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This is the same PR campaign that was being used against crypto. You need to wonder why someone is trying to pull the heart strings of those concerned about th

This is the same PR campaign that was being used against crypto. You need to wonder why someone is trying to pull the heart strings of those concerned about the environment. Who would benefit from getting the greenies mobilized against AI? Who wants to shift the conversation to concerns around the consumption of AI and why?

c-cube 3y ago
I know it sounds crazy but sometimes people are genuinely worried about climate change and the environment. Not everything is astroturfing.
- aunty_helen 3y ago
  Ok let’s have a balanced conversation about it. AI saves a massive amount of environmental footprint in what it can achieve that would otherwise need to be done by a human process or would be too complicated to be done by a human and so the resulting waste is written off. For a concrete example, because my company helped build this, there’s power plants in the USA wasting less electricity because AI is better able to combine data to predict demand. This is megawatts per day that never needs to be generated because of software running on a couple graphics cards in a server rack using a few hundred watts.
  - zht 3y ago
    did your company build something using LLMs or Gen AI?
zht 3y ago
and what has all of the crypto power usage lead to aside from wealth accumulation? did any of the other use cases pan out?
croes 3y ago
The consumption is real, so no need for a campaign. At least AI is more useful than crypto currencies but if we mainly get more spam text and fake images the energy costs aren't worth it.
- alchemist1e9 3y ago
  > At least AI is more useful than crypto currencies Here is a “radical” idea for you. Let markets decide what energy is useful for or not! Obviously there can be rules and regulations around how clean energy is and pollution, but the absolutely last thing the world needs is governments regulating what energy use is “good” or “bad”, unless you are itching to live in serious dystopian future.
  - croes 3y ago
    Markets can't decide usefulness they decide profitability. The bad news is lots of profitable things have bad consequences but markets don't care.
    - alchemist1e9 3y ago
      That is absolutely the biggest misunderstanding possible. The entire function of markets is to discover usefulness! The primary role of government is to provide a rule of law for markets. Should there be pollution? No Should there be snake oil or harmful consumer products? No Should there be fraud and deception? No Guess what when those happen those are GOVERNMENT failures! Not market failures. Any profits from those activities are not the reason they happened, the governments failure is. In an economy that has a functioning government with law and order and regulations to protect property rights and public goods, but no intervention, then: Profits == Usefulness It’s absolutely outrageous how current western culture has failed to teach basic economic facts. As I have said numerous times, this is equivalent to believing in creationism and teaching it in schools as truth while having overwhelming evidence of evolution. That’s the situation we are in. Collectivism, socialism, communism, social democracy, social justice, whatever name you assign to this idea a central planner who should adjust the system, intervene. they are all fairy tales that are being taught as facts while we actually have undeniably scientific and hard evidence of how human societies function economically and structurally, amongst honest people, honest intellectuals, there is no question about what works and why. Well regulated markets, NOT with interventions or redistribution, are the single most positive force in human history. Unfortunately culture and politics are holding us back in western civilization with a rival of the failed fairytales of previous times.
happymellon 3y ago
Because crypto was extremely wasteful for electricity, and AI is following the same route. Since a lot of power is still dirty, high energy usage should be curbed. On the flip side, restricting energy usage impacts homes significantly more than businesses and creates poverty. Look at the UK for energy poverty examples.

c-cube 3y ago

I know it sounds crazy but sometimes people are genuinely worried about climate change and the environment. Not everything is astroturfing.

aunty_helen 3y ago
Ok let’s have a balanced conversation about it. AI saves a massive amount of environmental footprint in what it can achieve that would otherwise need to be done by a human process or would be too complicated to be done by a human and so the resulting waste is written off. For a concrete example, because my company helped build this, there’s power plants in the USA wasting less electricity because AI is better able to combine data to predict demand. This is megawatts per day that never needs to be generated because of software running on a couple graphics cards in a server rack using a few hundred watts.
- zht 3y ago
  did your company build something using LLMs or Gen AI?

zht 3y ago

and what has all of the crypto power usage lead to aside from wealth accumulation? did any of the other use cases pan out?

croes 3y ago

The consumption is real, so no need for a campaign. At least AI is more useful than crypto currencies but if we mainly get more spam text and fake images the energy costs aren't worth it.

alchemist1e9 3y ago
> At least AI is more useful than crypto currencies Here is a “radical” idea for you. Let markets decide what energy is useful for or not! Obviously there can be rules and regulations around how clean energy is and pollution, but the absolutely last thing the world needs is governments regulating what energy use is “good” or “bad”, unless you are itching to live in serious dystopian future.
- croes 3y ago
  Markets can't decide usefulness they decide profitability. The bad news is lots of profitable things have bad consequences but markets don't care.
  - alchemist1e9 3y ago
    That is absolutely the biggest misunderstanding possible. The entire function of markets is to discover usefulness! The primary role of government is to provide a rule of law for markets. Should there be pollution? No Should there be snake oil or harmful consumer products? No Should there be fraud and deception? No Guess what when those happen those are GOVERNMENT failures! Not market failures. Any profits from those activities are not the reason they happened, the governments failure is. In an economy that has a functioning government with law and order and regulations to protect property rights and public goods, but no intervention, then: Profits == Usefulness It’s absolutely outrageous how current western culture has failed to teach basic economic facts. As I have said numerous times, this is equivalent to believing in creationism and teaching it in schools as truth while having overwhelming evidence of evolution. That’s the situation we are in. Collectivism, socialism, communism, social democracy, social justice, whatever name you assign to this idea a central planner who should adjust the system, intervene. they are all fairy tales that are being taught as facts while we actually have undeniably scientific and hard evidence of how human societies function economically and structurally, amongst honest people, honest intellectuals, there is no question about what works and why. Well regulated markets, NOT with interventions or redistribution, are the single most positive force in human history. Unfortunately culture and politics are holding us back in western civilization with a rival of the failed fairytales of previous times.

happymellon 3y ago

Because crypto was extremely wasteful for electricity, and AI is following the same route. Since a lot of power is still dirty, high energy usage should be curbed. On the flip side, restricting energy usage impacts homes significantly more than businesses and creates poverty. Look at the UK for energy poverty examples.