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I've never been so conflicted about a technology

marcjenkins.co.uk

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Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#21

Post by frereubu »

roywiggins wrote: post #18
frereubu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That may be true, but I guess my approach to it would be that as a general principle we shouldn't be using things that increase energy usage for little real gain, and this is something that is in my professional field that I can do something about personally. It does come somewhat from a place of feeling like the world as a whole is absolutely failing to get to grips with the significant large-scale changes that are needed.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#22

Post by JKCalhoun »

> Firstly, there’s the environmental impact.

Surely, like everything else in tech, this too shall pass. I expect power requirements to fall away since there is no doubt strong incentives to do so.

> My naive optimism led me to believe that technology would help us fight climate change.

Yeah, proceeding full steam ahead with planet destruction and praying tech will save us is kind of naive. You're not alone though.

> There are also ethical concerns regarding the methods used to obtain data for training AI models.

This one hasn't registered as problematic for me. Maybe I'm unethical?

> Content creators can't even determine which parts of their work were used to train the model…

"Content creators" don't develop their style from a vacuum either. I'm not conflicted about this one either.

> LLMs are also contaminating the web with generic content produced without care or thought.

The web has been contaminated ever since SEO. Maybe AI will kill the web. So it goes.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#23

Post by frereubu »

zdragnar wrote: post #14
frereubu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 taki…

Again, this just feels like throwing your hands up in the air and saying "it's too hard to decide!" But we have to take decisions somehow if we're going to do anything.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#24

Post by nicce »

criddell wrote: post #12
nicce wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Do you think that study applies if we would go 2000 years back? World was kinda different.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#25

Post by roywiggins »

frereubu wrote: post #5
bitpush wrote: post #2

Disappointed 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…

It's not a large environmental cost, though.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#26

Post by lucianbr »

roywiggins wrote: post #18
frereubu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

How much of that 500 TWh would disappear if you round to zero everything that consumes 3GWh per day or less? And keep in mind you are calculating for a single app (ChatGPT), nor for an entire industry or tech. Don't look at "civil aviation" but at each airline in particular.

I suspect nearly all of it. You framed it such that it appears insignificant, but with this framing nothing is significant.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#27

Post by roywiggins »

frereubu wrote: post #23
zdragnar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 taki…

Again, this just feels like throwing your hands up in the air and saying "it's too hard to decide!" But we have to take decisions somehow if we're going to do anything.

Take one fewer hot shower a week and you've saved enough energy to power a lot of ChatGPT queries. Play one fewer hour of Minecraft. Turn off raytracing. Eat one fewer burger per month. All of those things would save more energy than forgoing a few ChatGPT conversations.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#28

Post by blizdiddy »

acomjean wrote: post #15

I 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?

When chatGPT came out, i thought we would stagnate with new languages, but not anymore. Now we have small models that can be fine tuned for less than $20 and we have huge models that can learn a new programming language in-context if you provide the docs.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#29

Post by jll29 »

vaylian wrote: post #10
bitpush wrote: post #2

Disappointed 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…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#30

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #22

> Firstly, there’s the environmental impact. Surely, like everything else in tech, this too shall pass. I expect power requirements to fall away since there is no doubt strong incentives to do so. > My naive optimism led me to believe that technology would help us fight climate change. Yeah, proceeding full steam ahead with planet destruction and praying tech will save us is kind of naive. You're not alone though. >…

> I expect power requirements to fall away

This sounds extremely naive to my ears. Performance demands currently outpace resource utilization reductions and it's not clear that we're at the point where that will change soon. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

> > There are also ethical concerns regarding the methods used to obtain data for training AI models.

> This one hasn't registered as problematic for me. Maybe I'm unethical?

Yeah, the real ethical concern comes from the explosion of pernicious slop output that is utterly destroying everything good about the internet and media, not the training.

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