3 ms·

>And aluminum has more benefits than these AIs. The utility argument holds no water for me. I don't think it should be acceptable to assume the future worth(

by Lerc 2y ago

>And aluminum has more benefits than these AIs. The utility argument holds no water for me. I don't think it should be acceptable to assume the future worth(or lack of) of anything when there are a range of opinions on the issue. This holds equally for AI and Cryptocurrency which both get criticized for having a lack of utility. Nobody knows the future utility, in both issues there are people who sincerely believe that they will be world changing. They might be wrong, but it should not be up to individuals, or even the majority, to bluntly declare a different worth and then categorize the process a waste. By all means make arguments on the long term environmental impact of proposed mechanisms used to achieve those goals, but if your goal is to convince someone else then you have to consider those impacts relative to what they believe are the benefits. Electricity use, and indeed water use, frequently gets asserted as a big number with the implication of environmental damage. If the electricity is generated cleanly or the water is not rendered otherwise unusable, then the may be negligible environmental impact.

zekrioca 2y ago
Would you accept a datacenter to use your potable water and then release it for you to take a shower? Would you drink any kind of water [1]? Electricity and water are today’s main issues, but there are many indirect others like noisy neighborhoods, pollutants from diesel generators, etc. These infrastructures will start to use great portions of earth’s resources, saturating it to the point people will need to be making complex choices coming forward. [1] https://youtu.be/9H8mbIp01sg https://youtu.be/9H8mbIp01sg
- Lerc 2y ago
  >Would you accept a datacenter to use your potable water and then release it for you to take a shower? Would you drink any kind of water If it were deemed safe by experts in the field certainly. If if were deemed unsafe, certainly not. That's all I'm asking for here, is for decisions and arguments based upon the actual impact, not by assumption that water or electricity supply is uniform and by implication, bad.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Given I have no idea what the water is used for, I would defer to an expert. If it goes through copper pipes, picks up heat, then leaves… my expectation is that this is fine, and I could drink it without further processing. Perhaps even insulate the pipes then it's a free source of pre-heated water and we can save energy. If the exit pipes cross-connect with the staff sewage lines, then it needs full processing like any other waste water stream. Without having someone actually look at the setup, I'm not going to know which it is, and there's likely a lot of other possible configurations besides those two.
croes 2y ago
Building any power source has an environmental effect. So if want to risk global scale damage your cause should have a proven benefit. Otherwise it’s up to you to explain people who had to left their homes because of consequences of climate change why you needed those data centers to create power point presentation, mail text and funny cat pictures.
- Lerc 2y ago
  I think you may find that any project has no proven benefit before that benefit is achieved. Your argument is an argument against doing anything at all. If you wish to argue there is a risk of global scale damage, then you should demonstrate the risk. I'm not arguing against avoiding risk. I'm arguing against assuming risk and conflating high risk and low risk forms. What energy production would you find satisfactory? What is unsatisfactory. Attacking power-point presentations, mail text and funny cat pictures as the cause of people having to leave their homes is assuming undue impact of a small subset of behaviour. What is the actual impact of the behaviour you are criticizing? Is it insignificant in comparison to the resources predicting the path of a hurricane? I assume you would consider that a more worthy cause.
  - croes 2y ago
    > Your argument is an argument against doing anything at all. My argument is about the scale. They didn’t build a giant railwork network after the first train was shown, they didn’t build Highways after the car’s invention. It’s like the IT industry turned into a one trick pony and bets everything on a certain type of AI.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      We had data centres for a long time before this, and this isn't a bet on "a certain type of AI" as the GPUs can do a lot of other architectures besides Transformers. Indeed, your own example of "funny cat pictures"… if you meant "from GenAI" that's a diffusion model while text is a transformer model, and if you meant "in general" all those things pre-date current interest in AI.
ben_w 2y ago
> This holds equally for AI and Cryptocurrency which both get criticized for having a lack of utility The argument against cryptocurrency specifically is different: the security measure for anything proof-of-work based is the claim that one cannot reasonably afford to spend 51% of world resources to break it, which means there's no upper bound to consumption — if we Dyson sphere'd the sun and ran 51% of the power through BTC nodes, there would be no difference to how much value that BTC system could provide relative to the one today, and that's also true for any other PoW system. Many of the the criticisms are also specific to BTC, which is designed to not be able to scale even as far as just serving the transactions of people eating lunch in Berlin. The suggestion at this point is layers on top of BTC, but (1) that makes it look like normal currency handled by a bank, and (2) BTC also can't scale to all the purely inter-bank transactions worldwide. Proof-of-Stake may be meaningfully different, or not, I don't give it much thought.
- richrichie 2y ago
  > BTC, which is designed to not be able to scale even as far as just serving the transactions of people eating lunch in Berlin. BTC’s counterparts are treasury bonds and gold. Not cash. Many non-econ background tech people misunderstand the difference. Try buying lunch with gold or treasury bond.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    I will readily agree with you that: > Many non-econ background tech people misunderstand the difference. Unfortunately that includes the creators, early adopters, and many active proponents. The first thing purchased with BTC was famously two pizzas. The title of the original paper was "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System": https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf I've seen restaurants offering to accept it. Musk briefly offered to accept it at Tesla.

by Lerc 2y ago

zekrioca 2y ago

Would you accept a datacenter to use your potable water and then release it for you to take a shower? Would you drink any kind of water [1]? Electricity and water are today’s main issues, but there are many indirect others like noisy neighborhoods, pollutants from diesel generators, etc. These infrastructures will start to use great portions of earth’s resources, saturating it to the point people will need to be making complex choices coming forward. [1] https://youtu.be/9H8mbIp01sg https://youtu.be/9H8mbIp01sg

Lerc 2y ago
>Would you accept a datacenter to use your potable water and then release it for you to take a shower? Would you drink any kind of water If it were deemed safe by experts in the field certainly. If if were deemed unsafe, certainly not. That's all I'm asking for here, is for decisions and arguments based upon the actual impact, not by assumption that water or electricity supply is uniform and by implication, bad.
ben_w 2y ago
Given I have no idea what the water is used for, I would defer to an expert. If it goes through copper pipes, picks up heat, then leaves… my expectation is that this is fine, and I could drink it without further processing. Perhaps even insulate the pipes then it's a free source of pre-heated water and we can save energy. If the exit pipes cross-connect with the staff sewage lines, then it needs full processing like any other waste water stream. Without having someone actually look at the setup, I'm not going to know which it is, and there's likely a lot of other possible configurations besides those two.

croes 2y ago

Building any power source has an environmental effect. So if want to risk global scale damage your cause should have a proven benefit. Otherwise it’s up to you to explain people who had to left their homes because of consequences of climate change why you needed those data centers to create power point presentation, mail text and funny cat pictures.

Lerc 2y ago
I think you may find that any project has no proven benefit before that benefit is achieved. Your argument is an argument against doing anything at all. If you wish to argue there is a risk of global scale damage, then you should demonstrate the risk. I'm not arguing against avoiding risk. I'm arguing against assuming risk and conflating high risk and low risk forms. What energy production would you find satisfactory? What is unsatisfactory. Attacking power-point presentations, mail text and funny cat pictures as the cause of people having to leave their homes is assuming undue impact of a small subset of behaviour. What is the actual impact of the behaviour you are criticizing? Is it insignificant in comparison to the resources predicting the path of a hurricane? I assume you would consider that a more worthy cause.
- croes 2y ago
  > Your argument is an argument against doing anything at all. My argument is about the scale. They didn’t build a giant railwork network after the first train was shown, they didn’t build Highways after the car’s invention. It’s like the IT industry turned into a one trick pony and bets everything on a certain type of AI.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    We had data centres for a long time before this, and this isn't a bet on "a certain type of AI" as the GPUs can do a lot of other architectures besides Transformers. Indeed, your own example of "funny cat pictures"… if you meant "from GenAI" that's a diffusion model while text is a transformer model, and if you meant "in general" all those things pre-date current interest in AI.

ben_w 2y ago

> This holds equally for AI and Cryptocurrency which both get criticized for having a lack of utility The argument against cryptocurrency specifically is different: the security measure for anything proof-of-work based is the claim that one cannot reasonably afford to spend 51% of world resources to break it, which means there's no upper bound to consumption — if we Dyson sphere'd the sun and ran 51% of the power through BTC nodes, there would be no difference to how much value that BTC system could provide relative to the one today, and that's also true for any other PoW system. Many of the the criticisms are also specific to BTC, which is designed to not be able to scale even as far as just serving the transactions of people eating lunch in Berlin. The suggestion at this point is layers on top of BTC, but (1) that makes it look like normal currency handled by a bank, and (2) BTC also can't scale to all the purely inter-bank transactions worldwide. Proof-of-Stake may be meaningfully different, or not, I don't give it much thought.

richrichie 2y ago
> BTC, which is designed to not be able to scale even as far as just serving the transactions of people eating lunch in Berlin. BTC’s counterparts are treasury bonds and gold. Not cash. Many non-econ background tech people misunderstand the difference. Try buying lunch with gold or treasury bond.
- ben_w 2y ago
  I will readily agree with you that: > Many non-econ background tech people misunderstand the difference. Unfortunately that includes the creators, early adopters, and many active proponents. The first thing purchased with BTC was famously two pizzas. The title of the original paper was "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System": https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf I've seen restaurants offering to accept it. Musk briefly offered to accept it at Tesla.