What would AI models Copilot, Chat AI Plus, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude write about their datacenter hosts if asked to concoct speeches like Rep. Noel “Soggy” Sweat’s 1952 whiskey speech? Sweat’s storytelling legacy was highlighted Sunday by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
This composite came from the best two – Claude and Gemini:
“My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about AI data centers. All right, this is how I feel about AI data centers:
“If when you say AI data centers you mean the voracious consumer of our common inheritance — the electricity drawn from grids that darken neighborhoods when demand spikes, the aquifers drained to cool servers in lands already thirsting, the carbon poured into skies our grandchildren will inherit; if you mean the gleaming fortress of surveillance that catalogs our movements, our purchases, our prayers, and our politics, and sells that knowledge to the highest bidder; if you mean the engine that displaces the skilled worker, hollows out the meaningful vocation, and leaves the human person staring at a screen wondering what, exactly, they are now for; if you mean the inscrutable machine that generates confident lies at the speed of light and floods the public square with so much noise that truth itself grows weary and sits down — then certainly I am against it.
“But, if when you say data centers you mean the cathedrals of modern thought, the silicon engines of human progress, the vast libraries that hold the sum total of all we have ever known and dreamed; if you mean the infrastructure of the future that connects a grandmother to her grandson across an ocean in the blink of an eye; if you mean the tireless intelligence that deciphers the mysteries of cancer, predicts the fury of the storm, and unlocks the secrets of the stars; if you mean the engines of industry that bring high-tech jobs and untold millions in tax revenue to our struggling rural towns—revenue used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our pitiful aged and infirm, and to build the highways, the hospitals, and the schools of the twenty-first century; if you mean the very spark that enables a man to transcend his limitations and a nation to magnify its prosperity, then certainly I am for them.
“This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.”
“Be steadfast” – 1 Corinthians 15:58.
Crawford is an author and syndicated columnist from Northeast Jackson.
4 comments:
Crawford mails it in again.
I think one must consider location, population, financial resources and weather when planning a data center. I suspect, yet again, Mississippi is looked at as a site of the least resistance and cheapest ( in buying land and political support). And, perhaps, our tornado alleys and hurricane risks should be considered as well.
Ol’ Soggy himself would be pleased
Well done Bill; actually, well done Claude and Gemini.
Appropriately timed with the nod to Soggy and his composition almost 75 years ago at MDAH.
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