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Personally, I think catastrophic global warming and climate change will happen before we get AGI, possibly in part due to the pursuit of AGI. But as the saying

Personally, I think catastrophic global warming and climate change will happen before we get AGI, possibly in part due to the pursuit of AGI. But as the saying goes, yes the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

xpe 2y ago
Want to share your model? Or is this more like a hunch?
- fartfeatures 2y ago
  Sounds like standard doomer crap tbh. I'm not sure which is more dangerous at this point - climate change denialism (it isn't happening) or climate change doomerism (we can't stop it, might as well give up)
  - devjab 2y ago
    I’m not sure where you found your information to somehow form that ludicrous last strawman… Climate change is real, you can’t deny it, you can’t debate it. Simply look at the data. What you can debate is the cause… Again a sort of pointless debate if you look at the science. Not even climate change deniers as you call them are necessary saying that we shouldn’t do anything about it. Even big oil is looking into ways to lessen the CO2 in the atmosphere through various means. That being said, the GP you’re talking about made no such statement whatsoever.
    - fartfeatures 2y ago
      Of course climate change is real but of course we can do something about it. My point is denialism and defeatism lead to the same end point. Attack that statement directly if you want to change my mind.
      - data_maan 2y ago
        I think your first sentence of the original post was putting people off; perhaps remove that and keep only the second...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  We need to cut emissions, but AGI research/development is going to increase energy usage dramatically amongst all the players involved. For now, this mostly means more natural gas power. Thus accelerating our emissions instead of reducing them. For something that will not reduce the emissions long term. IMO, we should pause this for now and put these resources (human and capital) towards reducing the impact of global warming.
  - colibri727 2y ago
    Or we could use microwaves to drill holes as deep as 20km to tap geothermal energy anywhere in the world https://www.quaise.energy/ https://www.quaise.energy/
    - simonklitj 2y ago
      I don’t know the details of how it works, but considering the environmental impact of fracking, I’m afraid something like this might have many unwanted consequences.
  - xpe 2y ago
    It isn't a quantitative model unless you give a prediction of some kind. In this case, dates (or date ranges) would make sense. 1. When do you predict catastrophic global warming/climate change? How do you define "catastrophic"? (Are you pegging to an average temperature increase? [1]) 2. When do you predict AGI? How much uncertainty do you have in each estimate? When you stop and think about it, are you really willing to wager that (1) will happen before (2)? You think you have enough data to make that bet? [1] I'm not an expert in the latest recommendations, but I see that a +2.7°F increase over preindustrial levels by 2100 is a target by some: https://news.mit.edu/2023/explained-climate-benchmark-rising-temperatures-0827 https://news.mit.edu/2023/explained-climate-benchmark-rising...
xvector 2y ago
Most existing big tech datacenters use mostly carbon free or renewable energy. The vast majority of datacenters currently in production will be entirely powered by carbon free energy. From best to worst: 1. Meta: 100% renewable 2. AWS: 90% renewable 3. Google: 64% renewable with 100% renewable energy credit matching 4. Azure: 100% carbon neutral [1]: https://sustainability.fb.com/energy/ https://sustainability.fb.com/energy/ [2]: https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/products-services/the-cloud https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/products-services/the... [3]: https://sustainability.google/progress/energy/ https://sustainability.google/progress/energy/ [4]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastructure/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastruct...
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  That's not a defense. If imaginary cloud provider "ZFQ" uses 10MW of electricity on a grid and pays for it to magically come from green generation, that means 10MW of other loads on the grid were not powered by green energy, or 10MW of non-green power sources likely could have been throttled down/shut down. There is no free lunch here; "we buy our electricity from green sources" is greenwashing bullshit. Even if they install solar on the roofs and wind turbines nearby - that's still electrical generation capacity that could have been used for existing loads. By buying so many solar panels in such quantities, they affect availability and pricing of all those components. The US, for example, has about 5GW of solar manufacturing capacity per year. NVIDIA sold half a million H100 chips in one quarter, each of which uses ~350W, which means in a year they're selling enough chips to use 700MW of power. That does not include power conversion losses, distribution, cooling, and the power usage of the host systems, storage, networking, etc. And that doesn't even get into the water usage and carbon impact of manufacturing those chips; the IC industry uses a massive amount of water and generates a substantial amount of toxic waste. It's hilarious how HN will wring its hands over how much rare earth metals a Prius has and shipping it to the US from Japan, but ask about the environmental impacts of AI and it's all "pshhtt, whatever".
  - meling 2y ago
    Who is going to decide what are a worthy uses of our precious green energy sources?
concordDance 2y ago
> catastrophic global warming and climate change will happen before we get AGI, What are your timelines here? "Catastrophic" is vague but I'd put the climate change meaningfully affecting the quality of life of average westerner at end of century, while AGI could be before the middle of the century.
- hackerlight 2y ago
  It's meaningfully affecting people today near the equator. Look at the April 2024 heatwave in South Asia. These will continue to get worse and more frequent. Millions of these people can't afford air conditioning.
  - oldgradstudent 2y ago
    > It's meaningfully affecting people today near the equator. Look at the April 2024 heatwave in South Asia. Weather is not climate, as everyone is so careful to point out during cold waves.
    - hackerlight 2y ago
      Weather is variance around climate. Heatwaves are caused by both (high variance spikes to the upside around an increasing mean trend)
    - addcommitpush 2y ago
      "Probability of experiencing a heatwave at least X degrees, during at least Y days in a given place any given day" is increasing rapidly in many places (as far as I understand) and is climate, not weather. Sure, any specific instance "is weather" but that's missing the forest for the trees.
      - loceng 2y ago
        How do you suppose the nearly global cloud seeding effort to artificially form clouds is impacting shifting weather patters?

xpe 2y ago

Want to share your model? Or is this more like a hunch?

fartfeatures 2y ago
Sounds like standard doomer crap tbh. I'm not sure which is more dangerous at this point - climate change denialism (it isn't happening) or climate change doomerism (we can't stop it, might as well give up)
- devjab 2y ago
  I’m not sure where you found your information to somehow form that ludicrous last strawman… Climate change is real, you can’t deny it, you can’t debate it. Simply look at the data. What you can debate is the cause… Again a sort of pointless debate if you look at the science. Not even climate change deniers as you call them are necessary saying that we shouldn’t do anything about it. Even big oil is looking into ways to lessen the CO2 in the atmosphere through various means. That being said, the GP you’re talking about made no such statement whatsoever.
  - fartfeatures 2y ago
    Of course climate change is real but of course we can do something about it. My point is denialism and defeatism lead to the same end point. Attack that statement directly if you want to change my mind.
    - data_maan 2y ago
      I think your first sentence of the original post was putting people off; perhaps remove that and keep only the second...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
candiddevmike 2y ago
We need to cut emissions, but AGI research/development is going to increase energy usage dramatically amongst all the players involved. For now, this mostly means more natural gas power. Thus accelerating our emissions instead of reducing them. For something that will not reduce the emissions long term. IMO, we should pause this for now and put these resources (human and capital) towards reducing the impact of global warming.
- colibri727 2y ago
  Or we could use microwaves to drill holes as deep as 20km to tap geothermal energy anywhere in the world https://www.quaise.energy/ https://www.quaise.energy/
  - simonklitj 2y ago
    I don’t know the details of how it works, but considering the environmental impact of fracking, I’m afraid something like this might have many unwanted consequences.
- xpe 2y ago
  It isn't a quantitative model unless you give a prediction of some kind. In this case, dates (or date ranges) would make sense. 1. When do you predict catastrophic global warming/climate change? How do you define "catastrophic"? (Are you pegging to an average temperature increase? [1]) 2. When do you predict AGI? How much uncertainty do you have in each estimate? When you stop and think about it, are you really willing to wager that (1) will happen before (2)? You think you have enough data to make that bet? [1] I'm not an expert in the latest recommendations, but I see that a +2.7°F increase over preindustrial levels by 2100 is a target by some: https://news.mit.edu/2023/explained-climate-benchmark-rising-temperatures-0827 https://news.mit.edu/2023/explained-climate-benchmark-rising...

xvector 2y ago

Most existing big tech datacenters use mostly carbon free or renewable energy. The vast majority of datacenters currently in production will be entirely powered by carbon free energy. From best to worst: 1. Meta: 100% renewable 2. AWS: 90% renewable 3. Google: 64% renewable with 100% renewable energy credit matching 4. Azure: 100% carbon neutral [1]: https://sustainability.fb.com/energy/ https://sustainability.fb.com/energy/ [2]: https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/products-services/the-cloud https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/products-services/the... [3]: https://sustainability.google/progress/energy/ https://sustainability.google/progress/energy/ [4]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastructure/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastruct...

KennyBlanken 2y ago
That's not a defense. If imaginary cloud provider "ZFQ" uses 10MW of electricity on a grid and pays for it to magically come from green generation, that means 10MW of other loads on the grid were not powered by green energy, or 10MW of non-green power sources likely could have been throttled down/shut down. There is no free lunch here; "we buy our electricity from green sources" is greenwashing bullshit. Even if they install solar on the roofs and wind turbines nearby - that's still electrical generation capacity that could have been used for existing loads. By buying so many solar panels in such quantities, they affect availability and pricing of all those components. The US, for example, has about 5GW of solar manufacturing capacity per year. NVIDIA sold half a million H100 chips in one quarter, each of which uses ~350W, which means in a year they're selling enough chips to use 700MW of power. That does not include power conversion losses, distribution, cooling, and the power usage of the host systems, storage, networking, etc. And that doesn't even get into the water usage and carbon impact of manufacturing those chips; the IC industry uses a massive amount of water and generates a substantial amount of toxic waste. It's hilarious how HN will wring its hands over how much rare earth metals a Prius has and shipping it to the US from Japan, but ask about the environmental impacts of AI and it's all "pshhtt, whatever".
- meling 2y ago
  Who is going to decide what are a worthy uses of our precious green energy sources?

concordDance 2y ago

> catastrophic global warming and climate change will happen before we get AGI, What are your timelines here? "Catastrophic" is vague but I'd put the climate change meaningfully affecting the quality of life of average westerner at end of century, while AGI could be before the middle of the century.

hackerlight 2y ago
It's meaningfully affecting people today near the equator. Look at the April 2024 heatwave in South Asia. These will continue to get worse and more frequent. Millions of these people can't afford air conditioning.
- oldgradstudent 2y ago
  > It's meaningfully affecting people today near the equator. Look at the April 2024 heatwave in South Asia. Weather is not climate, as everyone is so careful to point out during cold waves.
  - hackerlight 2y ago
    Weather is variance around climate. Heatwaves are caused by both (high variance spikes to the upside around an increasing mean trend)
  - addcommitpush 2y ago
    "Probability of experiencing a heatwave at least X degrees, during at least Y days in a given place any given day" is increasing rapidly in many places (as far as I understand) and is climate, not weather. Sure, any specific instance "is weather" but that's missing the forest for the trees.
    - loceng 2y ago
      How do you suppose the nearly global cloud seeding effort to artificially form clouds is impacting shifting weather patters?