Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines, as you did here and in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44167429? If you keep posting like that we're going to have to ban you again. I don't want to do that, but we can't have commenters abusing HN like this.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
It's interesting also how these takes consistently ignore spectacularly the environmental cost of these as well.
I'm a bit on the fence myself, as I think it's very harmful, but I can also see ways it can be useful. But it's absolutely mindblowing how this is nearly always completely out of the discussion even though our current way of living and powering things is on a timer and we still haven't addressed it as a whole.
the “environmental costs” argument is based upon like fifteen false assumptions. by 2030, AI will be running almost entirely on solar+wind+battery, because that is by far the cheapest option
> by 2030, AI will be running almost entirely on solar+wind+battery
Bullshit.
Even if this was true (and so far that doesn't seem to be the case), that's not how commodities work.
You can't just measure how much your thing uses, because even if it was running purely on green energy you also have to keep in mind other consumers that end up displaced onto worse sources. The only fair way to measure this is by the worst generator on your grid, because that's who would be shut down w/o your demand.
And even if we assume that the entire grid was green, building out that capacity also has (environmental) costs! As does producing those GPUs, for that matter.
Degrowth and "Maybe this uses too much electricity" are not the same thing, particularly when a nontrivial portion of US generation is fossil-fuel based.
As for the breakthroughs, maybe they will, maybe they won't; it's not much of an argument.
endless growth is the philosophy of an economic system that does not regard the long-term health of the planet and its flora and fauna. what's your point?
- Cut me a little slack as I ask you to shove this concern up your ass
- Then shut the fuck up about IPR. Reap the whirlwind
This pretty much sums up the author's message. The whole article is just a suboptimal way to say "I don't give a fuck about you and your opinion"