Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

tomwphillips.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 683 posts

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#71

Post by fny »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #70
fny wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm personally excited for when the AGI-nauts start trotting out figures like... > An H100 on low-carbon grid is only about 1–2% of one US person’s total daily footprint! The real culprit is humans after all.

Humans have been measuring between human only vs augmented labor for literal centuries. Frederick Taylor literally invented the process you describe in his “principles of scientific management” This is the entire focus of the Toyota automation model. The consistent empirical pattern is: Machine-only systems outperform humans on narrow, formalizable tasks. Human-machine hybrid systems outperform both on robustness, yi…

I was making a joke.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#72

Post by kachapopopow »

LPisGood wrote: post #65
Aransentin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing almonds uses 1.3 trillion gallons of water annually in California alone. This is more than 4 times more than all data centers in the US combined, counting both cooling and the water used for generating their electricity. What has more utility: Californian almonds, or all IT infrastructure in the US times 4?

What does it mean to “use” water? In agriculture and in data centers my understanding is that water will go back to the sky and then rain down again. It’s not gone, so at most we’re losing the energy cost to process that water.

and water from datacenters goes where...? just disappears?

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#73

Post by wongarsu »

idiotsecant wrote: post #56
simonw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I think a data center produces a heck of a lot more economic and human value in a year - for a lot more people - than the same amount of water used for farming or golf.

I mean... Food is pretty important ...

Corn, potatoes and wheat are important maybe even oranges, but we could live with a lot less alfalfa and almonds.

Also a lot less meat in general. A huge part of our agriculture is feed to feed our food. We need some meat, but the current amount is excessive

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#75

Post by fallingfrog »

fallingfrog wrote: post #9
Etheryte wrote: post #2

Many big names in the industry have long advocated for the idea that LLM-s are a fundamental dead end. Many have also gone on and started companies to look for a new way forward. However, if you're hip deep in stock options, along with your reputation, you'll hardly want to break the mirage. So here we are.

I have some idea of what the way forward is going to look like but I don't want to accelerate the development of such a dangerous technology so I haven't told anyone about it. The people working on AI are very smart and they will solve the associated challenges soon enough. The problem of how to slow down the development of these technologies- a political problem- is much more pressing right now.

[flagged]

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#76

Post by tux3 »

LPisGood wrote: post #65
Aransentin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing almonds uses 1.3 trillion gallons of water annually in California alone. This is more than 4 times more than all data centers in the US combined, counting both cooling and the water used for generating their electricity. What has more utility: Californian almonds, or all IT infrastructure in the US times 4?

What does it mean to “use” water? In agriculture and in data centers my understanding is that water will go back to the sky and then rain down again. It’s not gone, so at most we’re losing the energy cost to process that water.

So with the water used in datacenters. It's just a cooling loop, the output is hot water.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#77

Post by embedding-shape »

fmbb wrote: post #62
Aransentin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing almonds uses 1.3 trillion gallons of water annually in California alone. This is more than 4 times more than all data centers in the US combined, counting both cooling and the water used for generating their electricity. What has more utility: Californian almonds, or all IT infrastructure in the US times 4?

Depends on what the datacenters are used for. AI has no utility. Almonds make marzipan.

Well, I don't like marzipan, so both are useless? Or maybe different people find uses/utility from different things, what is trash for one person can be life saving for another, or just "better than not having it" (like you and Marzipan it seems).

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#78

Post by dist-epoch »

lynndotpy wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: post #12

Tip for AI skeptics: skip the data center water usage argument. At this point I think it harms your credibility - numbers like "millions of liters of water annually" (from the linked article) sound scary when presented without context, but if you compare data centers to farmland or even golf courses they're minuscule. Other energy usage figures, air pollution, gas turbines, CO2 emissions etc are fine - but if you com…

Farmland, AI data centers, and golf courses do not provide the same utility for water used. You are not making an argument against the water usage problem, you are only dismissing it.

That is correct, AI data centers deliver far more utility per unit of water than farm/golf land.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#79

Post by LPisGood »

kachapopopow wrote: post #72
LPisGood wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to “use” water? In agriculture and in data centers my understanding is that water will go back to the sky and then rain down again. It’s not gone, so at most we’re losing the energy cost to process that water.

and water from datacenters goes where...? just disappears?

No it’s largely the same situation I think. I was drawing a distinction between agricultural use and maybe some more heavy industrial uses while the water is polluted or otherwise rendered permanently unfit for other uses.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#80

Post by simonw »

fmbb wrote: post #62
Aransentin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing almonds uses 1.3 trillion gallons of water annually in California alone. This is more than 4 times more than all data centers in the US combined, counting both cooling and the water used for generating their electricity. What has more utility: Californian almonds, or all IT infrastructure in the US times 4?

Depends on what the datacenters are used for. AI has no utility. Almonds make marzipan.

"AI has no utility" is a pretty wild claim to make in the tail end of 2025.
Post reply on HN