4 ms·
Nice, we'll be able to consume the Earth's resources even faster. Congrats everyone!
by yau8edq12i 3y ago
Nice, we'll be able to consume the Earth's resources even faster. Congrats everyone!
- eru 3y agoHuh? This is an AI accelerator card. So you should be looking at performance per Watt, instead of absolute numbers. The linked article doesn't mention anything about that.
- amelius 3y agoYeah so they should increase the efficiency instead of the power.
- epolanski 3y agoWell, there's no yeah, because there's no ratio... For all you could know energy went twofold and performance threefold..
- amelius 3y agoThey said nothing about performance, and if you think it increased without them saying anything about it, then you're being highly optimistic. Right now I can only assume they made it easier to burn more energy.
- hulitu 3y ago> They said nothing about performance 1kW says a lot about perfornance. You can heat a house with it. /s
- hulitu 3y agoYes, but this usually happens when they cannot increase the power anymore. (remember CPUs ?)
- eru 3y agoFor CPUs it also happened when we moved to mobile devices, like phones and laptops.
- Voultapher 3y agoAs long as we insist on doing the same thing, we will never use less in total. Point me to any sizable consumption field where gains in efficiency didn't translate to more usage.
- nicolaslem 3y agoLighting using using LEDs vs incandescent bulbs: streets and buildings are not ten times brighter than a couple of decades ago.
- Voultapher 3y agoGood example. Indeed light bulbs didn't get 6-10x brighter than before. But there are that many more of them now, sources: Kyba, Christopher CM, et al. “Artificially lit surface of Earth at night increasing in radiance and extent.” Science advances 3.11 (2017): e1701528. http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/11/e1701528.full?intcmp=trendmd-adv http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/11/e1701528.full?in...; Tsao, Jeffrey Y., et al. “Solid-state lighting: an energy-economics perspective.” Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 43.35 (2010): 354001. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228627788_Solid-state_lighting_an_energy-economics_perspective_J_Phys_D_Appl_Phys_43354001 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228627788_Solid-sta...
- IMTDb 3y agoHeating / cooling. People keep their houses at roughly the same temperature regardless of consumption. You don't get your house from 21 C to 26 just because your heater became more efficient.
- Voultapher 3y agoBased on this https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-residential-energy-use https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... it doesn't look like it's going down to me.
- eru 3y agoThe transition from incandescent to LED lighting, perhaps?
- refurb 3y agoThe best way to enjoy HN is to just ignore these comments. There are a lot of bored, angsty, frustrated, lonely people, many struggling with mental illness that like to make comments like this for no other reason than getting attention.
- ovi256 3y agoWe've never consumed resources faster, yet there's never been more resources made accessible by our efforts for us all to consume. Every tech advance unlocks more! Space exploration and mining will be a step change in accessible resources. Why not enjoy the non-scarcity!
- swader999 3y agoWe'll blow ourselves up before climate and scarcity are solved. AI might help with this.
- NoGravitas 3y agoYes, AI might help blow ourselves up.
- ta1243 3y agoDepends what the externalities of that resource usage are, and who bares them. Currently while NVidea shareholders reap the reward, it's people in the global south that suffer the immediate consequences (although the rest of us will eventually too)
- _8j50 3y agoI must disagree. Do you oppose renewable energy? If not then by definition, it is possible to use more energy and not deplete any natural resources. The consumer blaming technique is one fossil fuel companies like to spread and I believe you are inadvertently spreading. I was just reading an HN post about AWS getting rights to a nuclear powerplant. FAANG companies are getting more and more carbon neutral datacenters. The increasing energy needs of humans can be met with renewable energy. But saying it's people's fault for not conserving energy is giving power companies an excuse to continue using fossil fuels.
- phh 3y agoRenewable energy does deplete a lot of natural resources. Even assuming it is carbon neutral (it isn't). Even assuming we're still capable of constructing those without fossil energy (we currently can't). Even assuming mining of various minerals is done without fossil energy (it isn't). Even assuming it doesn't require any mining (it does). It still largely requires "natural surfaces" where we have to disrupt local environments. It might be net benefits (offshore wind farms seem to improve diversity), but we have no renewable energy growth that doesn't require first for the natural resources to take a toll. Don't get me wrong, I do think this is where we're heading towards, and I feel it's okay. But let's not be blind that yes even assuming we go towards fully renewable energy (still a big if, or rather very long when), any growth of energy consumption comes with a cost to natural resources.
- _8j50 3y agoUnless you speak of the supernatural, all resources are natural. Humans and our desire for energy is also natural. Ecosystem disruption is also natural since we are natural also. The only question is sustainability. More solar farms in the desert disrupts an ecosystem but not to the extent of causing species to die off or a food chain collapse that affects humans. More nuclear plants use more fissile material but at such low volume and extraction cost it's negligible. If you take a walk through the woods you'll step on grass and insects and cause damage. It's unnatural to live without interacting and harming flora and fauna and there are plenty of energy sources to sustain humans for millenia to come.
- pjmlp 3y agoWe will nuke ourselves before resources are fully wasted.
- ethanbond 3y agoThere’s zero evidence for that.
- pjmlp 3y agoI would assert is plenty of evidence that it will come, given the current state of the world. This is one of those times I would rather be wrong.
- NoGravitas 3y agoMaybe. The increased competition and other side effects of increased resource usage also increase the chance of us nuking ourselves, so it's liable to be a close-run thing.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoConsuming resources is a necessary part of living. Question is, what do we get out of consumed resources. And at this point, it's logical and clear, the only way to go from here is out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab_mH8R0KTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab_mH8R0KTM
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoCan't take a statement like this seriously when received in digital form, send it me as a letter.
- namlem 3y agoThe resources are there for us to consume