> AI and Crypto are net negatives in this regard. Not sure how anyone can with certainty say that AI will be a net negative in the long run for climate change. Logic I think says the opposite.
How can AI be a net positive for climate change? We know what needs to happen to fix it, how would AI telling us the same thing "hit differently"?
It’s the possibility that the AI doesn’t just tell us what we already know but instead comes up with something we don’t. Maybe it comes up with an abundant stable renewable energy source. Maybe a really well working carbon capture.
> 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. >…
> The web has been contaminated ever since SEO. Maybe AI will kill the web. So it goes. This statement kinda blows my mind. You contemplate the destruction of the web, the single most world-changing invention of the last century, possibly the last millennium, a force that has democratized access to information, accelerated scientific progress and connected people around the world, the technology that one way or anoth…
Uehreka, I'm sorry, but this is such utter tosh. This is the sort of rabid utopianism I remember hearing about the web in 1996. But then of course it was predictive - at least a bit excusable. Take a hard a look at the actual history of the web in the last 30 years. "Democracy"...what? It is a story of corporate seizure of commons leading to the frankly nightmarish scenario we are in now, heading full steam into a total surveillance techno-fascist neofeudalism.
Here's an innovation in the last millennium that did actually democratize access to information: Libraries. Simple public libraries. Look at the message that is engraved over the door of one of my favorite libraries, the central library in Edinburgh, Scotland. These places were palaces for public learning. Contrast them to the grotty, advert-saturated, casino of the web. Also, the calm, reflective, intelligent state of mind they cultivated. How many people can even read a book anymore, cover to cover? Or even a single page without electronic interruption?
You do realise most cryptocurrencies aren’t PoW, so your point is living in the past, man!
Only the one big pow coin matters tho. Turns out, PoS coins are worthless! I also dislike energy frugality arguments. They come from a Luddite place. A civilization is defined by its energy usage. Let’s be advanced civilization.
what do you mean worthless? I'd say the opposite - Bitcoin does nothing... it just sits there looking pretty, this vs all newer blockchains that can actually run programs... we even have smart contracts running MIPS emulators for production use!
... get Bitcoin to do 3% of what ANY PoS blockchain could do.
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.
ChatGPT is probably the majority of LLM use today, so this is not the equivalent of claiming that neither your car nor mine nor anybody else's uses more than 3GWh per day and therefore cars don't use a significant amount of energy collectively. Also, though this is not really relevant to your major incorrect point, airlines aren't part of civil aviation.
Do you think they're part of the military? Maybe think again.
ChatGPT is probably the majority of LLM use today, so this is not the equivalent of claiming that neither your car nor mine nor anybody else's uses more than 3GWh per day and therefore cars don't use a significant amount of energy collectively. Also, though this is not really relevant to your major incorrect point, airlines aren't part of civil aviation.
Do you think they're part of the military? Maybe think again.
You're right; I was wrong. Thanks for the correction! I was confusing civil aviation with general aviation.