331–340 of 346 posts
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It does seem most of the pro-AI people aren't actually affected by any of the negative aspects of it. It's a lot easier to be in favor of something that doesn't actually affect you or anyone you care about.
Most everybody isn't affected by data center build outs.
I saw a comment from another site that a lot of the data center locations on this map aren’t accurate. Is there any truth to that?
I was thinking some of the community ones are bogus and then I started looking closer at a few of the hotspots. There is what appears to be a compelling site for a datacenter right in the middle of a cluster of these reports: https://maps.app.goo.gl/nZyt5Yb3kqxj5thc8
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Wait, are you thinking this through carefully? Because your mitigating issue for golf courses, that they also use way more land, makes them worse, not better .
Agreed, golf courses and data centers need to be regulated and limited. Though data centers seem to use much more water per acre than golf courses. The number I pulled in the original post was global golf course water consumption not just the US. Golf courses also use 7x more pesticides than agricultural land. On the other hand data centers that try to do "closed loop" systems rely on heavy use of anti-freeze, anti-f…
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If it's not rational it's not reasonable. The two words are more or less synonyms, unless you're using the word reasonable to mean something like "not uncommon". AI does have clear tangible benefits everyone can see and understand! That's why ChatGPT has 800M+ actives! Those people aren't just experimenting anymore, they're getting real value. I myself ask models questions about all kinds of things many times per day…
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Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer...
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says... Assume good faith.
Please don't post shallow dismissals...
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
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Agreed, golf courses and data centers need to be regulated and limited. Though data centers seem to use much more water per acre than golf courses. The number I pulled in the original post was global golf course water consumption not just the US. Golf courses also use 7x more pesticides than agricultural land. On the other hand data centers that try to do "closed loop" systems rely on heavy use of anti-freeze, anti-f…
Again: using more acreage makes golf courses worse .
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Reassurance is identical to propaganda and manipulation insofar as all attempt to convey beliefs. Reassurance, here, should be apparently different in that it conveys true information. In the history of mankind, it has never been easier to discern between true and false information. If people want to throw up their hands and start believing whatever feels right, they are permitted to do so. Though they have a duty no…
Condescending responses like these are only reinforcing the original point. People don't want data centers because they don't want AI forced on them. > Let's not pretend it's a reasonable or respectable reaction to seeing billboards. Being angry after seeing and hearing your livelihood threatened by rich CEOs on a daily basis is a reasonable reaction. If you aren't willing or able to muster up a modicum of empathy to…
Just stop lying and defending liars while slandering the honest people who notice! I don't care how rich the ceos making you angry are, I don't care how pure the hatred in your heart is for this technology, none of that makes it okay! You don't get to demand my empathy while defacing the commons, sorry.
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What mechanism do you suppose would cause LLMs to use writing tropes at a significantly greater rate than than is found in their training data?
I have no idea, but the fact is they do! Probably something to do with the way they do RLHF?
Well, that's the assumption I'm challenging. That does not seem to be a substantiated fact at all.
Most of the arguments I've encountered online that attempt to make the case that LLMs do have a writing style that's readily distinguishable from human writing are deeply afflicted with confirmation bias, and are often based on circular reasoning.
My comment above was a rhetorical question intended to point out the fact that LLMs are specifically designed to mimic the patterns of writing found in their training data, so the idea that they'd all converge to some other set of pattern is not by itself plausible.
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Why does the construction of buildings to run business operations of any kind need to be "marketed" in the first place, absent manipulative media campaigns trying to manufacture a controversy around them?
Because the public is affected? If they were to run a highway through the middle of San Fransisco, a lot of people would also be affected. Like in Eastern Oregon a data center used agricultural water for evaporative cooling. The remaining water that was pumped out has nitrate levels over 5x the legal limit. Enough to cause cancer and miscarriages in nearby homes. Our environment and communities are being treated as e…
An abstract concept is being affected in unspecified ways by a generalized category of activity?
> If they were to run a highway through the middle of San Fransisco, a lot of people would also be affected.
Right. That's why they'd need to do all of the hard work to acquire all of the necessary property rights, easements, contracts, etc. from those people in order to undertake such a project.
Are data centers being constructed on other people's property without their consent? Are the actual negative externalities that impact specific people -- not the vague, all-encompassing notion of "the public" -- not being addressed within their context? I'm not aware of any of that happening.
> Like in Eastern Oregon a data center used agricultural water for evaporative cooling. The remaining water that was pumped out has nitrate levels over 5x the legal limit. Enough to cause cancer and miscarriages in nearby homes.
This is a good argument to back up the proposition that fertilizer-rich water from agricultural sources shouldn't be fed into municipal water supplies for use as tap water. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this proposition holds regardless of what intermediate uses the water may be put to as it travels from the farm to your kitchen faucet.
It's a terrible argument to back up the proposition that people shouldn't build data centers. It would be akin to citing the MV Dali incident a few years back (in which a cargo ship with improperly maintained power systems collided with a bridge) as an argument against the use of containerized logistics.
> Our environment and communities are being treated as economic externalities.
Yes, that's what we'd hope for. Would you rather that they weren't?
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Impact and externalities.
Such as