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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

#321

Post by gloomyday »

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…

One of the biggest problems in environmental education (imo) is the lack of notion regarding the footprint of products and services we consume daily; from the water and CO2 costs of a meal, of a heated pool, of a car, etc. It is eye-opening.

I first came across this type of info with the book "How Bad Are Bananas", from Mike Berners-Lee. I really enjoyed it, and I just saw that the new edition even includes stuff like hosting a World Cup, data centers, and space tourism!

It should give a good foundation to start talking about it.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#322

Post by lynndotpy »

Aransentin wrote: post #50
lynndotpy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Almonds are pretty cherry picked here as notorious for their high water use. Notably, we're not betting an entire economy and pouring increasing resources into almond production, either. Your example would be even more extreme if you chose crops like the corn used to feed cattle. Feeding cows alone requires 21.2 trillion gallons per year in the US.

The people advocating for sustainable usage of natural resources have already been comparing the utility of different types of agriculture for years.

Comparatively, tofu is efficient to produce in terms of land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water use, and can be made shelf-stable.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#323

Post by red75prime »

hitarpetar wrote: post #219
red75prime wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does language around fusion reactors ("bringing power of the sun to Earth" and the like) cause similar associations? Those situations are close in other aspects too: we have a physical system (the sun, the brain), whose functionality we try to replicate technologically.

the way the pro nuclear crowd talk you might think they are a persecuted religion actually

Or over-the-top proponents of clean intermittent energy sources. Mountains of batteries and lakes of pumped storage for the Sun and Wind god.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#324

Post by HDThoreaun »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #189
IgorPartola wrote: post #21

It is ultimately a hardware problem. To simplify it greatly, an LLM neuron is a single input single output function. A human brain neuron takes in thousands of inputs and produces thousands of outputs, to the point that some inputs start being processed before they even get inside the cell by structures on the outside of it. An LLM neuron is an approximation of this. We cannot manufacture a human level neuron to be s…

Assuming you want to define the goal, "AGI", as something functionally equivalent to part (or all) of the human brain, there are two broad approaches to implement that. 1) Try to build a neuron-level brain simulator - something that is a far distant possibility, not because of compute, but because we don't have a clear enough idea of how the brain is wired, how neurons work, and what level of fidelity is needed to ca…

Hard problem of consciousness seems way harder to wolve than the easy one which is a purely engineering problem. People have been thinking about why the brain thinks for a very long time and so far we have absolutely no idea.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#325

Post by netdevphoenix »

simonw wrote: post #315
netdevphoenix wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tip for AI skeptics Assumptions you are making: - AI = transformer ANNs - People sceptical of transformer ANNs directly leading to AGI within any reasonable period are also sceptical of transformer ANNs directly leading to AGI any time in the far future This kind of generalisations don't help you as the huge number of comments underneath yours likely shows

I don't think anyone who read my comment here misunderstood my usage of the term "AI skeptic" as applying to any form of machine learning as opposed to modern generative AI.

What you think it is and what it is are 2 different things. You are once more making assumptions.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#326

Post by nasmorn »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #233
hamdingers wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO the move is drop the politics, and discuss things on their technical merits. I'd love this but it's impossible to have this discussion with someone who will not touch generative AI tools with a 10 foot pole. It's not unlike when religious people condemn a book they refuse to read. The merits of the book don't matter, it's symbolic opposition to something broader.

Okay, but a lot of people are calling environmental and content theft arguments "political" in an attempt to make it sound frivolous. It's fine if you think every non-technical criticism against AI is overblown. I use LLMs, but it's perfectly fine to start from a place of whether it's ethical, or even a net good, to use these in the first place. People saying "ignoring all of those arguments, let's just look at the t…

The environmental argument is frivolous as long as people fly to Vegas for the weekend or drive a F150 to the office. Why is this as special domain?

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#327

Post by Traubenfuchs »

vamos_davai wrote: post #287
IgorPartola wrote: post #21

It is ultimately a hardware problem. To simplify it greatly, an LLM neuron is a single input single output function. A human brain neuron takes in thousands of inputs and produces thousands of outputs, to the point that some inputs start being processed before they even get inside the cell by structures on the outside of it. An LLM neuron is an approximation of this. We cannot manufacture a human level neuron to be s…

"To simplify it greatly, an LLM neuron is a single input single output function". This is very wrong unless I'm mistaken. A synthetic neuron is multiple input single output.

Ten thousands of extremely complex analog inputs, one output with several thousand of targets that MIGHT receive the output with different timing and quality.

One neuron is ufathomably complex. It‘s offensive to biology to call a cell in a mathematical matrix neuron.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#328

Post by pweezy »

magicalist wrote: post #171
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…

> I will go meta into what you posted here: That people are classifying themselves as "AI skeptics" The comment you're replying to is calling other people AI skeptics. Your advice has some fine parts to it (and simonw's comment is innocuous in its use of the term), but if we're really going meta, you seem to be engaging in the tribal conflict you're decrying by lecturing an imaginary person rather than the actual con…

To me, "Tip for AI skeptics" reads as shorthand for "Tip for those of you who classify as AI skeptics".

That is why the meta commentary about identity politics made complete sense to me. It's simply observing that this discussion (like so many others) tends to go this way, and suggests a better alternative - without a straw man.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#329

Post by tech_ken »

HardCodedBias wrote: post #122
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…

It seems like there is a very strong correlation between identity politics and "AI skepticism." I have no idea why. I don't think that the correlation is 1, but it seems weirdly high.

The adoption and use of technology frequently (even typically) has a political axis, it's kind of just this weird world of consumer tech/personal computers that's nominally "apolitical" because it's instead aligned to the axis of taste/self-identity so it'll generate more economic activity.

Re: AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering

#330

Post by saint_yossarian »

travisgriggs wrote: post #161

> As a technologist I want to solve problems effectively (by bringing about the desired, correct result), efficiently (with minimal waste) and without harm (to people or the environment). Me too. But, I worry this “want” may not be realistic/scalable. Yesterday, I was trying to get some Bluetooth/BLE working on a Raspberry CM 4. I had dabbled with this 9 months ago. And things were making progress then just fine. Sud…

Distros do have manuals, they just usually come in the form of user-curated wikis these days. ArchWiki is usually my first stop when I run into a Linux issue, even as a fellow Debian user.

Both https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bluetooth and https://wiki.debian.org/BluetoothUser mention rfkill and show you how to troubleshoot.

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