6 ms·

Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why

by matusp 1y ago

Observe what the AI companies are doing, not what they are saying. If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? Surely, all resources should go towards that goal, as it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow).

delusional 1y ago
Continuing in the same vain. Why would they force their super valuable, highly desirable, profit maximizing chat-bots down your throat? Observations of reality is more consistent with company FOMO than with actual usefulness.
- Touche 1y ago
  Because it's valuable training data. Like how having Google Maps on everyone's phone made their map data better. Personally I think AGI is ill-defined and won't happen as a new model release. Instead the thing to look for is how LLMs are being used in AI research and there are some advances happening there.
rvz 1y ago
Exactly. For example, Microsoft was building data centers all over the world since "AGI" was "around the corner" according to them. Now they are cancelling those plans. For them "AGI" was cancelled. OpenAI claims to be closer and closer to "AGI" as more top scientists left or are getting poached by other labs that are behind. So why would you leave if the promise of achieving "AGI" was going to produce "$100B dollars of profits" as per OpenAI's and Microsoft's definition in their deal? Their actions tell more than any of their statements or claims.
- zaphirplane 1y ago
  I’m not commenting on the whole just the rhetorical question of why would people leave. They are leaving for more money, more seniority or because they don’t like their boss. 0 about AGI
  - Touche 1y ago
    Yeah I agree, this idea that people won't change jobs if they are on the verge of a breakthrough reads like a silicon valley fantasy where you can underpay people by selling them on vision or something. "Make ME rich, but we'll give you a footnote on the Wikipedia page"
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      I think you're being very optimistic with the footnote.
  - rvz 1y ago
    > They are leaving for more money, more seniority or because they don’t like their boss. 0 about AGI Of course, but that's part of my whole point. Such statements and targets about how close we are to "AGI" has only become nothing but false promises and using AGI as the prime excuse to continue raising more money.
  - Game_Ender 1y ago
    I think the implicit take is that if your company hits AGI your equity package will do something like 10x-100x even if the company is already big. The only other way to do that is join a startup early enough to ride its growth wave. Another way to say it is that people think it’s much more likely for each decent LLM startup grow really strongly first several years then plateau vs. then for their current established player to hit hyper growth because of AGI.
    - leoc 1y ago
      A catch here is that individual workers may have priorities which are altered due to the strong natural preference for assuring financial independence. Even if you were a hot AI researcher who felt (and this is just a hypothetical) that your company was the clear industry leader and had, say, a 75% chance of soon achieving something AGI-adjacent and enabling massive productivity gains, you might still (and quite reasonably) prefer to leave if that was what it took to make absolutely sure of getting of your private-income screw-you money (and/or private-investor seed capital). Again this is just a hypothetical: I have no special insight, and FWIW my gut instinct is that the job-hoppers are in fact mostly quite cynical about the near-term prospects for "AGI".
- cm277 1y ago
  Yes, this. Microsoft has other businesses that can make a lot of money (regular Azure) and tons of cash flow. The fact that they are pulling back from the market leader (OpenAI) whom they mostly owned should be all the negative signal people need: AGI is not close and there is no real moat even for OpenAI.
  - whynotminot 1y ago
    Well, there’s clauses in their relationship with OpenAI that sever the relationship when AGI is reached. So it’s actually not in Microsoft’s interests for OpenAI to get there
    - PessimalDecimal 1y ago
      I haven't heard of this. Can you provide a reference? I'd love to see how they even define AGI crisply enough for a contract.
      - diggan 1y ago
        > I'd love to see how they even define AGI crisply enough for a contract. Seems to be about this: > As per the current terms, when OpenAI creates AGI - defined as a "highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work" - Microsoft's access to such a technology would be void. https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-seeks-unlock-investment-by-ditching-agi-clause-with-microsoft-ft-reports-2024-12-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-seeks-unlock-inves...
- computerphage 1y ago
  Wait, aren't they cancelling leases on non-ai data centers that aren't under Microsoft's control, while spending much more money to build new AI focused data centers that that own? Do you have a source that says they're canceling their own data centers?
  - PessimalDecimal 1y ago
    https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/hyperscale/article/55270517/does-it-matter-if-microsoft-is-cancelling-ai-data-center-leases https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/hyperscale/article/552705... might fit the bill of what you are looking for. Microsoft itself hasn't said they're doing this because of oversupply in infrastructure for it's AI offerings, but they very likely wouldn't say that publicly even if that's the reason.
    - computerphage 1y ago
      Thank you!
- tuatoru 1y ago
  > Their actions tell more than any of their statements or claims. At Microsoft, "AI" is spelled "H1-B".
pu_pe 1y ago
I don't think it's as simple as that. Chatbots can be used to harvest data, and sales are still important before and after you achieve AGI.
- worldsayshi 1y ago
  It could also be the case that they think that AGI could arrive at any moment but it's very uncertain when and only so many people can work on it simultaneously. So they spread out investments to also cover low uncertainty areas.
- energy123 1y ago
  Besides, there is Sutskever's SSI which is avoiding customers.
  - timy2shoes 1y ago
    Of course they are. Why would you want revenue? If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money!
- pests 1y ago
  OpenAI considers money to be useless post-agi. They’ve even made statements that any investments are basically donations once agi is achieved
redhale 1y ago
> Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? To fund yourself while building AGI? To hedge risk that AGI takes longer? Not saying you're wrong, just saying that even if they did believe it, this behavior could be justified.
- krainboltgreene 1y ago
  There is no chat bot so feature rich that it would fund the billions being burned on a monthly basis.
imiric 1y ago
Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? This is the main point that proves to me that these companies are mostly selling us snake oil. Yes, there is a great deal of utility from even the current technology. It can detect patterns in data that no human could; that alone can be revolutionary in some fields. It can generate data that mimics anything humans have produced, and certain permutations of that can be insightful. It can produce fascinating images, audio, and video. Some of these capabilities raise safety concerns, particularly in the wrong hands, and important questions that society needs to address. These hurdles are surmountable, but they require focusing on the reality of what these tools can do, instead of on whatever a group of serial tech entrepreneurs looking for the next cashout opportunity tell us they can do. The constant anthropomorphization of this technology is dishonest at best, and harmful and dangerous at worst.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  Data from the future is tunneling into the past to mess up our weights and ensure we never achieve AGI.
- ozim 1y ago
  anthropomorphization definitely sucks, hype is over the board. But it is far from snake oil as it actually is useful and does a lot of stuff really.
- richk449 1y ago
  > if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? Hallucination does seem to be much less of an issue now. I hardly even hear about it - like it just faded away. As far as I can tell smart engineers are using AI tools, particularly people doing coding, but even non-coding roles. The criticism feels about three years out of date.
bluGill 1y ago
The people who make the money in gold rushes sold shovels, not mined the gold. Sure some random people found gold and made a lot of money, but many others didn't strike it rich. As such even if there is a lot of money AI will make, it can still be the right decision to sell tools to others who will figure out how to use it. And of course if it turns out another pointless fad with no real value you still make money. (I'd predict the answer is in between - we are not going to get some AGI that takes over the world, but there will be niches where it is a big help and those niches will be worth selling tools into)
- convolvatron 1y ago
  its so good that people seem to automatically exclude the middle. its either the arrival of the singularity or complete fakery. I think you've expressed the most likely outcome by far - that there will be some really interesting tools and use cases, and some things will be changed forever - but very unlikely that _everything_ will
- mathgeek 1y ago
  > The people who make the money in gold rushes sold shovels, not mined the gold. Sure some random people found gold and made a lot of money, but many others didn't strike it rich. Another important group to remember is those who owned the infrastructure necessary for the prospectors to survive. The folks who owned (or strong-armed their way into) the services around housing, food, alcohol, etc. made off like bandits.
richk449 1y ago
> If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? What if chatbots and user interactions ARE the path to AGI? Two reasons they could be: (1) Reinforcement learning in AI has proven to be very powerful. Humans get to GI through learning too - they aren’t born with much intelligence. Interactions between AI and humans may be the fastest way to get to AGI. (2) The classic Silicon Valley startup model is to push to customers as soon as possible (MVP). You don’t develop the perfect solution in isolation, and then deploy it once it is polished. You get users to try it and give feedback as soon as you have something they can try. I don’t have any special insight into AI or AGI, but I don’t think OpenAI selling useful and profitable products is proof that there won’t be AI.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
Lichtso 1y ago
> Why bother developing chatbots Maybe it is the reverse? It is not them offering a product, it is the users offering their interaction data. Data which might be harvested for further training of the real deal, which is not the product. Think about it: They (companies like OpenAI) have created a broad and diverse user base which without a second thought feeds them with up-to-date info about everything happening in the world, down to the individual life and even their inner thoughts. No one in the history of mankind ever had such a holistic view, almost gods eye. That is certainly something a super intelligence would be interested in. They may have achieved it already and we are seeing one of its strategies playing out. Not saying they have, but this observation would not be incompatible or indicate they haven't.
- ysofunny 1y ago
  that possibility makes me feel weird about paying a subscription... they should pay me! or the best models should be free to use. if it's free to use then I think I can live with it
- blibble 1y ago
  > No one in the history of mankind ever had such a holistic view, almost gods eye. I distinctly remember search engines 30 years ago having a "live searches" page (with optional "include adult searches" mode)
  - kylecazar 1y ago
    I'n the mid 90's? What did the "live searches" feature do?
    - sllabres 1y ago
      Show what queries are send to the search engine (by other users) right now
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- 1y ago
grafmax 1y ago
> it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow). More like usher in climate catastrophe way ahead of schedule. AI-driven data center build outs are a major source of new energy use, and this trend is only intensifying. Dangerously irresponsible marketing cloaks the impact of these companies on our future.
- Redoubts 1y ago
  Incredibly bizarre take. You can build more capacity without frying the planet. Many ai companies are directly investing in nuclear plants for this reason, for example.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    Several companies investing in AI Have made commitments to renewable and clean energy. However at most half of this increased energy demand is expected to come from renewables through 2030 and fossil fuels will continue to be heavily utilized for the massive data center build outs occurring beyond that, according to the International Energy Agency’s April 2025 report. Nuclear energy has long build outs of 10+ years. For the forseeable future the AI industry will continue to contribute to climate change, at a point in history where immediate drastic action is needed to mitigate the impending climate catastrophe.
    - Redoubts 1y ago
      > However at most half of this increased energy demand is expected to come from renewables through 2030 You know that’s actually very good, right? > Nuclear energy has long build outs of 10+ years. Good news is degrowthers have left us with a long list of deactivated plants that can simply be restarted much sooner than that.
      - grafmax 1y ago
        Rapidly increased energy use from fossil fuels (despite up to half coming from renewables), is simply not good enough. We are likely in the process of exceeding the 1.5 degree threshold targeted by the Paris Climate Accords. Making gestures toward renewable energy while drastically increasing fossil fuel usage is dangerously irresponsible. As for degrowthers - that’s really not the reason nuclear plants have been shuttered, historically - rather it’s aging infrastructure as plants reached the end of their operational timelines, and economic competition (historically) from fossil fuels. “Degrowth”, on the other hand, is a recent ideology. Nor is the expected energy use from shuttered nuclear expected to address the extreme energy usage from AI data centers. The IEA already forecasts with unshuttering in mind. Sadly your notion that unshuttering will be enough to make AI energy clean just isn’t true once we take sober stock of our current situation. And, as truly dire as our circumstances are, we are better off acknowledging them with an honest appraisal so we can make the optimal decisions around our predicament - rather than digging our hole even deeper in the comfort of our rose colored glasses and Pollyanna ideologies.
comfysocks 1y ago
If we just forget about AGI for a second, and looked at AI Wars as something in the vein of Search Wars Redux, wouldn’t that explain a lot of the strategy? Granted, history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, it rhymes…

by matusp 1y ago

delusional 1y ago

Continuing in the same vain. Why would they force their super valuable, highly desirable, profit maximizing chat-bots down your throat? Observations of reality is more consistent with company FOMO than with actual usefulness.

Touche 1y ago
Because it's valuable training data. Like how having Google Maps on everyone's phone made their map data better. Personally I think AGI is ill-defined and won't happen as a new model release. Instead the thing to look for is how LLMs are being used in AI research and there are some advances happening there.

rvz 1y ago

Exactly. For example, Microsoft was building data centers all over the world since "AGI" was "around the corner" according to them. Now they are cancelling those plans. For them "AGI" was cancelled. OpenAI claims to be closer and closer to "AGI" as more top scientists left or are getting poached by other labs that are behind. So why would you leave if the promise of achieving "AGI" was going to produce "$100B dollars of profits" as per OpenAI's and Microsoft's definition in their deal? Their actions tell more than any of their statements or claims.

zaphirplane 1y ago
I’m not commenting on the whole just the rhetorical question of why would people leave. They are leaving for more money, more seniority or because they don’t like their boss. 0 about AGI
- Touche 1y ago
  Yeah I agree, this idea that people won't change jobs if they are on the verge of a breakthrough reads like a silicon valley fantasy where you can underpay people by selling them on vision or something. "Make ME rich, but we'll give you a footnote on the Wikipedia page"
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    I think you're being very optimistic with the footnote.
- rvz 1y ago
  > They are leaving for more money, more seniority or because they don’t like their boss. 0 about AGI Of course, but that's part of my whole point. Such statements and targets about how close we are to "AGI" has only become nothing but false promises and using AGI as the prime excuse to continue raising more money.
- Game_Ender 1y ago
  I think the implicit take is that if your company hits AGI your equity package will do something like 10x-100x even if the company is already big. The only other way to do that is join a startup early enough to ride its growth wave. Another way to say it is that people think it’s much more likely for each decent LLM startup grow really strongly first several years then plateau vs. then for their current established player to hit hyper growth because of AGI.
  - leoc 1y ago
    A catch here is that individual workers may have priorities which are altered due to the strong natural preference for assuring financial independence. Even if you were a hot AI researcher who felt (and this is just a hypothetical) that your company was the clear industry leader and had, say, a 75% chance of soon achieving something AGI-adjacent and enabling massive productivity gains, you might still (and quite reasonably) prefer to leave if that was what it took to make absolutely sure of getting of your private-income screw-you money (and/or private-investor seed capital). Again this is just a hypothetical: I have no special insight, and FWIW my gut instinct is that the job-hoppers are in fact mostly quite cynical about the near-term prospects for "AGI".
cm277 1y ago
Yes, this. Microsoft has other businesses that can make a lot of money (regular Azure) and tons of cash flow. The fact that they are pulling back from the market leader (OpenAI) whom they mostly owned should be all the negative signal people need: AGI is not close and there is no real moat even for OpenAI.
- whynotminot 1y ago
  Well, there’s clauses in their relationship with OpenAI that sever the relationship when AGI is reached. So it’s actually not in Microsoft’s interests for OpenAI to get there
  - PessimalDecimal 1y ago
    I haven't heard of this. Can you provide a reference? I'd love to see how they even define AGI crisply enough for a contract.
    - diggan 1y ago
      > I'd love to see how they even define AGI crisply enough for a contract. Seems to be about this: > As per the current terms, when OpenAI creates AGI - defined as a "highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work" - Microsoft's access to such a technology would be void. https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-seeks-unlock-investment-by-ditching-agi-clause-with-microsoft-ft-reports-2024-12-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-seeks-unlock-inves...
computerphage 1y ago
Wait, aren't they cancelling leases on non-ai data centers that aren't under Microsoft's control, while spending much more money to build new AI focused data centers that that own? Do you have a source that says they're canceling their own data centers?
- PessimalDecimal 1y ago
  https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/hyperscale/article/55270517/does-it-matter-if-microsoft-is-cancelling-ai-data-center-leases https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/hyperscale/article/552705... might fit the bill of what you are looking for. Microsoft itself hasn't said they're doing this because of oversupply in infrastructure for it's AI offerings, but they very likely wouldn't say that publicly even if that's the reason.
  - computerphage 1y ago
    Thank you!
tuatoru 1y ago
> Their actions tell more than any of their statements or claims. At Microsoft, "AI" is spelled "H1-B".

pu_pe 1y ago

I don't think it's as simple as that. Chatbots can be used to harvest data, and sales are still important before and after you achieve AGI.

worldsayshi 1y ago
It could also be the case that they think that AGI could arrive at any moment but it's very uncertain when and only so many people can work on it simultaneously. So they spread out investments to also cover low uncertainty areas.
energy123 1y ago
Besides, there is Sutskever's SSI which is avoiding customers.
- timy2shoes 1y ago
  Of course they are. Why would you want revenue? If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money!
pests 1y ago
OpenAI considers money to be useless post-agi. They’ve even made statements that any investments are basically donations once agi is achieved

redhale 1y ago

> Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? To fund yourself while building AGI? To hedge risk that AGI takes longer? Not saying you're wrong, just saying that even if they did believe it, this behavior could be justified.

krainboltgreene 1y ago
There is no chat bot so feature rich that it would fund the billions being burned on a monthly basis.

imiric 1y ago

Related to your point: if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? This is the main point that proves to me that these companies are mostly selling us snake oil. Yes, there is a great deal of utility from even the current technology. It can detect patterns in data that no human could; that alone can be revolutionary in some fields. It can generate data that mimics anything humans have produced, and certain permutations of that can be insightful. It can produce fascinating images, audio, and video. Some of these capabilities raise safety concerns, particularly in the wrong hands, and important questions that society needs to address. These hurdles are surmountable, but they require focusing on the reality of what these tools can do, instead of on whatever a group of serial tech entrepreneurs looking for the next cashout opportunity tell us they can do. The constant anthropomorphization of this technology is dishonest at best, and harmful and dangerous at worst.

deadbabe 1y ago
Data from the future is tunneling into the past to mess up our weights and ensure we never achieve AGI.
ozim 1y ago
anthropomorphization definitely sucks, hype is over the board. But it is far from snake oil as it actually is useful and does a lot of stuff really.
richk449 1y ago
> if these tools are close to having super-human intelligence, and they make humans so much more productive, why aren't we seeing improvements at a much faster rate than we are now? Why aren't inherent problems like hallucination already solved, or at least less of an issue? Surely the smartest researchers and engineers money can buy would be dogfooding, no? Hallucination does seem to be much less of an issue now. I hardly even hear about it - like it just faded away. As far as I can tell smart engineers are using AI tools, particularly people doing coding, but even non-coding roles. The criticism feels about three years out of date.

bluGill 1y ago

The people who make the money in gold rushes sold shovels, not mined the gold. Sure some random people found gold and made a lot of money, but many others didn't strike it rich. As such even if there is a lot of money AI will make, it can still be the right decision to sell tools to others who will figure out how to use it. And of course if it turns out another pointless fad with no real value you still make money. (I'd predict the answer is in between - we are not going to get some AGI that takes over the world, but there will be niches where it is a big help and those niches will be worth selling tools into)

convolvatron 1y ago
its so good that people seem to automatically exclude the middle. its either the arrival of the singularity or complete fakery. I think you've expressed the most likely outcome by far - that there will be some really interesting tools and use cases, and some things will be changed forever - but very unlikely that _everything_ will
mathgeek 1y ago
> The people who make the money in gold rushes sold shovels, not mined the gold. Sure some random people found gold and made a lot of money, but many others didn't strike it rich. Another important group to remember is those who owned the infrastructure necessary for the prospectors to survive. The folks who owned (or strong-armed their way into) the services around housing, food, alcohol, etc. made off like bandits.

richk449 1y ago

> If they would expect to achieve AGI soon, their behaviour would be completely different. Why bother developing chatbots or doing sales, when you will be operating AGI in a few short years? What if chatbots and user interactions ARE the path to AGI? Two reasons they could be: (1) Reinforcement learning in AI has proven to be very powerful. Humans get to GI through learning too - they aren’t born with much intelligence. Interactions between AI and humans may be the fastest way to get to AGI. (2) The classic Silicon Valley startup model is to push to customers as soon as possible (MVP). You don’t develop the perfect solution in isolation, and then deploy it once it is polished. You get users to try it and give feedback as soon as you have something they can try. I don’t have any special insight into AI or AGI, but I don’t think OpenAI selling useful and profitable products is proof that there won’t be AI.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Lichtso 1y ago

> Why bother developing chatbots Maybe it is the reverse? It is not them offering a product, it is the users offering their interaction data. Data which might be harvested for further training of the real deal, which is not the product. Think about it: They (companies like OpenAI) have created a broad and diverse user base which without a second thought feeds them with up-to-date info about everything happening in the world, down to the individual life and even their inner thoughts. No one in the history of mankind ever had such a holistic view, almost gods eye. That is certainly something a super intelligence would be interested in. They may have achieved it already and we are seeing one of its strategies playing out. Not saying they have, but this observation would not be incompatible or indicate they haven't.

ysofunny 1y ago
that possibility makes me feel weird about paying a subscription... they should pay me! or the best models should be free to use. if it's free to use then I think I can live with it
blibble 1y ago
> No one in the history of mankind ever had such a holistic view, almost gods eye. I distinctly remember search engines 30 years ago having a "live searches" page (with optional "include adult searches" mode)
- kylecazar 1y ago
  I'n the mid 90's? What did the "live searches" feature do?
  - sllabres 1y ago
    Show what queries are send to the search engine (by other users) right now
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
1y ago

grafmax 1y ago

> it is supposed to usher the humanity into a new prosperous age (somehow). More like usher in climate catastrophe way ahead of schedule. AI-driven data center build outs are a major source of new energy use, and this trend is only intensifying. Dangerously irresponsible marketing cloaks the impact of these companies on our future.

Redoubts 1y ago
Incredibly bizarre take. You can build more capacity without frying the planet. Many ai companies are directly investing in nuclear plants for this reason, for example.
- grafmax 1y ago
  Several companies investing in AI Have made commitments to renewable and clean energy. However at most half of this increased energy demand is expected to come from renewables through 2030 and fossil fuels will continue to be heavily utilized for the massive data center build outs occurring beyond that, according to the International Energy Agency’s April 2025 report. Nuclear energy has long build outs of 10+ years. For the forseeable future the AI industry will continue to contribute to climate change, at a point in history where immediate drastic action is needed to mitigate the impending climate catastrophe.
  - Redoubts 1y ago
    > However at most half of this increased energy demand is expected to come from renewables through 2030 You know that’s actually very good, right? > Nuclear energy has long build outs of 10+ years. Good news is degrowthers have left us with a long list of deactivated plants that can simply be restarted much sooner than that.
    - grafmax 1y ago
      Rapidly increased energy use from fossil fuels (despite up to half coming from renewables), is simply not good enough. We are likely in the process of exceeding the 1.5 degree threshold targeted by the Paris Climate Accords. Making gestures toward renewable energy while drastically increasing fossil fuel usage is dangerously irresponsible. As for degrowthers - that’s really not the reason nuclear plants have been shuttered, historically - rather it’s aging infrastructure as plants reached the end of their operational timelines, and economic competition (historically) from fossil fuels. “Degrowth”, on the other hand, is a recent ideology. Nor is the expected energy use from shuttered nuclear expected to address the extreme energy usage from AI data centers. The IEA already forecasts with unshuttering in mind. Sadly your notion that unshuttering will be enough to make AI energy clean just isn’t true once we take sober stock of our current situation. And, as truly dire as our circumstances are, we are better off acknowledging them with an honest appraisal so we can make the optimal decisions around our predicament - rather than digging our hole even deeper in the comfort of our rose colored glasses and Pollyanna ideologies.

comfysocks 1y ago

If we just forget about AGI for a second, and looked at AI Wars as something in the vein of Search Wars Redux, wouldn’t that explain a lot of the strategy? Granted, history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, it rhymes…