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We can’t stop the development of Artificial Intelligence by government decree any more than we could have stopped Covid by government decree.

The sum of human knowledge used to be an unimaginably vast entity, consisting of acres of books and images, stretching across countless libraries, that could never be known by one generation, still less by one human. Now, thanks to AI, it can exist all in one place, a server farm in California, along with the algorithms that bombard it every second of every day.

The AI cat is out of the bag – $350 billion has already been invested in commercial applications, from internet search to composing music to gold prospecting.

Who knows how many tens of billions governments have already spent on military applications of AI each year? That’s a secret. The next global war will probably be fought by computers. The next generation of drones is probably being field-tested in Ukraine as we speak.

AI is potentially as big a threat to humanity as Covid was, or bigger. And many are now calling for tighter controls. But a recent appeal by Yuval Harari and several hundred leading experts, for AI research to be halted or slowed immediately has had no effect, and it may be in years before any such edict could possibly be agreed and issued, by which time according to Harari himself, AI bots may have moved beyond human control.

Harari fears computers which assimilate and recombine all human knowledge far more quickly and efficiently than humans, could take control of that knowledge unimaginably fast. He argued in a recent New York Times article, that AI could control humanity by controlling our language. He is right. All knowledge is language. Even images are a kind of language.

Nobody owns language, and never can. But fortunes are spent on pure language – the advertising, publishing, and computer software industries, have between them $1.3 trillion annual revenues. And some languages are more powerful than others.

At the heart of the debate is copyright. Who owns the entirety of human knowledge when it is recombined in new ways? Does it belong to the OpenAI computer company that is the current market leader? Or does it belong to the countless writers, researchers, publishers, photographers, filmmakers, to name but a few, whose work has now been hoovered up to feed the algorithms? And by far the largest part of what is in the AI/big tech memory banks is the entire history of all our social media, and email. It belongs to us, to all of us. But if we want to retain our ownership, the only way is to start fighting for it immediately.

The key questions is what barriers, if any, should there be to universal access to this entity, “the sum of human knowledge?” If it belongs to all of us, then should we all have …

With the South African economy blighted by electricity blackouts, the nation’s banks are reporting record profits for 2022. Corporate and Investment Bank was first to announce it had been helped by one area of strong volumes for all the banks: financing off-grid electricity.

At Eskom, the CEO was sacked last month, 8 weeks after he survived a poisioning attempt. Andre de Ruyter, 54, issued a devastating indictment of governance under the ANC nearly three decades after the end of apartheid. Eskom has imposed rolling power cuts of up to 10 hours a day to keep the electricity grid from crashing. De Ruyter blames the power shortages on the failure of the ANC over many years to maintain coal-fired power stations that have an average age of 42 years.

He also blames sabotage. Criminal syndicates, he says, steal coal and infrastructure, including copper and aluminium cables, pylons and even bolts, to be melted down and resold. They also make more money by tendering for contracts to repair the damage they have done, he says. The father-of-three thinks criminal gangs plotted his murder.

A report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, a Geneva-based body, last year highlighted the scale of the problem. “South Africa’s infrastructure is suffering from sustained and organised theft, mainly of copper, on an industrial scale.”

FirstRand was the first bank to report last week, showing profits up 15% Covid-19. “We will see even bigger records from the other major banks when they report over the next two weeks,” said Stuart Theobald of Intellidex. Standard Bank has guided the market to expect growth of 30%-35%, Nedbank 24%-29%, Absa 10%-15%.

This growth is not thanks to the general economy; that has been dismal. What banks want to see is businesses investing not to merely protect existing output, but to expand output, which is what much of the off-grid electricity investment is doing.…

Recreational vehicle makers often boast how their RVs and trailers can feel just like home. Besides their cleverly packaged bathrooms and kitchenettes, when you park your rig at a campground you can find something else that will make you feel you never left home: neighbors.

Often lots of neighbors. Sometimes noisy ones. Just like at home.

That’s why a lot of campers these days are enjoying the seclusion of “boondocking,” or camping away from traditional campsites. And away from all those other campers.

“You drive around. You find yourself a spot, you don’t have any services of any sort,” said Amanda Watson who’s been living in a 1998 Safari motorhome with her husband for eight years. “That’s what I consider boondocking.”

RV’ing in general has become increasingly popular over the past few years. And that’s been especially the case recently, with the coronavirus keeping people away from shared lodgings. Now, even once-secluded spots are getting less secluded, especially if it’s near a cell-phone tower. Not having running water or sewer access is one thing, but apparently no one wants to be away from the Internet.

“We have discovered, particularly in the Southwest where the land is really wide open and the cell signal travels far, that we have gotten a good cell signal in some really remote places,” Watson said.

It’s a trend that has spawned numerous small startup companies, like Opus, Polydrops and EarthRoamer, to make trailers and recreational vehicles designed for venturing far from paved — or even unpaved — roads. Traditional RV companies, like Winnebago and Airstream, have also taken notice and are now turning out trailers and camping rigs with bigger, knobbier tires and more ground clearance to clamber over rocks and ruts.

Dry camping

Some homeowners rent out campsites that are often just easily accessible spots on their private land. But if you want to get to places that are more remote and away from drivable asphalt or gravel roads, you’ll want a rig designed for that.

Compact size is also important. You don’t want something that’s difficult to maneuver around boulders or between trees on the way to your secluded campsite.

About three years ago, California architecture student Kyunghyun Lew set out to design a camping trailer light enough to tow behind his wife’s Mazda3 or almost any SUV. He designed the Polydrop trailer, now available in four different styles from about $14,000 to $20,000, all of which resemble a space pod from a 1970’s science fiction movie. With air conditioning and heating, it offers a comfortable place to sleep. A fold out kitchenette is also available and Lew says he is also working on a built-in toilet. For now, campers will have to improvise.

Another company, Opus — founded in the United Kingdom but with its US headquarters in Pittsburg, California — offers rugged folding camping trailers. Advertised as “Tough Luxury,” most …

Rolling blackouts are the reality of everyday life in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.   Russia’s war is increasingly targeting the civilian population and the country’s electricity infrastructure, in a bid analysts say seeks to break the will of the people.

Now the world has become complacent about the considerable dangers posed by the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the UN nuclear watchdog has said within the past few hours.

Moscow captured the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear site, in March last year raising fears of a nuclear disaster.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is working to set up a safe zone around the facility. Mr Grossi, speaking in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, said a nuclear accident could happen any day and reiterated the situation at the plant was very precarious.

Poweroutage.com had been tracking Ukraine’s outages, but has stopped. Ukrainian officials began classifying the data, given that it can be used by the enemy to locate vulnerabilities.

But that has not affected the US-based effort to provide power to Ukrainians.  New Use Energy and a group of nonprofits are working with medical professionals and others to keep the lights on as Russia makes Ukraine’s grid a war-target.

Paul Shmotolokha is CEO of New Use Energy Solutions, and has been working to bring microgrid equipment — largely portable solar and storage — to Ukraine since the start of the war.

In the early days of the conflict, the company, along with several nonprofit partners, provided energy equipment to the war front where the destruction of buildings and infrastructure caused localized power outages.

But Shmotolokha, tied to Ukraine through family and friends, knew that the worst was still to come. “I was sitting there the whole time saying, they’re going to go after the grid. In the 21st century, you take down the grid and you hurt society.”

Psychological and physical harm

Or as Andrian Prokip of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future said in a blog, such destruction goes beyond the physical: “Besides creating immediate economic hardship and logistical problems, attacks on the power system are a powerful way to apply psychological pressure to citizens.”

Moldova, a staging ground for humanitarian aid for Ukraine, is the latest victim of the Russian attacks on the grid that began in earnest last October with a massive missile and drone attack that heavily damaged transmission lines and caused 1.4 million Ukrainians to lose power. Off-Grid advocates point to such attacks as an example of the danger of relying on centralized energy systems with a single point of failure. They can cause power outages for miles beyond the actual point of attack.

Shmotolokha is aware of what’s happening because of his frequent communications with doctors and others in the country as he tries to get solar panels, batteries, medical headlamps and other equipment to those in need.

Everything …

Last May Josh Spodek disconnected the circuit breaker in his West Village studio, and now “his carbon footprint is about that of three average-sized house cats,” reports New Yorker magazine, following up on a story first publicised by Time magazine

Spodek is a fifty-one-year-old executive-leadership coach and environmentalist. He specializes in winning converts—C.E.O.s, oil executives, Trumpers—to sustainable life styles. Check out his blog and his podcast, where he conducts interviews and enumerates personal facts, including number of burpees performed since 2011 (two hundred and three thousand five hundred and seventy-eight) and times mugged (many).

What does it mean to live off the grid in a city? No wall outlets, no gas hookup, no taxis. Elevators are out. Running water is in, though Spodek is stingy with the faucet. You’ll need some essentials, including a handheld battery, a portable solar charger, and roof access; in the winter, it only takes six or so hours of direct sunlight to power your days.

 Spodek has coaching clients. For hedge funds and corporations, he charges fifteen thousand dollars for six months of executive training. “For other people, I say pay what you can,” he says. He has calls back to back today to discuss sustainability: a former ExxonMobil manager, a German oil executive, then Alan Iny, a partner at Boston Consulting Group. Iny reports that he’s reconsidering the wisdom of constant business travel. “Progress can be slow in the non-Josh world,” he concedes. Make sure to monitor your phone battery. “It’s at seven per cent,” Spodek says. “I think I’ll be O.K.”

Up to the roof for more charging. It’s a good spot to reflect on your new life’s rewards. “I know the patterns of the shadows,” Spodek says. “Due south is right in the middle, between the World Trade Center and the Woolworth Building.” He likes to orient the panels in that direction for more light. “The weather and the sun drive a lot of my decisions,” Spodek says. “Rain means I have to cut way back on computer use. It’s being humble to nature.”

 His fridge is no more, so Spodek keeps it simple. Every day is solar-powered-no-packaging-vegan-stew day—legumes, nuts, veggies in a pressure cooker. (Unless it rains, in which case: salad.) “Also, it turns out banana peels are edible,” Spodek says.

You might be wondering: is all the fridge-disconnecting and fermenting and composting going to make your apartment stink? Only mildly.

Joshua Spodek hosts the This Sustainable Life podcast, is the author of Initiative and Leadership Step by Step, and is an adjunct professor of leadership at New York University.…