stop first? Tired limbs, escalating heat of the crowd—many continued, figuring it was their doom until they either fainted or had a heart attack.
Eventually the first person stopped from exhaustion and the crowd quickly quieted down. The first person to stop clapping spent the next 10 years imprisoned in a gulag. His single warning under interrogation — “don’t ever be the first one to stop clapping”.
Slightly less sturm und drang but this story flickers across my mind when the best intentioned geospatial professionals and even climate scientists shrug at the eventuality of AI. No mention of the obsequious crowds ignoring the irony of finite resources being tapped to fuel exponential and ever expanding energy demands.
Tech is energy intensive well before we begin mathematical modeling or calculating probabilities for algorithms applied to generative AI. The problem is the scale of what is in the works and already unleashed unregulated to the public writ large.
I dabble with a little openAI. Often a worthwhile assistant pointing me to data resources or articles it remains the human element requiring discernment that has the task of filtering the wheat from the chaff.
Valuable tools and their application define the space we inhabit in the modern era of data science and specifically geospatial science. I prefer SQL queries of vetted open-source data to a black box of information scaled to the universe of flotsam.
I continue to clap but this time I am working for the underdog. Our little blue planet hurling through space and time negotiating the impact of its destructive inhabitants. The only species to extinct other species ~ 85 % of what was here when we entered the game.
It is okay to stop clapping when you find yourself cheering for the wrong team.