I don’t like these companies for their cooperation/friendly attitude towards nation-states either, but your comments are insipid. AWS has like 2 million businesses as customers. They have 30% marketshare in the cloud space, of course they provide cloud services to cops and militaries. They’re cheap, and one of the biggest providers, period. I can’t find any numbers showing their state contracts outweigh their business contracts.

And, sure, plenty of those business contracts are for businesses that don’t do anything useful, but what you don’t seem to understand is that telecoms is vital to industry and literally always has been. It’s not like there’s a bunch of virtuous factories over here producing tons of steel and airplanes, and a bunch of computers stealing money over there. Those factories and airlines you laud are owned by businesses, who use computers to organize and streamline their operations. Computers are a key part of why any industry is as productive as it is today.

AI, and I don’t so much mean LLM’s and stable diffusion here, even if they are fun and eye-catching algorithms, will also contribute to streamlining operations of those virtuous steel foundries and airlines you approve so heartily of. They’re not counterposed to each other. Researchers are already making use of ML in the sciences to speed up research. That research will be applied in real-world industry. It’s all connected.

Its not for you to worry about. The decision to rapidly consume cheap energy and potable water is entirely beyond your control. Might as well find a silver lining in the next hurricane. By the same token, you shouldn’t worry about it either, and should log off and cower under your bed.