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A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

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Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#91

Post by daedrdev »

Retric wrote: post #58
TeMPOraL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, another two big questions are: - To what extent AI will actually be helpful in solving the climate crisis? - To what extent the power generation growth fueled by AI will be critical to solving the climate crisis, and conversely, how badly we'll be screwed without it? "Degrowth" is not an option. It hasn't been for a long time now. We can't just "social solution" our way out this problem anymore.

We can very quickly and reasonably cheaply ‘solve’ global warming without AI. Wind, solar, batteries + existing hydro and nuclear can hit a 95% clean electricity grid with capacity to scale in EV’s and heat pumps. Electricity + home heating + cars is not 100%, but cutting emissions in half means you double the time before reaching any given threshold. For many problems the last 10% is the most challenging but we get…

Electricity is only part of energy use and emissions production. In no way is there a simple and cheap solution, all proposals have tradeoffs and costs

Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#92

Post by CooCooCaCha »

ben_w wrote: post #30
candiddevmike wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?

To the extent that further improvements to AI remain economically useful, "let's do these other things first" means your economy trails behind those of whoever did work on the AI. To the extent that further improvements to AI are either snake oil or just hard to monopolise on, doing everything else first is of course the best idea. Even though I'm more on the side of finding these things impressive, it's not at all c…

That’s why I wonder if a planetary government is inevitable sometime in the future. We can’t address species-wide issues if we’re constantly worried about competition, and if market forces aren’t going to work then the only other solution I can think of is a bigger, more powerful entity laying down the law.

Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#93

Post by hahajk »

hbartab wrote: post #6

> We certainly need to partner with industry. Because they are so far ahead and are making such giant investments, that is the only possible path. And therein lies the risk: research labs may become wholly dependent on companies whose agendas are fundamentally commercial. In exchange for access to compute and frontier models, labs may cede control over data, methods, and IP—letting private firms quietly extract value…

In the case of huge frontier LLMs, the public labs will likely never be able to compete. In my experience, govt orgs are ardent rule-followers and wouldn't be as willing to violate copyright.

Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#94

Post by myhf »

woah wrote: post #69
senderista wrote: post #20

Clearly AI is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by tech interests, how can we be sure that public AI funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?

HN commenters in 1960: > Clearly computer networking is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by military industrial interests, how can we be sure that public networking funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?

There was literally a vaporware "AI" hype cycle in 1960. Propositional logic programming was poison to investors for 50 years because of that one, just like LLMs will be poison to investors for 50 years because of this one.

Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#95

Post by BrawnyBadger53 »

dlivingston wrote: post #84
_heimdall wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't just switch to clean energy, we would need to drastically reduce our energy use per capita.

Absolutely not. We would be moving backwards as a society. Increased energy usage is a bellwether of societal advancement. See the Kardashev scale and Dyson sphere for example. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

I don't think we should be setting artificial limiters on energy usage or anything but you're using circular reasoning as justification.

These scales use energy usage as the measure of progress which you are saying is proof that reducing energy use is reducing progress.

Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#96

Post by drdrey »

daedrdev wrote: post #91
Retric wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can very quickly and reasonably cheaply ‘solve’ global warming without AI. Wind, solar, batteries + existing hydro and nuclear can hit a 95% clean electricity grid with capacity to scale in EV’s and heat pumps. Electricity + home heating + cars is not 100%, but cutting emissions in half means you double the time before reaching any given threshold. For many problems the last 10% is the most challenging but we get…

Electricity is only part of energy use and emissions production. In no way is there a simple and cheap solution, all proposals have tradeoffs and costs

electricity generation is only ~20% of emissions

Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#97

Post by bobxmax »

candiddevmike wrote: post #28
senderista wrote: post #20

Clearly AI is worthy of public investment, but given the capture of this administration by tech interests, how can we be sure that public AI funding isn't just handouts to the president's cronies?

How about we fix global warming and switch 100% to clean energy, and then invest in AI?

It's going to be fun when China rules the world because western democracies have gone so batshit anti-tech

Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#98

Post by michaelt »

threeseed wrote: post #72
dale_glass wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who "we"? The people qualified to fix global warming aren't the same people qualified to work on ML.

Yes they are. I've worked with hundreds of Data Scientists and every one had the ability to work on different problem areas. And so they were working on models to optimise truck rollouts or when to increase compute for complex jobs. If as a society we placed an increased emphasis on efficiency and power consumption we would see a lot more models being used in those areas.

Seems to me, we know pretty well what we need to do about climate change. It has already been data scienced many, many times.

The problem is we don't want to do it.

Re: A conversation about AI for science with Jason Pruet

#100

Post by ngangaga »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #51
haswell wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the extent that further improvements to AI remain economically useful, "let's do these other things first" means your economy trails behind those of whoever did work on the AI. The major question is: at what point will unaddressed climate change nullify these economic gains and make the fact that anyone worried about them feel silly in retrospect? Or put another way, will we even have the chance collectively enj…

Still, another two big questions are: - To what extent AI will actually be helpful in solving the climate crisis? - To what extent the power generation growth fueled by AI will be critical to solving the climate crisis, and conversely, how badly we'll be screwed without it? "Degrowth" is not an option. It hasn't been for a long time now. We can't just "social solution" our way out this problem anymore.

> "Degrowth" is not an option.

This is not helpful. There are many reasons degrowth won't generally help humanity, but the benefits are particularly aplicable to western nations and their diplomatic relations. Certainly many western nations can bear degrowth without significant loss in quality of life. The wealthy just gotta take a significant cut to their waistlines.

> We can't just "social solution" our way out this problem anymore.

This certainly seems to be the liberal solution. Short of evicting them from our society what better choices do we have?

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