HN reacts to a New Yorker piece on the “obscene energy demands of AI” with exactly the same arguments coiners use when confronted with the energy cost of blockchain - the product is valuable in of itself, demands for more energy will spur investment in energy generation, and what about the energy costs of painting oil on canvas, hmmmmmm???

Maybe it’s just my newness antennae needing calibrating, but I do feel the extreme energy requirements for what’s arguably just a frivolous toy is gonna cause AI boosters big problems, especially as energy demands ramp up in the US in the warmer months. Expect the narrative to adjust to counter it.

  • 1stTime4MeInMCU@mander.xyzEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    Because I’m not arguing with OP, I’m largely agreeing with them. Generating silly images and doing school kids homework is not the promised land of AI the corporate overlords keep promising. But that’s not to suggest the field in general has zero uses. Crypto and AI are apples and oranges and while I’m not exactly sure what you mean by the arguments being the same, it would be possible for the same argument to be true for AI and not true for crypto, because AI has much more obvious use cases to benefit the common good.

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsMEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      “AI” is a marketing term for various at best slightly related technologies. If you mean LLMs or whatever, you’d need to be specific else you’re not even defining the goalposts before setting them up with wheels.

      • 200fifty@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        yeah, I definitely think machine learning has obvious use cases to benefit the common good (youtube auto captions being Actually Pretty Decent Now is one that comes to mind easily) but I’m much less certain about most of the stuff being presently marketed as “AI”

        • Deborah@hachyderm.io
          0·
          9 months ago

          Exactly. Some machine learning is great (image recognition for accessibility, machine translation) and some machine learning is awful (image recognition for cops, or machine translation for cops). But AI®️™️ is just mouth noises.

          • Deborah@hachyderm.io
            0·
            9 months ago

            (also obviously image recognition and machine translation are at least real, even when for cops, as opposed to “creative thought produced by LLMs” which is even worse than mouth noises.)

              • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
                0·
                9 months ago

                (meta: has any llm actually exceeded this level of engagement? I can’t recall seeing a single example. some changes in the sophistication of the language perhaps, but otherwise nothing)

            • Deborah@hachyderm.io
              0·
              9 months ago

              Is it that you would like to be able to tell you more about why you’re pretty cool with ELIZA?

      • Lmaydev@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        9 months ago

        AI is the name of the field of study. It has existed since the 60s. LLMs are neural networks one of the first and most widely used forms of AI.