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Some iron age tech really was very nasty:
https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-romans-likel...
I've never been so conflicted about a technology
11–20 of 125 posts
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct. We have to order by impact and refrain from spending effort on all but the issue at the top of the list. If we choose to affect any lower-priority issue, it is an example of hypocriticality that de-legitimizes the whole project.
If we had stayed farmers, we wouldn't have these issues. Most people would be still happy. Intelligence is both destruction and savior.
> farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population
https://www.fb.org/in-the-news/modern-farmer-farmers-face-a-...
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#13[flagged]
I see where you're coming from, but the planet was not on the verge of a climate breakdown at the time. I think that's the implicit context in the block post that your reply misses.
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#14Disappointed with the article, especially because it uses "think of the planet" as a weak argument against this technology. > Firstly, there’s the environmental impact Their own blog contributes to climate crisis they are now crying about. We can argue someone in a developing country writing a similar article saying "all these self publishing technologists are making climate crisis worse" and it'll have a stronger po…
Your argument seems to be flattening everything so it's just the same - "everything has an impact" - but different things have different impacts, and each needs to be measured against their utility. Me ordering a coffee at my local cafe has an impact, but it's a good deal less than me driving from London to Edinburgh. The author's argument, as I read it and generally agree, is that we don't really need LLMs to get th…
We don't really need LLMs like we don't really need the internet. We don't really need that blog, nor do we really need Netflix, porn or Facebook.
Individuals value things differently, so attempting to do society-wide prioritization is always going to be a reductive exercise.
For example: Your local cafe doesn't need to exist at all. You could still drink coffee, you'd just have to make it yourself. That cafe is taking up space, running expensive commercial equipment, keeping things warm even when there aren't customers ordering, keeping food items cool that aren't going to be eaten, using harsh commercial chemicals for regular sanitization, possibly inefficient cooling or heating due to heavy traffic going in and out the door, so on and so forth.
Imagine the environmental impact of turning all cafes into housing and nobody driving to go get a coffee.
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#15I think AI is interesting, but I wonder what it will do to progress when used very extensively.
Trained on all the things/ideas of the past and creating a larger barrier of entry for new ideas.
Thinking about new computer languages, who would use one that AI couldn’t help you code in?
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#16I think it's harsh to start the accounting so soon after the breakthrough. Yes, of course AI uses a lot of energy. But we have to give it a bit of time to see if there are benefits that come with this cost. I think there will be. Whether the tradeoff was worthwhile, I think we are not even close to being able to conclude. Something like social media, which has a good long while behind it, I could accept if you starte…
You can't have it both ways, i.e. deploy the technology as rapidly and widely as possible but then say you have to wait to do any accounting of the pros/cons.
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#17"I've never been so conflicted"? Err, where's the sense of conflict? All I see is: "it sucks, it's helping kill the planet, but I need a job."
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#18[flagged]
I see where you're coming from, but the planet was not on the verge of a climate breakdown at the time. I think that's the implicit context in the block post that your reply misses.
The marginal impact of AI on global climate probably rounds down to zero, or at least is not the thing driving us over the cliff:
> Global energy consumption in 2023 was around 500,000 GWh per day. That means that ChatGPT’s global 3GWh per day is using 0.0006% of Earth’s energy demand.
https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#19> “If you’re going to use generative tools powered by large language models, don’t pretend you don’t know how your sausage is made.”
This isn't a very hopeful quote given how many people continue to eat sausages even though we all know how sausages are made.
Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology
#20[flagged]
I see where you're coming from, but the planet was not on the verge of a climate breakdown at the time. I think that's the implicit context in the block post that your reply misses.
The reason we have any environmental regulations at all was from mass death and disease caused by technology. Far more people died due to the agricultural revolution then will ever die due to climate change in the next few decades in the worst predictions.
The Black Death alone was 25-50 million people in 7 years