Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I've never been so conflicted about a technology

marcjenkins.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 125 posts

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#81

Post by roywiggins »

robinsonb5 wrote: post #80
roywiggins wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a single hot shower uses more Watt-hours than most people spend on ChatGPT in a week, or a month. if people really want to cut down on how many watt-hours they're using on frivolous things there are dozens of things they should do first. if people are spending time worried about their ChatGPT energy use more than they are spending time going vegan or getting used to cold showers then they have been grossly misinforme…

Ultimately we're trying to persuade people to reduce their quality of life in order to reduce their energy footprint. That's already a difficult sell. It becomes an impossible sell when any reductions that might be achieved are immediately offset by a new energy-hungry technology coming online - especially when the long-term effect (goal, even) is to reduce yet further the quality of life of everyday people.

convincing people to change anything is very hard, so why are people spending time wringing their hands over LLM use? if you convinced one person to go vegan or get into cold showers for a year you'd do more for the planet than convincing a hundred people not to pick up ChatGPT

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#82

Post by teruakohatu »

BeetleB wrote: post #75
teruakohatu wrote: post #55

I feel the points made in this article have been debated many times on HN. The argument about power usage for developers, as opposed to consumers, is probably insignificant compared to the inefficient use of compute resources for deployed software today. Arguably LLMs are probably enabling some web developers to create native applications rather than Electron monstrosities saving many P-core CPU cycles multiplied by…

> The argument about power usage for developers, as opposed to consumers, Except with MCP, essentially most consumers will become "programmers". See my other comment for the rationale ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43997227 ). (TLDR: MCP lets non-programmers convert their prompts into programs, for all practical purposes. Currently there is a barrier to entry to automate simple tasks: The need to learn progra…

> Except with MCP, essentially most consumers will become "programmers"

You are more optimistic than I am. Most people I have seen are using LLMs are at best as an alternative to Grammarly or a document/web summary, or at worst making decision based on outdated LLM advice or as an inaccurate fact-engine.

The average person could code using Excel, but most don't even if they know how to use IF() and VLOOKUP().

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#83

Post by distances »

teruakohatu wrote: post #71
perrygeo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the "whatboutism" angle. Running LLMs requires massive amounts of electricity and water. Period. That beef consumption and other activities also require massive amounts of resources is independent. Both can be true. And both need to be addressed. We no longer have the luxury to pick and choose which climate interventions we find most convenient; we need to succeed on all fronts. If the patient is d…

> massive amounts of electricity and water ... we need to succeed on all fronts Datacenters' used for training or batch jobs can be placed in places where water and power are plentiful, ambient temperature are relatively low and government/society are stable. A datacenter is going to be built at the bottom of New Zealand where all these things are true. There must be plenty of places in the world where this holds tru…

> A datacenter is going to be built at the bottom of New Zealand where all these things are true. There must be plenty of places in the world where this holds true.

There are many datacenters being built in Finland. Water is not running out, and one of the cheapest electricity prices in Europe thanks to plentiful wind power.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#84

Post by dgb23 »

teruakohatu wrote: post #55

I feel the points made in this article have been debated many times on HN. The argument about power usage for developers, as opposed to consumers, is probably insignificant compared to the inefficient use of compute resources for deployed software today. Arguably LLMs are probably enabling some web developers to create native applications rather than Electron monstrosities saving many P-core CPU cycles multiplied by…

The main point being: LLMs cost, but do something useful. Building slow applications just adds cost, but the utility is much more vague.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#85

Post by lolinder »

perrygeo wrote: post #36
roywiggins wrote: post #9

> Models require massive amounts of electricity and water (to cool servers). Does it? https://prospect.org/environment/2024-09-27-water-not-the-pr... > training GPT-3 used as much water as just under twice what is required for the average American’s beef consumption. In other words, just two people swearing off beef would more than compensate. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa... > It would…

I don't understand the "whatboutism" angle. Running LLMs requires massive amounts of electricity and water. Period. That beef consumption and other activities also require massive amounts of resources is independent. Both can be true. And both need to be addressed. We no longer have the luxury to pick and choose which climate interventions we find most convenient; we need to succeed on all fronts. If the patient is d…

Whataboutism is bad, but there's a distinction between whataboutism and making comparisons to get a sense of the true scale of the problem. If you're not allowed to ever compare relative scales of things without being accused of whataboutism then we're paving the way to making every molehill a mountain.

Two average American's beef consumption for training GPT-3 would place the cost in water of training GPT-3 at 1/150000000 of the US beef industry's average water consumption. That means it's a rounding error relative to all the other uses we place on water, and pointing that out is not whataboutism, it's putting the problem in its proper scale.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#86

Post by sherburt3 »

frereubu wrote: post #23
zdragnar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't really need LLMs like we don't really need the internet. We don't really need that blog, nor do we really need Netflix, porn or Facebook. Individuals value things differently, so attempting to do society-wide prioritization is always going to be a reductive exercise. For example: Your local cafe doesn't need to exist at all. You could still drink coffee, you'd just have to make it yourself. That cafe is taki…

Again, this just feels like throwing your hands up in the air and saying "it's too hard to decide!" But we have to take decisions somehow if we're going to do anything.

Ok lets try to trick China and India into believing industrialization is lame and being poor is cool. That should buy us a couple of years

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#87

Post by breuleux »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #22

> 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. >…

> 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.

Halving power requirements is only a net gain if demand isn't doubled. Unfortunately, using less power means cheaper service, so demand will increase, and not necessarily smoothly. If there is a massive use case for which AI is currently too expensive, simply moving under that threshold could decuple demand -- a small efficiency gain leading to a giant spike in total energy use.

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#88

Post by roywiggins »

lolinder wrote: post #85
perrygeo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the "whatboutism" angle. Running LLMs requires massive amounts of electricity and water. Period. That beef consumption and other activities also require massive amounts of resources is independent. Both can be true. And both need to be addressed. We no longer have the luxury to pick and choose which climate interventions we find most convenient; we need to succeed on all fronts. If the patient is d…

Whataboutism is bad, but there's a distinction between whataboutism and making comparisons to get a sense of the true scale of the problem. If you're not allowed to ever compare relative scales of things without being accused of whataboutism then we're paving the way to making every molehill a mountain. Two average American's beef consumption for training GPT-3 would place the cost in water of training GPT-3 at 1/150…

if a few thousand westerners who want to atone for LLM water use skipped a few burgers, the planet would come out ahead on net I think

Re: I've never been so conflicted about a technology

#89

Post by JKCalhoun »

breuleux wrote: post #87
JKCalhoun wrote: post #22

> 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. >…

> 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. Halving power requirements is only a net gain if demand isn't doubled. Unfortunately, using less power means cheaper service, so demand will increase, and not necessarily smoothly. If there is a massive use case for which AI is currently too expensive, simply moving…

You're probably right. I assume they're moving these servers to places like along the Columbia River where electricity is cheap (bitcoin miners have been there for a decade).
Post reply on HN