Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think we've run out of space to build or something?
Think bigger. Earth will only be good for the next 2 billion years or so.
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The Gentle Singularity
91–100 of 557 posts
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is watt-hours the right unit of measurement here? That's how electricity is most commonly priced. What else would you want?
It's more that every time the topic has come up, it's reported in watts and I'm not sure if there's a nuance I'm missing. It's entirely possible those reports have been in watt-hours though and using watts for shorthand. I still find the Technology Connections video counterintuitive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOK5xkFijPc
Watt-hours is the only unit that makes sense here as we're describing the energy cost of some calculation. Watt, a rate unit, is not appropriate.
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#93> The rate of new wonders being achieved will be immense. It’s hard to even imagine today what we will have discovered by 2035; maybe we will go from solving high-energy physics one year to beginning space colonization the next year; or from a major materials science breakthrough one year to true high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces the next year. How about affordable housing?
> How about affordable housing? But space colonization is cool and poor people are yickie.
Our best shot at affordable housing died with government throwing it's lot in with C-suite feelings and moving to kill work from home.
It was the one genuine, serious potential improvement.
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#94Will the period between whole classes of jobs going away and a new social contract be short enough so that a Butlerian Jihad doesn't kick off?
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#95[deleted]
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#96We've somehow had a calm few months in the industry without the daily hyperbole on AGI, superintelligence and the upcoming singularity. After the string of underwhelming incremental updates from all the top LLM publishers I guess they need to start the hype cycle again.
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#97Some reasoning tokens on this post: >Intelligence too cheap to meter is well within grasp And also: >cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity. Which is a meter-worthy resource. So intelligence effect on people's lives is in the order of magnitude of one second of a toaster use each day, in present value. This begs the question: what could you do with a toaster-second say 5 years…
That's what they said about electricity when nuclear power plants were proposed. What's your electricity bill like today?
The primary operating cost of traditional power plants is fuel, i.e. coal and natural gas. The fuel cost for nuclear power plants is negligible because the energy content is higher by more than a factor of a million. So if you build enough nuclear plants to power the grid, charging per kWh for the electricity is pointless because the marginal cost of the fuel is so low. Meanwhile the construction cost should be on par with a coal plant, since the operating mechanism (heat -> steam -> electricity) is basically the same.
Unsurprisingly, this scared the crap out of the fossil fuel industry in the US and countries like Russia that are net exporters of fossil fuels, so they've spent decades lobbying to bind nuclear plant construction up in red tape to prevent them being built and funding anti-nuclear propaganda.
You can see a lot of the same attempts being made with AI, proposals to ban it or regulate it etc., or make sure only large organizations have it.
But the difference is that power plants are inherently local. If the US makes it uneconomical to build new nuclear plants, US utility customers can't easily get electricity from power plants in China. That isn't really how it works with AI.
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#98> We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be. Not sure if wishful thinking trying to LARP-manifest this future into being, or just more unfalsifiable thinking where we can always be said to be past the event horizon and near to the singularity, given sufficiently underwhelming…
The phrase for this is “high on your own supply.” These guys are embarrassing, frankly.
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is watt-hours the right unit of measurement here? That's how electricity is most commonly priced. What else would you want?
It's more that every time the topic has come up, it's reported in watts and I'm not sure if there's a nuance I'm missing. It's entirely possible those reports have been in watt-hours though and using watts for shorthand. I still find the Technology Connections video counterintuitive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOK5xkFijPc
A watt wouldn't make any sense.
A watt needs a time unit to be converted to joules because a watt is a measure of power, while a joule is a measure of energy.
Think of it like speed and distance:
A watt is a RATE of energy use, just like speed (e.g., miles per hour) is a RATE of travel.
A joule is a total amount of energy, just like distance (e.g., miles) is a total amount of travel.
If you're traveling 60 mph but you don't specify for how long... You won't know how far you went, how much gas you used, etc.
Re: The Gentle Singularity
#100> although we’ll make plenty of mistakes and some things will go really wrong, we will learn and adapt quickly Famous last words.
Yes, in a world where populations increasingly ask an AI any question they have and believe whatever it says the opportunity for “things going really wrong” feels huge. To brush that aside so easily… well I wish I could say it surprises me.