4 ms·

> 1. Corporations misappropriating $9Tn of opensource human works to sell isomorphic plagiarism tokens is not progress, but rather an unsustainable ectoparasite

by bitpush 15d ago

> 1. Corporations misappropriating $9Tn of opensource human works to sell isomorphic plagiarism tokens is not progress, but rather an unsustainable ectoparasite people will not tolerate very long. I think about this a lot when I look at the roads, freeways and railroads of the world. In pursuit for building it, billions of trees have been cut down, land fundamentally shifted, rivers cut through, and wildlife uprooted. Yet, roads, freeways and railroads allow for growth. Someone facing medical emergency can reach a hospital on road because it exists. I get to eat fruits in winter because it is imported and transported to me from warmer places and/or storage units. Human progress and prosperity comes at a cost. Nothing in the world is free (perhaps maybe sunshine?) and the life that you're yearning pre-AI is also extremely tainted. Infact, you'll be hard pressed to find an era when human meddling hasnt had bad impact on the world (right from farming and domesticating animals).

Joel_Mckay 15d ago
I ran the numbers on Sam Altman flippant statement about wasted energy, and found roughly 40000 human 20 year old lives worth of energy are exchanged with every frontier model training-cycle release at OpenAI. Some history... Westinghouse Electric sold turbines to power stations in the 1950s, and promoted electronic home appliances to drive energy consumption to close the sales loop. While the scheme was not a direct business success, for society it improved just about every Americans living standards. The problem is LLM cost resources, broke that loop, and only bids down the quality of life people can afford. You pay more, have less, and reduce taxable labor incomes into demand deficient classes. This will not end well for people even if LLM are recognized as mostly hype. =3
- bitpush 15d ago
  > You pay more, have less, and reduce taxable labor incomes into demand deficient classes. This will not end well for people even if LLM are recognized as mostly hype. =3 Depends on how you view efficient market hypothesis. Computers and Memory was prohibitively expensive. "Putting a computer in every one's desk" was literal rallying cry for Microsoft because it appeared audacious, just like saying "Unlimited LLM usage for every man, woman and child" or some such. Will it happen? Nope, but if the technology is useful the markets it'll spur competition and prices will come down. Heck, we dig plant juice out of the earth from deep sea oil rigs so that I can fill up my car to go walmart to buy soda. Pretty preposterous when you think about the closed loop.
  - Joel_Mckay 14d ago
    >if the technology is useful the markets it'll spur competition and prices will come down. Regulatory-captured markets have nothing to do with free competition, or bidding down price pressures. You do have monopolistic competitive firms drawing $4Tn in loans to artificially hyper-scale demands for NVIDIA hardware that earns you -$2.50 for every $1 in revenue. Your home heating bill may double this winter because the economic engine is currently post-consumer/broken. We shall see how this plays out. =3

by bitpush 15d ago

Joel_Mckay 15d ago

I ran the numbers on Sam Altman flippant statement about wasted energy, and found roughly 40000 human 20 year old lives worth of energy are exchanged with every frontier model training-cycle release at OpenAI. Some history... Westinghouse Electric sold turbines to power stations in the 1950s, and promoted electronic home appliances to drive energy consumption to close the sales loop. While the scheme was not a direct business success, for society it improved just about every Americans living standards. The problem is LLM cost resources, broke that loop, and only bids down the quality of life people can afford. You pay more, have less, and reduce taxable labor incomes into demand deficient classes. This will not end well for people even if LLM are recognized as mostly hype. =3

bitpush 15d ago
> You pay more, have less, and reduce taxable labor incomes into demand deficient classes. This will not end well for people even if LLM are recognized as mostly hype. =3 Depends on how you view efficient market hypothesis. Computers and Memory was prohibitively expensive. "Putting a computer in every one's desk" was literal rallying cry for Microsoft because it appeared audacious, just like saying "Unlimited LLM usage for every man, woman and child" or some such. Will it happen? Nope, but if the technology is useful the markets it'll spur competition and prices will come down. Heck, we dig plant juice out of the earth from deep sea oil rigs so that I can fill up my car to go walmart to buy soda. Pretty preposterous when you think about the closed loop.
- Joel_Mckay 14d ago
  >if the technology is useful the markets it'll spur competition and prices will come down. Regulatory-captured markets have nothing to do with free competition, or bidding down price pressures. You do have monopolistic competitive firms drawing $4Tn in loans to artificially hyper-scale demands for NVIDIA hardware that earns you -$2.50 for every $1 in revenue. Your home heating bill may double this winter because the economic engine is currently post-consumer/broken. We shall see how this plays out. =3