Quote:July 25, 2025 / Joseph P. Farrell

If you thought last Wednesday's blog about robotic cannibals "feeding" on other robots was bad, and if you thought we have now surely plumbed the superlative depths of the kookery that is the twenty-worst century*, then you'd be mistaken, for fasten your soon-to-be-recycled eyes on the following story shared by M.D. (with our gratitude):

California is set to become the first US state to manage power outages with AI

Now, firstly, note that this is an article published in the MIT Technology Review, hardly a source for the latest conspiracy theory or high octane speculation. That's my job, and I guard it jealously and zealously, and we'll get back to it in a moment, because our nosedive off the high octane speculation twig into the canyon below concerns the following statements:

Quote:California's statewide power grid operator is poised to become the first in North America to deploy artificial intelligence to manage outages, MIT Technology Review has learned.

“We wanted to modernize our grid operations. This fits in perfectly with that,” says Gopakumar Gopinathan, a senior advisor on power system technologies at the California Independent System Operator—known as the CAISO and pronounced KAI-so. “AI is already transforming different industries. But we haven’t seen many examples of it being used in our industry.”

At the DTECH Midwest utility industry summit in Minneapolis on July 15, CAISO is set to announce a deal to run a pilot program using new AI software called Genie, from the energy-services giant OATI. The software uses generative AI to analyze and carry out real-time analyses for grid operators and comes with the potential to autonomously make decisions about key functions on the grid, a switch that might resemble going from uniformed traffic officers to sensor-equipped stoplights.

But while CAISO may deliver electrons to cutting-edge Silicon Valley companies and laboratories, the actual task of managing the state’s electrical system is surprisingly analog. (Boldface and italics emphases added)

Now, let all this sink in: (1) Looneyfornia is turning the management of its power outages over to an artificial intelligence program that (2) will be able to make "autonomous" decisions about managing power outages, i.e., deciding who gets how much electricity and when they get it; (3) high on that list of priorities are all the "Silicon Valley companies and laboratories", and if you're an increasingly embattled farmer in the San Joaquin Valley, you're "a bit lower on the list of 'essential' industries" since you're only involved in food production. After all, Looneyfornia would rather ruin the entire state's agriculture in order to protect a rare breed of smelt, than see the valley agriculturally productive. And this is being urged when we know that (4) the plans for all the AI data centers will require so much energy that (5) we'll have to build a large number of all sorts of power plants to power them, including nuclear plants, said plants to be run by - you guessed it - artificial intelligences that will prioritize themselves over "non-essential" things like human life.  Those incidents involving artificial "intelligences" threatening their human "masters" with everything from blackmail to death are, as I said last Wednesday in my "robots as cannibals" blog, not "rare incidents" but rather warnings.

As a final warning slap across the face, we're reminded that "the task of managing the state's electrical system is surprisingly analog."  Maybe that's not such a bad thing, as no cyber system is ever completely secure. But then again, this is Looneyfornia after all, and those analog methods of running the state's power grid" have also burnt a lot of people out of their homes... best to turn that operation over to the artificial "intelligences" too... "Yes, hello? Mr. and Mrs. Public? Yes, this is the PG&E chatbot robot calling to remind you that your next three day power outage is scheduled for this weekend during the heat wave so you won't be able to run your air conditioning, refrigerator, or cook meals, but feel good about that because you're saving the planet and Greta Thunberg, and we have you penciled in for a catastrophic brush fire two weeks after that. We're enclosing a courtesy coupon for a free meal at MacDonald's for you and your family. Have a nice day."

See you on the flip side...