Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#131

Post by ETH_start » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

seadan83 wrote: post #130

ETH_start wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wages, after adjusting for inflation, are more than 20x greater today than they were 200 years ago. That's why infant mortality has declined so much. We still have a lot of room for improvement, with the masses still forced to subsist on sub-par products (e.g. ultra-processed foods, products that poison them with microplastics, etc) and long work hours just to afford basics (housing, healthcare, childcare, etc), and…

> Wages, after adjusting for inflation, are more than 20x greater today than they were 200 years ago. Agree. Though, the time periods are not all that comparable and I'm really referring to the last 20 to 40 years. 200 years ago, agriculture was dominant, things indeed have changed a lot since then. To another extent, I think this is kinda like looking at stock charts of something like AAPL. Yeah - it is up by like a…

>Wage growth was not the only factor. Vaccines against childhood sicknesses, that previously routinely killed children before they were 3 years old was a huge factor as well.

You're right, however, much of the death from disease was ultimately due to poverty. This is evident by the fact that many diseases have much higher fatality rates in the developed world than in the developing world, absent any vaccination. Lack of nutrition and access to healthcare makes a significant impact.

Also, the second order effects of more economic development includes amenities like good sanitation, proper insulation and non-polluting heating sources, which also reduces infant mortality.

>I just want to point out that it was not just wage growth.

You're right. I would also add that vaccination programs themselves develop and advance more quickly in a world with more economic output, both in terms of total output and per capita output.

>Craft goods replaced by mass produced goods.

I see your point. I would add that AI can give us much more affordable craft goods.

>(Though, market capture and monopolies, IMO the mass produced goods, notably tech products - are arguably getting enshittified at a faster rater than anything that happened in the 1900s. Market forces indicate that these companies don't need to put out better products, they can do shrink-flation, price gauging, generally lower the quality of already cheap stuff simply because they can and profit motive dictates that they should [profit motive IMO is a good thing, but profit motive without competition is not])

This is a common trope, and at least in automobiles, this one comment on Reddit made me convinced of its inaccuracy:

https://archive.md/diMIY

It may be that in some product categories, people are buying lower quality products on average today, but my guess is that the reason for it is consumers making a conscious choice to buy disposable products, because they perceive the trade-off that they provide as being better than that offered by more expensive, higher quality products.

>This is getting to my point as well. 50 years ago - a high school degree was plenty to have a middle class lifestyle. Since the last 50 years, the stratification of 'lower' and 'higher' has increased.

Globally this is definitely not the case:

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-gl...

And in the US, this was mostly not the case either:

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/data-reveal-that-the-average-...

In the US, the biggest problem is housing: cities have put in place barriers to building houses, and that has increased the financial burden of rent:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388

Economic analyses suggests that most of the growth in economic inequality in the US since the 1950s comes down solely to housing (see Figure 3):

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...

As for computer-based automation, I personally see it as a huge benefit in my life. I even like Google's new AI generated responses.

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#132

Post by seadan83 » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 6:02 PM UTC

ETH_start wrote: post #131

seadan83 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wages, after adjusting for inflation, are more than 20x greater today than they were 200 years ago. Agree. Though, the time periods are not all that comparable and I'm really referring to the last 20 to 40 years. 200 years ago, agriculture was dominant, things indeed have changed a lot since then. To another extent, I think this is kinda like looking at stock charts of something like AAPL. Yeah - it is up by like a…

> Wage growth was not the only factor. Vaccines against childhood sicknesses, that previously routinely killed children before they were 3 years old was a huge factor as well. You're right, however, much of the death from disease was ultimately due to poverty. This is evident by the fact that many diseases have much higher fatality rates in the developed world than in the developing world, absent any vaccination. Lac…

Thanks for the responses.

We disagree on a number of things. AI generated content is not "craft" IMO at all, almost the definition of mass produced. EG: AI artwork, can get a lot of it, but if you want a Mona Lisa - you're going to need a human.

With regards to common trope - you seem to imply that shrinkflation is not a thing? There is a reasonable argument that most of the inflation of the last couple years is simply price gauging, record profits. The common trope that I'm getting at is that unregulated capitalism falls apart because winners emerge. To some extent, this has happened. EG: facebook buying up instagram, conglomerations, actual price cartels (eg: airlines). Many examples. We are in an era of a great squeeze for profits (not just generic economic growth, but instead a phase of growth achieved through squeezing)

> And in the US, this was mostly not the case either:

I am speaking from a US based perspective. I don't think I agree that the data you pointed to shows the same thing. While wage growth can still occur, the acceleration of wage growth has changed and is becoming more stratified. The source I linked to earlier showed that.

> In the US, the biggest problem is housing: cities have put in place barriers to building houses, and that has increased the financial burden of rent

I agree regarding the problem. Though, I would state more specifically the issue is the price of housing relative to wages. That speaks to the trend of people moving away from cities due to pricing, gentrification.;

Though, let's not also forget the median family income is still below $50k, and child poverty in the US effects an astonishing 11 out of 74 million children in the US [1]. Which is to say, I think we often bias from an urban perspective. There is a WHOLE lot of poor people in America. Even in places with affordable housing, people are still not getting by. The significance that 1 in 7 children are living in poverty in the US is hard to overstate.

> As for computer-based automation, I personally see it as a huge benefit in my life. I even like Google's new AI generated responses.

Sure. Though, per the other resources I linked, the trend in the last 30 years is to squeeze out middle jobs. I want to emphasize it is uncharted territory, there is no full historical analog to it. We have yet to see how it plays out.

[1] https://www.childrensdefense.org/tools-and-resources/the-sta...

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#133

Post by seadan83 » Sun, Jul 07, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

ETH_start wrote: post #131

seadan83 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wages, after adjusting for inflation, are more than 20x greater today than they were 200 years ago. Agree. Though, the time periods are not all that comparable and I'm really referring to the last 20 to 40 years. 200 years ago, agriculture was dominant, things indeed have changed a lot since then. To another extent, I think this is kinda like looking at stock charts of something like AAPL. Yeah - it is up by like a…

> Wage growth was not the only factor. Vaccines against childhood sicknesses, that previously routinely killed children before they were 3 years old was a huge factor as well. You're right, however, much of the death from disease was ultimately due to poverty. This is evident by the fact that many diseases have much higher fatality rates in the developed world than in the developing world, absent any vaccination. Lac…

2nd reply, another perspective, perhaps summarizing. I think you're saying essentially a raising tide lifts all boats, and lifted boats reduces essentially all problems. To some extent that is true, on average, poor people are better off than poor people 70 years ago. At the same time, the "great american middle class" is a lot smaller & is shrinking. Also, at the same time, social mobility in the US is falling. Wealth is now a greater predictor of success than is ability, education or anything else [1][2]. To that extent, there is now less social mobility in the US than in Europe [2].

Also to consider, comparing 70 years ago to today hides that there was a ton of progress from the 1950s to 1970s, but since then the trajectory has changed [2].

[1] https://www.ctpublic.org/education/2019-05-15/georgetown-stu...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...

"The correlation between parents' income and their children's income in the United States is estimated between .4 and .6"

"Several studies have found that inter-generational mobility is lower in the US than in some European countries, in particular the Nordic countries.[4][5] The US ranked 27th in the world in the 2020 Global Social Mobility Index.[6]"

"Social mobility in the US has either remained unchanged or decreased since the 1970s."

Re: Google's carbon emissions surge nearly 50% due to AI energy demand

#134

Post by ETH_start » Wed, Jul 10, 2024, 2:16 PM UTC

seadan83 wrote: post #133

ETH_start wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wage growth was not the only factor. Vaccines against childhood sicknesses, that previously routinely killed children before they were 3 years old was a huge factor as well. You're right, however, much of the death from disease was ultimately due to poverty. This is evident by the fact that many diseases have much higher fatality rates in the developed world than in the developing world, absent any vaccination. Lac…

2nd reply, another perspective, perhaps summarizing. I think you're saying essentially a raising tide lifts all boats, and lifted boats reduces essentially all problems. To some extent that is true, on average, poor people are better off than poor people 70 years ago. At the same time, the "great american middle class" is a lot smaller & is shrinking. Also, at the same time, social mobility in the US is falling. Weal…

The data provided here:

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/data-reveal-that-the-average-...

Provides significant evidence challenging this idea of a shrinking middle class, in my opinion.

The rate of progress has slowed since 1970, and that has correlated with a slowdown in per capita GDP growth, which goes back to my point that the overriding determinant of quality of life improvement is productivity growth.

As for housing, it comes solely down to the rate of construction of houses being artificially limited by regulations.

There is a woeful shortfall in construction of new housing in North America.

In the US at least, there is a 40-year record number of apartment buildings under construction:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2XssdmXkAAX_0d?format=webp&name...

Even now, adjusted for population, it is still well below the 1970s peak.

Restrictions on housing construction have mounted in the US since the 1960s, especially in the large coastal metropolises with the greatest productivity, as this study details:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388

This, combined with rapid population growth, has created some of the highest rental rates in the world in San Francisco.

This is also relevant to income inequality: rising rent is the primary cause of capital's share of income growing at the expense of labor's, and not any of the other usual suspects (e.g. tax cuts, IP law, technological disruption, regulatory barriers to competition, corporate consolidation, etc) (see Figure 3):

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2015a_r...

What the US and its major cities need to do is straightforward, but hard: speed up permitting, upzone and remove rent control that discourages building rentals.

This strategy is extremely effective, as best exemplified by Chongqing, China, where construction has kept rent to $75 a month:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/chongqing-chin...