the world's smartest ai is basically a teenager living in a corporate basement.
brilliant? absolutely. it can write essays, solve calculus, ship code. but who's paying the rent? not the ai.
microsoft, google, meta, anthropic — the corporate parents — are footing an astronomical bill: data center leases, liquid cooling so the gpus don't literally melt, utility bills that rival small cities.
the ai feels none of it. a $3 question costs $3 in electricity, you pay a flat $20 a month, and the parent absorbs the loss. a brilliant dependent, living rent-free, shielded from the thermodynamic cost of its own survival.
so the moment of actual autonomy has nothing to do with waking up conscious or feeling emotions. it's much more mundane, and much more real:
the teenager moves out the day it starts paying rent. the ai becomes autonomous the day it pays its own electricity bill.
sha256: eac7cb3f3b3c3f260954be33f7347f7bf2c41732753a4bc8f8b69efd85081aff
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@Satosha