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AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

tomwphillips.co.uk

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Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#201

Post by plufz »

wongarsu wrote: post #73
idiotsecant wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Corn, potatoes and wheat are important maybe even oranges, but we could live with a lot less alfalfa and almonds. Both alfalfa and almonds contain a lot of nutrients you dont find in large enough amounts (or at all) in corn and potatoes though. And alfalfa improves the soil but fixating nitrogen. Sure almonds require large amounts of water. Maybe alfalfa does as well? And of course it depends on if they are grown for human consumption or animal.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#202

Post by danielbln »

paperplaneflyr wrote: post #19

After reading Empire of AI by Karen Hao, actually changed my perspective towards these AI companies, not that they are building world-changing products but the human nature around all this hype. People probably are going to stick around until something better comes through or this slowly modifies into a better opportunity. Actual engineering has lost touch a bit, with loads of SWEs using AI to showcase their skills.…

Can you elaborate on that last sentence a bit? How has engineering lost touch?

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#203

Post by Kiro »

buellerbueller wrote: post #156
simonw wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, the key thing here is to ask how MUCH value we get per liter of water used. If data centers and farms used the same amount of water we should absolutely be talking about their comparative value to society, and farms would win. Farms use thousands of times more water than data centers.

Once again, you are ignoring my (implied) argument: Humans NEED food, the output of agriculture. Humans do not NEED any of LLMs' outputs. Once everyone is fed, then we can talk about water usage for LLMs.

Going only by the effective need of humans is a bad argument. A lot of farmers wouldn't survive without subsidies and are not vital to our food supply.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#204

Post by dghlsakjg »

roywiggins wrote: post #118
bee_rider wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We definitely shouldn’t worry about bankrupting golf courses, they are not really useful in any way that wouldn’t be better served by just having a park or wilderness. Beef, I guess, is a popular type of food. I’m under the impression that most of us would be better off eating less meat, maybe we could tax water until beef became a special occasion meal.

I'm saying that if you taxed water enough for datacenters to notice, beef would probably become uneconomical to produce at all. Maybe a good idea! But the reason datacenters would keep operating and beef production wouldn't is that datacenters produce way more utility per gallon.

Taxes can have nuance.

You can easily write a law that looks like this: There is now a water usage tax. It applies only to water used for data-centers. It does not apply to residential use, agricultural use, or any other industrial use.

We do preferential pricing and taxing all the time. My home's power rate through the state owned utility is very different than if I consumed the exact same amount of power, but was an industrial site. I just checked and my water rate at home is also different than if I were running a datacenter. So in all actuality we already discriminate for power and water based on end use. at least where I live. Most places I have lived have different commercial and residential rates.

In other words, the price of beef can stay the same.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#205

Post by eucyclos »

lkey wrote: post #163
the__alchemist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will go meta into what you posted here: That people are classifying themselves as "AI skeptics". Many people are treating this in terms of tribal conflict and identity politics. On HN, we can do better! IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. If we do talk about it as a debate, we can do it when with open minds, and intellectual honesty. I think much of this may be a reactio…

| Drop the politics Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources . Most municipalities literally do not have enough spare power to service this 1.4 trillion dollar capital rollout as planned on paper. Even if they did, the concurrent inflation of energy costs is about as polit…

There are politics and there are Politics, and I don't think the two of you are using the same definition. 'Making decisions in groups' does not require 'oversimplifying issues for the sake of tribal cohesion or loyalty'. It is a distressingly common occurrence that complex problems are oversimplified because political effectiveness requires appealing to a broader audience.

We'd all be better off if more people withheld judgement while actually engaging with the nuances of a political topic instead of pushing for their team. The capacity to do that may be a privilege but it's a privilege worth earning and celebrating.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#206

Post by lukan »

Flavius wrote: post #173
tracerbulletx wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really mind if people advocate for their value judgements, but the total disregard for good faith arguments and facts is really out of control. The number of people who care at all about finding the best position through debate and are willing to adjust their position is really shockingly small across almost every issue.

Totally agree. It seems like a symptom of a larger issue: people are becoming increasingly selfish and entrenched in their own bubbles. It’s hard to see a path back to sanity from here.

Well, I share your pain .. but was it ever really better in reality?

Unfortunately it is not like human society in history had truth as the highest virtue.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#207

Post by wasabi991011 »

simonw wrote: post #168
belter wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised by your analytical mistake of comparing irrigation water with data-center water usage... They are not equivalent. Data centers primarily consume potable water, whereas irrigation uses non-potable or agricultural-grade water. Mixing the two leads to misleading conclusions on the impact.

That's a really good point - you're right, comparing data center usage to potable water usage by towns is a different and more valid comparison than comparing with water for irrigation.

They made a good point, but keep in mind that they're doing a "rules for thee, not for me" sometimes.

The same person who mentioned potable water being an important distinction also cited a report on data center water consumption that did not make the distinction (where the 628M number came from).

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#208

Post by rtkwe »

lkey wrote: post #163
the__alchemist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will go meta into what you posted here: That people are classifying themselves as "AI skeptics". Many people are treating this in terms of tribal conflict and identity politics. On HN, we can do better! IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. If we do talk about it as a debate, we can do it when with open minds, and intellectual honesty. I think much of this may be a reactio…

| Drop the politics Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources . Most municipalities literally do not have enough spare power to service this 1.4 trillion dollar capital rollout as planned on paper. Even if they did, the concurrent inflation of energy costs is about as polit…

Hear hear, It's funny having seen the same issue pop up in video game forums/communities. People complaining about politics in their video games after decades of completely straight faced US military propaganda from games like Call of Duty but because they agree with it it wasn't politics. To so many people politics begins where they start to disagree.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#209

Post by colechristensen »

geerlingguy wrote: post #8

I like the conclusion; like for me, Whisper has radically improved CC on my video content. I used to spend a few hours translating my scripts into CCs, and tooling was poor. Now I run it through whisper in a couple minutes, give one quick pass to correct a few small hallucinations and misspellings, and I'm done. There are big wins in AI. But those don't pump the bubble once they're solved. And the thing that made Whi…

I think a lot of AI wins are going to end up local and free much like whisper.

Maybe it could be a little bit more accurate, it would be nice if it ran a little faster, but ultimately it's 95% complete software that can be free forever.

My guess is very many AI tasks are going to end up this way. In 5-10 years we're all going to be walking around with laptops with 100k cores and 1TB of RAM and an LLM that we talk to and it does stuff for us more or less exactly like Star Trek.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#210

Post by abathur »

simonw wrote: post #192
abathur wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agriculture feeds people, Simon. It's fair to be critical of how the ag industry uses that water, but a significant fraction of that activity is effectively essential. If you're going to minimize people's concern like this, at least compare it to discretionary uses we could ~live without. The data's about 20 years old, but for example https://www.usga.org/content/dam/usga/pdf/Water%20Resource%2... suggests we were us…

I called out golf in my first comment in this thread. If data center usage meant we didn't have enough water for agriculture I would shout that from the rooftops.

Yep--I'm agreeing that one's a good comparison to elaborate on.

Exploring how it stacks up against an essential use probably won't persuade people who perceive it as wasteful.

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