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Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

andymasley.substack.com

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Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#331

Post by mritterhoff »

shafyy wrote: post #325
mritterhoff wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the upside of moralizing energy consumption, especially once it's 100% renewable. Why not just let the market decide? If I'm paying for it, why does anyone else get a say in how I use it?

> What's the upside of moralizing energy consumption, especially once it's 100% renewable. Because of the reason I just explained above. 100% renewable energy does not mean that producing that energy does not have an environmental cost. > Why not just let the market decide? If I'm paying for it, why does anyone else get a say in how I use it? Because the "free market" does not internalize externalities (costs to shar…

Focussing on pricing those externalities (tiny as they'll be in a 100% renewable world), through laws + policy, is a better strategy than trying to convince people not to use their electricity for .

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#332

Post by saagarjha »

derangedHorse wrote: post #227
saagarjha wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just lack but outright apathy and villainizing of these attempts. If you try to tax gas some oil CEO will run a campaign explaining to the working class that their commute will now cost 10% more, which obviously makes people upset. Part of it is that we, unfortunately, can’t actually subsidize car commuters anymore. But part of it is that CEO is going to incur a cost of 50%, as he should, which is why he’s bother…

It is not feasible to take a bike or public transportation to work in many parts of the world so a policy change like that would just incur an additional cost to those who have no alternative. A better idea is to encourage other types of transportation in private companies rather than penalize existing companies with taxes. If taxing the companies will raise prices on consumers, you might as well consider it an addit…

The point is that you make the other alternatives affordable with such a fee. You can take the tax and put it directly into improving that infrastructure.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#333

Post by saagarjha »

maeil wrote: post #323
johnthewise wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say accusing people of random stuff(racism,sexism and other isms) have been so overplayed in recent years, not only it doesn't work anymore, it works against you.

In the US, what Trump is doing is working. In the EU, what the authoritarian far-right parties are doing is working. Their tactics have been working incredibly well for them, use them, the inane pacifist take of "being above that" by environmentalists and progressives in general is what has caused them to be completely irrelevant and the rise of authoritarianism across the West.

I mean Hitler clearly did something right in getting elected. I'm not sure we want to emulate his policies, though.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#334

Post by saagarjha »

josephcsible wrote: post #160
Brystephor wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of Americans driving to work is because they choose too though? Amazon's 5 day RTO policy is a good example. How many of the people now going to an office 5 days a week would've done so without the mandate? I see the traffic every day, and saw the same area before the mandate, so I can tell you with confidence that there's many more cars on the road as a result of this commute. this all funnels back to the c…

Exactly. IMO, any politician who's serious about saving the environment or reducing the number of cars should be proposing bills to heavily tax employers for every unnecessary commute they require of their employees (maybe $100-$500 per employee per unnecessary day required in the office).

Employers are unfortunately very bad at deciding what is "necessary" work.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#335

Post by saagarjha »

photonthug wrote: post #162
saagarjha wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not true. Let's take Americans, for example, driving their cars to work. Americans are about 15% of the world's emissions, of which 25% or so is transportation, of which well over half is cars. So you not driving to work is making direct impact on 2-3% of the world's overall emissions. Likewise, your decisions on all the other things, if taken in aggregate, will have a significant impact on overall…

> That's definitely not true. Let's take Americans, for example, driving their cars to work. Even an example like this that is carefully chosen to make consumers feel/act more responsible falls short. You want people to change their lives/careers to not drive? Ok, but most people already want to work from home, so even the personal “choice” about whether to drive a car is basically stuck like other issues pending gov…

I didn't really carefully choose this, it was just what I came up. As others have mentioned, meat is another big one. FWIW I have no disagreement with letting people work from home, or pushing for other changes to make them less car-dependent.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#336

Post by saagarjha »

cyberax wrote: post #263
saagarjha wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unironically like public transport because someone else does the “driving” for me. I’m sure someone is going to explain how Waymo solves this but sitting on a train with my laptop and breakfast while I magically get teleported to my office is much nicer than even being in the back seat of a car.

> I magically get teleported to my office You work on a train station platform? My condolences. And indeed, self-driving will solve this. You'll be able to just step into a car, and get teleported to the door of your office. After stopping at your favorite coffee shop midway.

It doesn't, actually: there is no good place to work in a car. They don't have tables in them, and they accelerate both laterally and in the forward and back directions which makes most people carsick.

Re: Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment

#337

Post by mindcrash »

You are kidding right?

OpenAI -- for now -- is planning to build 5 gigawatt data centers (yes, plural) to continue its quest towards AGI. -- see HN archives. Meanwhile they are also looking into private nuclear power for the same purpose.

Any serious competitor will likely need to do the same.

So there's a rational choice and tradeoff to make:

Net zero or AGI.

We can't have both.

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