I’m genuinely excited about the possibilities of AI, just not in the hands of a bunch of self-serving amoral cunts.
Comment on We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
At some point, someone said the same thing about:
- electricity
- books
- cars
- computers
- medicine
- houses
Is this /c/technology or /c/anti_technology because it’s hard to tell most of the time.
Almacca@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I completely agree. However the genie is out of the bottle. Not much we can do to prevent it at this point, but there is plenty we can do to learn about it and defend against is abuse against us.
Almacca@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
We could nationalise it.
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Realistically not going to happen anytime soon.
AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 2 weeks ago
I don’t think books ever had the same amount of discussion of how they impact our global carbon footprint, and where it comes to “houses” - I doubt people in the neolithic said about their new invention what is being discussed with AI. It is a disingenuous comparison. (And sure, someone somewhere may have said something like that about basically anything, but usually not a large part of professionals from within the field, like is the case with AI.)
This is also not simply Ludditism, the nature of how AI is used currently goes far beyond where it is genuinely useful in a case of investor hype FOMO, and the hidden costs for our efforts against climate change are real, as are the problems for creatives - who sadly need a lot of the “bullshit work” that AI can substitute to survive while honing their craft - as is the quality drop in journalism, as are fundamental questions about how far generative AI models can truly evolve in quality for the massive amount of energy invested, so the usual “just wait until the tech gets better” is not the easy way out to justify draining said energy (and fresh water) on top of what crypto mining has been wasting with data centres in the past years.
Now, those problems aren’t simply problems of the technology, but also of how that technology manifests within market dynamics. But the technology still is not just neutral, and even if we view it as an inevitability, that inevitability does not have to manifest without regulation and within the context of hyped, often unwanted application to basically everything.
Without mechanisms to address problems and to enforce regulation, in lieu of fundamental changes to what market/investment dynamics demand, this is indeed a very questionable technology at this point. And also: To truly love something abstract, like “technology”, means being able to - sometimes harshly - criticise it. Think the meme of a “tech bro” with a fully automated house vs the IT guy who barely has tech stuff beyond their PC and some stuff tinkered on passionately in their own time.
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I’m not sure regulation is going to be an open for this in the US anytime soon. Maybe EU can show us the way.
Engywuck@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Is this /c/technology or /c/anti_technology because it’s hard to tell most of the time.
People here are generally are anti-anything. That’s what echo chambers are for.
zerofk@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Sounds like most of Lemmy. Honestly sometimes I feel it’s worse than Reddit with the constant bashing on anything except Linux, Firefox, or - for some reason - Steam. Still glad I left Reddit though.
Engywuck@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
I didn’t leave reddit, because O consider useful the subs O use (mostly technical stuff). And yes, you’re right about the constant bashing in anything out of the herd mentality.
Almacca@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
Take all that shit with a grain of salt. Such things don’t matter. Imagine getting riled up over a fucking web-browser. LOL.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
or about an operating system, LOL! oh nevermind that it’s been uploading all your personal documents and pictures to a questionable cloud storage service without your given informed consent, or that it recently started screenshotting the everydays of millions if not billions of users (among them businesses dealing with your data), to scrape together as much information as they possibly can
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I can hate on Firefox if it’ll make you feel better.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Nuclear power seems to be one of those things that are anything but bashed here but instead gets treated with an almost worship-like reverence.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It’s much better to be a critical thinker than mindlessly accepting whatever BS from some grifter.
Engywuck@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
I’m gladly you’re one of the few non-brainwashed humans on the Earth. So special!
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I am biased, I am having a ton of fun with LLMs and they are helping me achieve some personal goals. Do they use energy? Sure. Will new, more powerful technologies come along later that require even greater amounts of energy? I hope so one day. We need to find cleaner more abundant energy sources.
madjo@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
What benefit for society does this crop of large language models and generative “AI” offer?
We already see students use it for homework, meaning they don’t learn their stuff.
We also see people treat the output of LLMs as gospel truth, despite the fact that LLMs often hallucinate complete BS!
LLMs and generative “AI” rely on stolen artwork. Which is a net negative for society.
Telorand@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Some people think you can use it as a replacement for therapy or to fight loneliness. Turns out, simply reading fiction is better.
Almacca@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
Cool article. Thanks for the link. As an older fellow, but a lifetime reader, mainly of sci-fi, I feel thankful that I’ve been doing something to offset the years of drug and alcohol abuse. :)
Recently, though, I went through and read the entire bibliography of Robert Rankin, which kind of broke my mind a bit - I DO NOT recommend it - and it’s taken me a year or so to feel like starting to read novels again. They’re wildly hilarious if you’re a fan of running gags and sheer insane premises, but I shouldn’t have taken them all at once.
Telorand@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
It’s pretty cool how books are more than just fuel for imagination, no? But I second the idea of joining a book club, because not only do you get the cognitive effects of a book, but you get the social benefits of a club!
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Well for me, I enjoy pair programming my own projects with offline models. I also bounce ideas off it to attempt to ground myself in some type of reality (some models are better for this than others… probably has risk of delusions of grandeur. Some models will just verbally suck you off which is annoying).
I built ansible tooling for deploying k3s kubernetes and Ceph-backed Proxmox clusters and VMs and containers and services. Utilized the help of LLMs to structure my playbooks and figure out how roles work.
I love learning new things and LLMs have a lot to offer in that regard. You have to watch out for the bullshit and independently look at other sources as well, but it’s a great starting point and I can sometimes have sone deep conversations around some topics.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Well only one of those is allowed to exist so you figure it out.
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
When AI was getting popular, the media released an absolute war against it. A lot of us are swayed by what the media tell us
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
That’s probably going to be one of the main weapons against us, the media generating fake news using AI to control us.
eleitl@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
You might have heard of these fossil fuels we’re busily running out of. And fossil is still 80% of primary energy use so there is no renewable energy transition, and renewable infrastructure is being built almost exclusively using fossil fuels.
So this means future energy rationing. What’s the business case for AI?
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
What’s the business case for AI?
printing money by deception. oh and also votes, probably.
Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Also telling me how to install arch Linux but sing it to me as a Kenny Loggins
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Restricting our energy use is not a very good end game. We need to learn how to unlock more energy production without destruction of the environment. This will happen through technological development. Temporarily rationing or conservation may be needed, but permanent is not the answer.
eleitl@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
May I interest you in this resource? escholarship.org/uc/item/9js5291m
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I’m not interested in books championing our reduction of human expansion. I want to see us reach out into the stars one day. Technological development and progress is needed. We need to also change our mindset on current systems. E.g., if it doesn’t maximize return on investment, forget about it. If there is a way to do it slightly cheaper even if it’s detrimental, do it cheaper. That mindset sucks.
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
A better analogy for AI is the discovery of asbestos or the invention of single-use plastics. Terrible fucking idea.
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I think it’s probably a bit early to tell for certain on that assessment. There is definitely pros and cons to all technology. Electricity production causes environmental damage, building wooden houses require logging. Plastics are a byproduct of a withering industry. Asbestos might have saved more lives than it took, but there were probably much better ways to solve fire resistant buildings.
Why all these destructive things? Capitalism requires maximizing profits above all else. So, really the question is how will capitalism fuck us over with AI? So, so many ways. That’s why it’s important that we build community understanding of this technology in order to combat it. It’s not going away. It’s here to stay. So we either put our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not here or we can embrace it and learn how it works and how to defeat it and come up with open source tooling to combat it.
I’m in the latter camp. I love technology breakthroughs and want to learn first hand the capabilities to understand how it will be used against me and how I can use it.
dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Well, it’s a bit better than that, simply because you can train AI with solar power. Probably nobody does that currently, as it’s easier, faster-to-market and probably (for whatever corrupt reason) cheaper for business to let it run on burning fossils/nuclear. Currently there’s an insane amount of waste, often 1000s of models are trained and only the best performing one is deployed - and then it’s just a fancy autocomplete. The better use is for prediction of material failure, new medicine and protein folding, generally improved processes.
With asbestos you get some convenience, but it’ll be for eternity a pain to find a waste management facility that will accept it.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Plastics are great, what are you smoking, plastics?