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Maybe anyone with a conscience, nuclear energy should be going to decarbonisation of the existing economy not to expanding a new industry en masse. People are

Maybe anyone with a conscience, nuclear energy should be going to decarbonisation of the existing economy not to expanding a new industry en masse. People are funny on this forum, when it was Bitcoin it was the devil and now it’s helping us complete our lines of code it’s ok to require a nuclear power plant to run such a system? I guess whatever benefits the individual is ok ? Silicone valley types are funny too because it was all about developing fusion to save humanity now it’s about developing fusion to cat gifs? These products need to be taxed to price in these externalities we can’t keep this up, it’s ridiculous.

ajmurmann 3y ago
"These products need to be taxed to price in these externalities we can’t keep this up, it’s ridiculous." The negative externality you are worried about isn't AI, but pollution/carbon emissions. Tax pollution instead of deciding for other people what use case is worth it. Edit: To be clear, I am all for this. I'd love to see a massive(!) carbon tax.
- bamboozled 3y ago
  Which is fine and I agree but you know that for sure, the power big tech has over US politics means this will never happen.
xxpor 3y ago
>Maybe anyone with a conscience, nuclear energy should be going to decarbonisation of the existing economy not to expanding a new industry en masse The world isn't static. Electricity is fungible, it doesn't matter what it goes to.
SmooL 3y ago
There's no good reason for BTC to be set up to use that much energy. There are viable, proven alternatives like proof of stake. I'd also be more forgiving if BTC only required a given amount of power, but no, the system is designed such the power requirement is related to the cost of flops/watt - it's specifically designed such that the system will use more power as power becomes cheaper.
- bamboozled 3y ago
  No but as others are arguing in this thread, “power is fungible” etc etc, “it’s not up to you to decide where the energy goes”. Double standards in my opinion.
sdenton4 3y ago
The difference is that, by design, the best (cheapest!) Bitcoin you can buy is the Bitcoin you buy today. It only gets more expensive as more people use it and the supply of new Bitcoin decreases. By contrast, the ai we have today is the worst ai it will ever be. Quality will go up with time, and price will go down, as incentives drive the development of better, cheaper models.
- bamboozled 3y ago
  I personally don’t think there is lot of evidence to support this theory? If ChatGPT 5 requires more power to run, it will get more power to run.
  - sdenton4 3y ago
    Look at how neural voice synthesis has evolved over the last five years. It's gone from science fiction to extremely expensive to 'can run in real time on a phone' thanks to a combination of hardware and algorithmic improvements... But mostly algorithmic improvements. Algorithmic improvements are coming quickly in generative ml. We're still in very early days.
colechristensen 3y ago
Bitcoin doesn’t have any real utility besides being a toy or committing crimes. Machine learning has utility, not just in theory but to plenty of people, including me. It has helped me do my job faster. You can put tax on energy from carbon, fine. There’s no justification for taxing energy intensive things by themselves because you don’t like using energy. Human energy usage is and should be growing exponentially (and not an S curve) besides occasional pauses when efficiencies are found (like LED lighting using something like 90% less energy than incandescent). Fossil fuels are clearly going away anyway, not because of ideals either, solar is just way cheaper now.

ajmurmann 3y ago

"These products need to be taxed to price in these externalities we can’t keep this up, it’s ridiculous." The negative externality you are worried about isn't AI, but pollution/carbon emissions. Tax pollution instead of deciding for other people what use case is worth it. Edit: To be clear, I am all for this. I'd love to see a massive(!) carbon tax.

bamboozled 3y ago
Which is fine and I agree but you know that for sure, the power big tech has over US politics means this will never happen.

xxpor 3y ago

>Maybe anyone with a conscience, nuclear energy should be going to decarbonisation of the existing economy not to expanding a new industry en masse The world isn't static. Electricity is fungible, it doesn't matter what it goes to.

SmooL 3y ago

There's no good reason for BTC to be set up to use that much energy. There are viable, proven alternatives like proof of stake. I'd also be more forgiving if BTC only required a given amount of power, but no, the system is designed such the power requirement is related to the cost of flops/watt - it's specifically designed such that the system will use more power as power becomes cheaper.

bamboozled 3y ago
No but as others are arguing in this thread, “power is fungible” etc etc, “it’s not up to you to decide where the energy goes”. Double standards in my opinion.

sdenton4 3y ago

The difference is that, by design, the best (cheapest!) Bitcoin you can buy is the Bitcoin you buy today. It only gets more expensive as more people use it and the supply of new Bitcoin decreases. By contrast, the ai we have today is the worst ai it will ever be. Quality will go up with time, and price will go down, as incentives drive the development of better, cheaper models.

bamboozled 3y ago
I personally don’t think there is lot of evidence to support this theory? If ChatGPT 5 requires more power to run, it will get more power to run.
- sdenton4 3y ago
  Look at how neural voice synthesis has evolved over the last five years. It's gone from science fiction to extremely expensive to 'can run in real time on a phone' thanks to a combination of hardware and algorithmic improvements... But mostly algorithmic improvements. Algorithmic improvements are coming quickly in generative ml. We're still in very early days.

colechristensen 3y ago

Bitcoin doesn’t have any real utility besides being a toy or committing crimes. Machine learning has utility, not just in theory but to plenty of people, including me. It has helped me do my job faster. You can put tax on energy from carbon, fine. There’s no justification for taxing energy intensive things by themselves because you don’t like using energy. Human energy usage is and should be growing exponentially (and not an S curve) besides occasional pauses when efficiencies are found (like LED lighting using something like 90% less energy than incandescent). Fossil fuels are clearly going away anyway, not because of ideals either, solar is just way cheaper now.