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> I am certain that generative AI is a productivity amplifier, but its economic, environmental, and cultural externalities are not being discussed enough. You

> I am certain that generative AI is a productivity amplifier, but its economic, environmental, and cultural externalities are not being discussed enough. You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed. There’s nothing in this article I haven’t heard 100 times before. Open any mainstream news article or HN/Reddit thread and you’ll find all of OP’s talking points about water, electricity, job loss, the intrinsic value of art, etc.

erxam 9mo ago
It should be reworded as: It's not being discussed amongst the people who matter.
rootnod3 9mo ago
And most of those concerns being wildly dismissed by the AI shills, even here on HN. Mention anything about the water and electricity wastage and embrace the downvotes.
- sharifhsn 9mo ago
  Because those criticisms misses the forest for the trees. You might as well complain about the pollution caused by the Industrial Revolution. AI doesn’t use nearly as much as water as even a small amount of beef production. And we have cheap ways of producing electricity, we just need to overhaul our infrastructure and regulations. The more interesting questions are about psychology, productivity, intelligence, AGI risk, etc. Resource constraints can be solved, but we’re wrestling with societal constraints. Industrialization created modernism, we could see a similar movement in reaction to AI.
  - nancyminusone 9mo ago
    >we could see Well, that's just it. Those extentitential risks aren't even proven yet. Meanwhile, threats to resources are already being felt today. "just overhaul our infrastructure" isn't an actionable solution that will magically fix things today or next week. Even if these don't end up being big problems in the grand scheme of things doesn't mean they aren't problems now.
  - wiseowise 9mo ago
    > AI doesn’t use nearly as much as water as even a small amount of beef production. It's almost like humans evolved from prehistoric times eating meat. Wild discovery, right? > And we have cheap ways of producing electricity, we just need to overhaul our infrastructure and regulations. Why don't AI bros lobby the changes? Much harder than selling snake oil and getting rid of programmers, I guess.
    - sooklord 9mo ago
      [dead]
- aspenmartin 9mo ago
  Well considering people that disagree with you “shills” is maybe a bad start and indicates you kind of just have an axe to grind. You’re right that there can be serious local issues for data centers but there are plenty of instances where it’s a clear net positive. There’s a lot of nuance that you’re just breezing over and then characterizing people that point this out as “shills”. Water and electricity demands do not have to be problematic, they are highly site specific. In some cases there are real concerns (drought-y areas like Arizona, impact on local grids and possibility of rate impacts for ordinary people etc) but in many cases they are not problematic (closed loop or reclaimed water, independent power sources, etc).
  - dr-detroit 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - rootnod3 9mo ago
    It’s already causing massive problems before we even got to models that even do anything actually useful. Wait until other countries jump in the bandwagon and see energy prices jump. Currently it is mostly the US and China. And RAM and GPU prices are already through the roof with SSDs to follow. That is for now with ONLY the US market mostly. And those “net benefits” you talk about have very questionable data behind it. It’s a net loss of you ask me.
    - aspenmartin 9mo ago
      Well why would we ask you (no offense)? What is the questionable data you're talking about? RAM and GPU prices going up, sure ok, but again: if you're claiming there is no net benefit from AI what is your evidence for that? These contracts are going through legally, so what basis do you have to prevent them from happening? Again I say its site specific: plenty of instances where people have successfully prevented data centers in their area, and lots of problems come up (especially because companies are secretive about details so people may not be able to make informed judgements). What are the massive problems besides RAM + GPU prices, which again, what is the societal impact from this?
everdrive 9mo ago
This is a weird quirk that I observe in all sorts of contexts. "No one's talking about [thing that is frequently discussed]!" or, "There's never been [an actor in this identity category] in major movie role before!" (except there has plenty of times) or sometimes "You can't even say Christmas anymore!" (except they just did) The somewhat inaccurate use of hyperbolic language does not mean that there is _nothing_ to the particular statement or issue. Only that the hyperbole is just that; an exaggeration of a potentially real and valid issue. The hyperbole is not very helpful, but neither is a total refutation of the issue based on the usage of hyperbole.
- dgeiser13 9mo ago
  I find hyperbolic comments on recommendation threads, e.g. "I can't believe no one has mentioned <blah> yet", to be quite annoying. Every item recommended on this thread is going to be "first" when it's first recommended. Trying to rocket your suggestion to the top of the pile by suggesting it's self-obviousness doesn't mean it's a better suggestion than any others.
- throwup238 9mo ago
  @dang has noted this phenomenon in various forms multiple times. The most recent one I can find: > It's common, if not inevitable, for people who feel strongly about $topic to conclude that the system (or the community, or the mods, etc.) are biased against their side. One is far more likely to notice whatever data points that one dislikes because they go against one's view and overweight those relative to others. This is probably the single most reliable phenomenon on this site. Keep in mind that the people with the opposite view to yours are just as convinced that there's bias, but they're sure that it's against their side and in favor of yours. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42205856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42205856
s-macke 9mo ago
> ... emitting a NYC worth of CO2 in a year is dizzying Simplified comparisons like these rarely show the full picture [0]. They focus on electricity use only, not on heating, transport, or meat production, and certainly not on the CO2 emissions associated with New York’s airports. As a rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate, a flight from Los Angeles to New York with one seat is on the order of 1,000,000 small chat queries CO2e. Of course we should care about AI’s electricity consumption, especially when we run 100 agents in parallel simply because we can. But it’s important to keep it in perspective. [0] https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...
happytoexplain 9mo ago
Yes, it's being discussed a lot. No, it's not being discussed enough, nor by all the right people. It has the potential to cause untold suffering to the middle class of developed nations, since it's moving too fast for individual humans to adjust. On the Problem Scale that puts it on the "societal emergency" end, which basically can not be discussed enough.
- sodapopcan 9mo ago
  Ya, I think "it's not being discussed enough" is a veiled way to say: "I can't believe so people are ok with this shit."
duped 9mo ago
What's not being discussed are the people building these things are evil and they're doing it for evil purposes. I spent some time thinking of a better word than "evil" before typing this comment. I can't think of one. Doing something bad that harms more than it helps for the purposes of enrichment and power is simply put: evil.
micromacrofoot 9mo ago
I think maybe people who write that it's not being discussed really mean that people aren't doing anything based on the discussions. Overall all of this is just sort of happening.
Aurornis 9mo ago
> You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed It’s not just being discussed, it’s dominating the conversation on sites like Hacker News. It’s actually hard to find the useful and informative LLM content because it doesn’t get as many upvotes as the constant flow of anti-LLM thought pieces like this. There was even the strange period when the rationalist movement was in the spotlight and getting mainstream media coverage for their AI safety warnings. They overplayed their hand with the whole call to drop bombs on data centers and the AI 2027 project with Scott Alexander that predicted the arrival of AGI and disastrous consequences in 2027. There was so much extreme doom and cynicism for a while that a lot of people just got tired of it and tuned out.

erxam 9mo ago

It should be reworded as: It's not being discussed amongst the people who matter.

rootnod3 9mo ago

And most of those concerns being wildly dismissed by the AI shills, even here on HN. Mention anything about the water and electricity wastage and embrace the downvotes.

sharifhsn 9mo ago
Because those criticisms misses the forest for the trees. You might as well complain about the pollution caused by the Industrial Revolution. AI doesn’t use nearly as much as water as even a small amount of beef production. And we have cheap ways of producing electricity, we just need to overhaul our infrastructure and regulations. The more interesting questions are about psychology, productivity, intelligence, AGI risk, etc. Resource constraints can be solved, but we’re wrestling with societal constraints. Industrialization created modernism, we could see a similar movement in reaction to AI.
- nancyminusone 9mo ago
  >we could see Well, that's just it. Those extentitential risks aren't even proven yet. Meanwhile, threats to resources are already being felt today. "just overhaul our infrastructure" isn't an actionable solution that will magically fix things today or next week. Even if these don't end up being big problems in the grand scheme of things doesn't mean they aren't problems now.
- wiseowise 9mo ago
  > AI doesn’t use nearly as much as water as even a small amount of beef production. It's almost like humans evolved from prehistoric times eating meat. Wild discovery, right? > And we have cheap ways of producing electricity, we just need to overhaul our infrastructure and regulations. Why don't AI bros lobby the changes? Much harder than selling snake oil and getting rid of programmers, I guess.
  - sooklord 9mo ago
    [dead]
aspenmartin 9mo ago
Well considering people that disagree with you “shills” is maybe a bad start and indicates you kind of just have an axe to grind. You’re right that there can be serious local issues for data centers but there are plenty of instances where it’s a clear net positive. There’s a lot of nuance that you’re just breezing over and then characterizing people that point this out as “shills”. Water and electricity demands do not have to be problematic, they are highly site specific. In some cases there are real concerns (drought-y areas like Arizona, impact on local grids and possibility of rate impacts for ordinary people etc) but in many cases they are not problematic (closed loop or reclaimed water, independent power sources, etc).
- dr-detroit 9mo ago
  [dead]
- rootnod3 9mo ago
  It’s already causing massive problems before we even got to models that even do anything actually useful. Wait until other countries jump in the bandwagon and see energy prices jump. Currently it is mostly the US and China. And RAM and GPU prices are already through the roof with SSDs to follow. That is for now with ONLY the US market mostly. And those “net benefits” you talk about have very questionable data behind it. It’s a net loss of you ask me.
  - aspenmartin 9mo ago
    Well why would we ask you (no offense)? What is the questionable data you're talking about? RAM and GPU prices going up, sure ok, but again: if you're claiming there is no net benefit from AI what is your evidence for that? These contracts are going through legally, so what basis do you have to prevent them from happening? Again I say its site specific: plenty of instances where people have successfully prevented data centers in their area, and lots of problems come up (especially because companies are secretive about details so people may not be able to make informed judgements). What are the massive problems besides RAM + GPU prices, which again, what is the societal impact from this?

everdrive 9mo ago

This is a weird quirk that I observe in all sorts of contexts. "No one's talking about [thing that is frequently discussed]!" or, "There's never been [an actor in this identity category] in major movie role before!" (except there has plenty of times) or sometimes "You can't even say Christmas anymore!" (except they just did) The somewhat inaccurate use of hyperbolic language does not mean that there is _nothing_ to the particular statement or issue. Only that the hyperbole is just that; an exaggeration of a potentially real and valid issue. The hyperbole is not very helpful, but neither is a total refutation of the issue based on the usage of hyperbole.

dgeiser13 9mo ago
I find hyperbolic comments on recommendation threads, e.g. "I can't believe no one has mentioned <blah> yet", to be quite annoying. Every item recommended on this thread is going to be "first" when it's first recommended. Trying to rocket your suggestion to the top of the pile by suggesting it's self-obviousness doesn't mean it's a better suggestion than any others.
throwup238 9mo ago
@dang has noted this phenomenon in various forms multiple times. The most recent one I can find: > It's common, if not inevitable, for people who feel strongly about $topic to conclude that the system (or the community, or the mods, etc.) are biased against their side. One is far more likely to notice whatever data points that one dislikes because they go against one's view and overweight those relative to others. This is probably the single most reliable phenomenon on this site. Keep in mind that the people with the opposite view to yours are just as convinced that there's bias, but they're sure that it's against their side and in favor of yours. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42205856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42205856

s-macke 9mo ago

> ... emitting a NYC worth of CO2 in a year is dizzying Simplified comparisons like these rarely show the full picture [0]. They focus on electricity use only, not on heating, transport, or meat production, and certainly not on the CO2 emissions associated with New York’s airports. As a rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate, a flight from Los Angeles to New York with one seat is on the order of 1,000,000 small chat queries CO2e. Of course we should care about AI’s electricity consumption, especially when we run 100 agents in parallel simply because we can. But it’s important to keep it in perspective. [0] https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversations-about https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...

happytoexplain 9mo ago

Yes, it's being discussed a lot. No, it's not being discussed enough, nor by all the right people. It has the potential to cause untold suffering to the middle class of developed nations, since it's moving too fast for individual humans to adjust. On the Problem Scale that puts it on the "societal emergency" end, which basically can not be discussed enough.

sodapopcan 9mo ago
Ya, I think "it's not being discussed enough" is a veiled way to say: "I can't believe so people are ok with this shit."

duped 9mo ago

What's not being discussed are the people building these things are evil and they're doing it for evil purposes. I spent some time thinking of a better word than "evil" before typing this comment. I can't think of one. Doing something bad that harms more than it helps for the purposes of enrichment and power is simply put: evil.

micromacrofoot 9mo ago

I think maybe people who write that it's not being discussed really mean that people aren't doing anything based on the discussions. Overall all of this is just sort of happening.

Aurornis 9mo ago

> You sure? That’s basically all that’s being discussed It’s not just being discussed, it’s dominating the conversation on sites like Hacker News. It’s actually hard to find the useful and informative LLM content because it doesn’t get as many upvotes as the constant flow of anti-LLM thought pieces like this. There was even the strange period when the rationalist movement was in the spotlight and getting mainstream media coverage for their AI safety warnings. They overplayed their hand with the whole call to drop bombs on data centers and the AI 2027 project with Scott Alexander that predicted the arrival of AGI and disastrous consequences in 2027. There was so much extreme doom and cynicism for a while that a lot of people just got tired of it and tuned out.