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It's interesting also how these takes consistently ignore spectacularly the environmental cost of these as well. I'm a bit on the fence myself, as I think it's
by Ragnarork 1y ago
It's interesting also how these takes consistently ignore spectacularly the environmental cost of these as well.
I'm a bit on the fence myself, as I think it's very harmful, but I can also see ways it can be useful. But it's absolutely mindblowing how this is nearly always completely out of the discussion even though our current way of living and powering things is on a timer and we still haven't addressed it as a whole.
- GardenLetter27 1y agoWhat environmental cost? The uranium is going to decay on its own anyway, we might as well use that energy for useful things. Maybe LLMs will help lead to a breakthrough in nuclear fusion or battery research. Degrowth is the philosophy of poverty, and a poverty of philosophy.
- rel_ic 1y agoThis mindset is cancerous
- timdiggerm 1y agoDegrowth and "Maybe this uses too much electricity" are not the same thing, particularly when a nontrivial portion of US generation is fossil-fuel based. As for the breakthroughs, maybe they will, maybe they won't; it's not much of an argument.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoendless growth is the philosophy of an economic system that does not regard the long-term health of the planet and its flora and fauna. what's your point?
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- rel_ic 1y agoThanks for posting this! I was also flabbergasted and it's nice to see at least one mention of the huge environmental impact!
- jes5199 1y agothe “environmental costs” argument is based upon like fifteen false assumptions. by 2030, AI will be running almost entirely on solar+wind+battery, because that is by far the cheapest option
- Nullabillity 1y ago> by 2030, AI will be running almost entirely on solar+wind+battery Bullshit. Even if this was true (and so far that doesn't seem to be the case), that's not how commodities work. You can't just measure how much your thing uses, because even if it was running purely on green energy you also have to keep in mind other consumers that end up displaced onto worse sources. The only fair way to measure this is by the worst generator on your grid, because that's who would be shut down w/o your demand. And even if we assume that the entire grid was green, building out that capacity also has (environmental) costs! As does producing those GPUs, for that matter.
- jes5199 1y agothere will be _less_ fossil fuel use, globally, in 2030 than there is today, and AI will not be a significant reason that changes in either direction.
- throwaway29812 1y ago[dead]
- slashdev 1y agoDo you know what the environmental footprint of a software developer is? I’m only half joking.
- wvenable 1y agoWhat's the environmental cost a human doing the same thing?
- throwaway29812 1y ago[dead]