251–260 of 504 posts
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#1 is marketing hype. #2 is very real. #3 is happening and could cause #2 if wars for livable land and water resources break out.
#1 is very real #2 is warmongering #3 will be solved by human ingenuity I have a more positive outlook. :)
#2 will solve #3
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Well, also, plastic waste getting dumped in water ways, and in the USA, steel and coal waste being dumped into the Ohio (causing a huge dead zone in the Gulf). There are serious pollution problems everywhere, and I kind of hate the climate change narrative for taking people’s eyes off of those problems.
AI is already developing enzymes that can break down plastics. Put them on bacteria, and that plastic may stop being a problem quickly.
With each new IPCC report the chances of us keeping global warming below 1.5 C become more and more remote as emissions are locked in. But at the same time the really bad scenarios where we go well over 4 C also become more remote. Every half degree is worse than the last and each is worth righting for but it does look like our civilization will make it through this intact, even if not all people individually.
>it does look like our civilization will make it through this intact Has anybody ever seriously believed that we wouldn't make it through? This just seems like an alarmist take to me.
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Pointing the finger at China is ridiculous. China has more than 4 times the population of the US so it would be reasonable to expect that they actually emit more than 4x the CO2 of the US. Your numbers show that they actually emit 'only' just more than twice the US, and bearing in mind that they are indeed the world's factory. So your numbers show that the US (and Russia) are doing badly and that the EU is doing rela…
The US's per capita CO2 emissions have dropped by around 70% since 1990. It should've been a larger drop, to match that of the EU, but nonetheless it's a highly positive trend that also proved that per capita emissions can be divorced from per capita GDP growth, something that was previously uncertain. Moreover, this happened while US manufacturing output remained fairly constant. China's per capita emissions have mo…
The world simply cannot emit like the US do per capita.
China's emissions have increased because the country has been developing and Chinese are still quite poorer on average than Americans. India is still low because they are behind in terms of development and they don't (yet) produce for the world.
I am not sure what point you are making. My point is simply that population varies wildly per country so pointing the finger at China because they emit the most as a country is nonsensical. Emission per capita is a much better metric.
I am not sure there is any way to combine development and drastic reduction in emissions with 10 billion people on the planet, but I am sure that the US are doing worse than China when you do a valid comparison that must take population into account.
> Moreover, this happened while US manufacturing output remained fairly constant.
The issue there is that output is measured in dollar value, not raw volume or mass of stuff, which may be better correlated with emissions. Many intrinsically polluting and lower value industries have been outsourced to China with output imported.
The comments section is an trash fire. Some people seem to be more than ready for the apocalypse to actually happen. What a sad state of affairs.
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I'm loving this absolutely breathless parroting of "AGI in the next 5 years" and yet: we don't even know what general intelligence is. We don't know how/why/where consciousness arises. It's not even a clearly defined concept. But here we have "Workaccount2" prophesizing the rise of general intelligence :D Please enlighten us sensei, what is actually General Intelligence, and how will you know it's here? I realize my…
Ironically I often post the exact same sentiment that you are sharing. But you are conflating two different things. AGI doesn't require consciousness. We likely will have no idea whether or not the first AGI computer is conscious or not. What we will know though, is that it is solving novel problems that humans struggle with, and from the outside the only way to discern it isn't another human is because it is way to…
And I'm not particularly keen of the reasoning: "it is solving novel problems that humans struggle with", because a pocket calculator can solve problems that humans struggle with. A computer can play chess better than a human can, does it mean it's an AGI?
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AGI by 2030 is not a reach statement at all anymore. The LLM's we have today weren't supposed to show up until 2030 at the earliest and 2050 more realistically. If you go back 10 years and read what people were writing about AI progress, you will find that they were _completely_ off the mark. It's prudent to assume a very liberal timeline for AI progress, based off whats been happening now.
10 years ago we just had another AI hype. I want to see delivered promises & my job automated before i change my mind.
Not an achievement at all?
Talking to an ai?
Generating any image you like?
Etc.?
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The US's per capita CO2 emissions have dropped by around 70% since 1990. It should've been a larger drop, to match that of the EU, but nonetheless it's a highly positive trend that also proved that per capita emissions can be divorced from per capita GDP growth, something that was previously uncertain. Moreover, this happened while US manufacturing output remained fairly constant. China's per capita emissions have mo…
That's why I mentioned development, which is key to understand current status, evolution and where things are going. The world simply cannot emit like the US do per capita. China's emissions have increased because the country has been developing and Chinese are still quite poorer on average than Americans. India is still low because they are behind in terms of development and they don't (yet) produce for the world. I…
So, no, even when you take population into account China is a bad emitter and not doing nearly enough to invest in decarbonising their economy in the same way the US and EU have.
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I'm loving this absolutely breathless parroting of "AGI in the next 5 years" and yet: we don't even know what general intelligence is. We don't know how/why/where consciousness arises. It's not even a clearly defined concept. But here we have "Workaccount2" prophesizing the rise of general intelligence :D Please enlighten us sensei, what is actually General Intelligence, and how will you know it's here? I realize my…
AGI has nothing to do with consciousness, unless consciousness is for some reason required to attain it (which doesn't seem like it's the case). AGI simply means that we can create a type of machine that can do any kind of mental task that a human can, at least at a human level.
> AGI simply means that we can create a type of machine that can do any kind of mental task that a human can, at least at a human level.
What does this even mean? What is human level? The ability to write a symphony? Or the ability to calculate 2+2=4? These are such poorly defined metrics that I don't understand how can we then start throwing around very precise (and short!) timelines for attaining it.
The statement: "we'll send a human mission to Mars in the next 5 years" is 10x more believable than this breathless AGI hype, because at least the former is well defined.