Trying to entangling your bias towards hating on LLMs/AI/automation makes you lose credibility.
“Disempowering labor through automation” isnt a thing. We’ve been automating our labor for thousands of years, its called science lol
People will do whatever they can to entangle their hate for <new tech> in with the other problematic stuff.
This is right up there with people entangling metal and dungeons and dragons in with communism during the red scare. It has nothing to do with that, you’re just scared of a new thing.
A significant amount of the AI money is going into/coming from surveillance and “defense” sectors. Also, the ultra-wealthy obviously see it as a tool to disempower labor through automation, so much so that they’re laying off masses of people before the thing actually works. The amount of money being invested into AI only makes sense if it does take a large percentage of people’s jobs. And, automation/industrialization has indeed made people’s lives worse for multiple generations. E.g. extremely long shift work, soot-filled cities, two-penny hangovers, urban squalor, etc. “Engel’s pause” is one example of this.
Man i hate that automation is getting lumped in with AI these days. Fuck “AI” and all its clammy grifters.
Automation is things like your dishwasher, or basically every bit of manufacturing these days. You can hate aspects of it for sure, but unlike AI it’s very clear to see automation is a thing that exists.
Yup, in a theoretical, say, socialist utopia where nobody has to work, most of the work would need to be automated. Anything where people need to work less demands automation to replace what currently needs to be done by humans. Automation does cause problems, both temporary ones by taking people’s jobs, and more long-term ones when replacing the jobs people want to do, but it seems like an inevitable and necessary step into the future.
Yup, but a lot of those problems are problems with capitalism not the actual automation. Like it should take work away from us, but that shouldn’t mean we suffer
I do suspect suffering might be unavoidable in a transition period, it feels inevitable that as less work is necessary society will take time to adapt to the situation. It’s not that it’s impossible to adapt in time as the situation changes, but it seems implausible to actually implement that, and I feel like we should be accounting for it when discussing implementing automation.
In that context, I feel that automation and innovation are inevitable, and fighting them feels foolish (like by forcing coal mines and coal power plants to continue running), and we need to focus on improving peoples’ lives if they’re negatively affected.
I will also note that I’m negative towards GenAI, considering it unethical and (relatively) impractical. Though I’m also biased since my profession is affected :P
Yup, fighting that feels like fighting clean power or digitalization or a number of other advancements. But a lot of those weren’t well adapted to by many societies (US especially), and automation (which has been around for many decades now) has been pretty well adopted and poor adapted. Tech moving much faster than society
I mean, even AI isnt as bad as people make it out to be, people have GROSSLY overexaggerated the consumption of it to fit their narratives
If you crunch the numbers, a few hours of using even the most hungry of LLMs uses less water than washing your hands once >_>;
People don’t wanna hear it though because it doesnt fit their “AI bad” narrative
Millennials need to take a very long look in the mirror and realize this is their “phones bad” boomer moment and take the initiative to grow up. Its cringe and most of their gripes arent backed by reality.
Do LLM datacenters eat up power? Are they bad for the environment? Do they use a lot of water?
Yes… but they arent even in the top 10 of worst offenders that have been around for way longer and per-capita fuck shit up way worse
My fellow Millennials are only hating on AI cuz they are scared of it, or deeply deeply misinformed.
Id honestly be really curious to see a pool on how much water people think 1 convo with an LLM actually takes, Id bet the answers are so incredibly far off.
(The reality is its only a couple mL of water or so, depending on the model, if you wanna know)
I am not convinced LLMs provide a damn thing of value.
I work as a software developer and the sheer increase to my productivity makes it extremely valuable for me on numerous fronts.
Id estimate Im about 4x as productive, give or take.
And most of that productivity isnt coding, most of it is what LLMs are good at:
Locating documentation (using it as a fuzzy find searcher by intent)
Generating documentation and improving documentation
Summarizing existing code
Quickly locating bugs
Its really good at fuzzy searching huge datasets, finding needles in haystacks. When Im trying to find something specific in a codebase with thousands of files quickly.
While I agree most people are using it wrong or poorly, if you do know how to use an LLM, it becomes a huge productivity boost.
I like how people treat these data centers magically different from the same shit we’ve been doing for like 40 years now.
As if suddenly now its a big deal.
The best part is the same people will use literally any type of AWS backed system and pretend its not just as bad for the environment.
People are too bad at math to go realize there’s like forty other things they do in normal day-to-day life that’s just as bad, if not worse, for the environment that jacks up their carbon footprint, as if AI is a big deal.
If you:
use amazon
use netflix
eat red meat
drive a gas powered vehicle of any kind
drive an electric vehicle that you dont charge via renewables
use an electric stove
Eat fast food
And many many other things, then any of those things are way bigger carbon footprints than a person fucking around with an LLM for an hour or two.
And if you try and act high and mighty about how bad AI is and how bad people are for using it, and proceed to do multiple of the things above, you are a massive hypocrite and an asshole, full stop. Go fix your own shit before judging others.
I dont drive my car to work, grow my own food, take fairly cold showers, avoid eating fast food, and am getting solar panels added to my home, so statistically speaking even using an LLM many times per day my carbon footprint is a fraction of other peoples, so kindly fuck off :)
The best part is the same people will use literally any type of AWS backed system and pretend its not just as bad for the environment.
The people at MIT know way more about this than either of us.
This isn’t simply the norm of a digital world. It’s unique to AI, and a marked departure from Big Tech’s electricity appetite in the recent past. From 2005 to 2017, the amount of electricity going to data centers remained quite flat thanks to increases in efficiency, despite the construction of armies of new data centers to serve the rise of cloud-based online services, from Facebook to Netflix. In 2017, AI began to change everything. Data centers started getting built with energy-intensive hardware designed for AI, which led them to double their electricity consumption by 2023. The latest reports show that 4.4% of all the energy in the US now goes toward data centers.
I am not okay with forever increasing the amount of non renewable energy we spend on a product that is 99% hype.
If you: - use amazon - use netflix - eat red meat - drive a gas powered vehicle of any kind - drive an electric vehicle that you dont charge via renewables - use an electric stove - Eat fast food
I realize I am a huge outlier here, but I haven’t done/owned any of those things for anywhere from years to decades, lmao. I logged nearly 1800 miles on public transit last year.
Go fix your own shit before judging others.
Oops, now what? How many carbon saving morality points do I need to accrue to point out that you clearly realize there is an environmental impact by defensively listing all the environmentally friendly things you do?
Turn the heat up on your shower and walk away from the AI, it’ll put you in a better mood.
Had me up until the automation/AI stuff
Trying to entangling your bias towards hating on LLMs/AI/automation makes you lose credibility.
“Disempowering labor through automation” isnt a thing. We’ve been automating our labor for thousands of years, its called science lol
People will do whatever they can to entangle their hate for <new tech> in with the other problematic stuff.
This is right up there with people entangling metal and dungeons and dragons in with communism during the red scare. It has nothing to do with that, you’re just scared of a new thing.
A significant amount of the AI money is going into/coming from surveillance and “defense” sectors. Also, the ultra-wealthy obviously see it as a tool to disempower labor through automation, so much so that they’re laying off masses of people before the thing actually works. The amount of money being invested into AI only makes sense if it does take a large percentage of people’s jobs. And, automation/industrialization has indeed made people’s lives worse for multiple generations. E.g. extremely long shift work, soot-filled cities, two-penny hangovers, urban squalor, etc. “Engel’s pause” is one example of this.
Man i hate that automation is getting lumped in with AI these days. Fuck “AI” and all its clammy grifters.
Automation is things like your dishwasher, or basically every bit of manufacturing these days. You can hate aspects of it for sure, but unlike AI it’s very clear to see automation is a thing that exists.
Yup, in a theoretical, say, socialist utopia where nobody has to work, most of the work would need to be automated. Anything where people need to work less demands automation to replace what currently needs to be done by humans. Automation does cause problems, both temporary ones by taking people’s jobs, and more long-term ones when replacing the jobs people want to do, but it seems like an inevitable and necessary step into the future.
Yup, but a lot of those problems are problems with capitalism not the actual automation. Like it should take work away from us, but that shouldn’t mean we suffer
I do suspect suffering might be unavoidable in a transition period, it feels inevitable that as less work is necessary society will take time to adapt to the situation. It’s not that it’s impossible to adapt in time as the situation changes, but it seems implausible to actually implement that, and I feel like we should be accounting for it when discussing implementing automation.
In that context, I feel that automation and innovation are inevitable, and fighting them feels foolish (like by forcing coal mines and coal power plants to continue running), and we need to focus on improving peoples’ lives if they’re negatively affected.
I will also note that I’m negative towards GenAI, considering it unethical and (relatively) impractical. Though I’m also biased since my profession is affected :P
Yup, fighting that feels like fighting clean power or digitalization or a number of other advancements. But a lot of those weren’t well adapted to by many societies (US especially), and automation (which has been around for many decades now) has been pretty well adopted and poor adapted. Tech moving much faster than society
I mean, even AI isnt as bad as people make it out to be, people have GROSSLY overexaggerated the consumption of it to fit their narratives
If you crunch the numbers, a few hours of using even the most hungry of LLMs uses less water than washing your hands once >_>;
People don’t wanna hear it though because it doesnt fit their “AI bad” narrative
Millennials need to take a very long look in the mirror and realize this is their “phones bad” boomer moment and take the initiative to grow up. Its cringe and most of their gripes arent backed by reality.
Do LLM datacenters eat up power? Are they bad for the environment? Do they use a lot of water?
Yes… but they arent even in the top 10 of worst offenders that have been around for way longer and per-capita fuck shit up way worse
My fellow Millennials are only hating on AI cuz they are scared of it, or deeply deeply misinformed.
Id honestly be really curious to see a pool on how much water people think 1 convo with an LLM actually takes, Id bet the answers are so incredibly far off.
(The reality is its only a couple mL of water or so, depending on the model, if you wanna know)
How about the water usage of energy for data centers? Or for that each query there’s tons of pre and post training usage?
How about the fact that it’s just a grift that doesn’t do much and even environment aside it funnels wealth to the richest people?
Hank green has a nice little video of it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
Yes, I included that.
The usage is incredibly low “per capita”
If you think AI is special, its not. This same problem is present when you watch Netflix or order from Amazon.
People have a very warped idea of how much power/water AI uses.
You should go look up how huge the datacenters that power everything else are too.
But again, like Netflix provides something now (albeit not my favorite thing). I am not convinced LLMs provide a damn thing of value.
I think AI is special for being a waste and very negative socially without providing any positive back.
I work as a software developer and the sheer increase to my productivity makes it extremely valuable for me on numerous fronts.
Id estimate Im about 4x as productive, give or take.
And most of that productivity isnt coding, most of it is what LLMs are good at:
Its really good at fuzzy searching huge datasets, finding needles in haystacks. When Im trying to find something specific in a codebase with thousands of files quickly.
While I agree most people are using it wrong or poorly, if you do know how to use an LLM, it becomes a huge productivity boost.
Guy watching fascists use new tech to set the world on fire: you’re just scared of how great this is!
I like how people treat these data centers magically different from the same shit we’ve been doing for like 40 years now.
As if suddenly now its a big deal.
The best part is the same people will use literally any type of AWS backed system and pretend its not just as bad for the environment.
People are too bad at math to go realize there’s like forty other things they do in normal day-to-day life that’s just as bad, if not worse, for the environment that jacks up their carbon footprint, as if AI is a big deal.
If you:
And many many other things, then any of those things are way bigger carbon footprints than a person fucking around with an LLM for an hour or two.
And if you try and act high and mighty about how bad AI is and how bad people are for using it, and proceed to do multiple of the things above, you are a massive hypocrite and an asshole, full stop. Go fix your own shit before judging others.
I dont drive my car to work, grow my own food, take fairly cold showers, avoid eating fast food, and am getting solar panels added to my home, so statistically speaking even using an LLM many times per day my carbon footprint is a fraction of other peoples, so kindly fuck off :)
The people at MIT know way more about this than either of us.
I am not okay with forever increasing the amount of non renewable energy we spend on a product that is 99% hype.
I realize I am a huge outlier here, but I haven’t done/owned any of those things for anywhere from years to decades, lmao. I logged nearly 1800 miles on public transit last year.
Oops, now what? How many carbon saving morality points do I need to accrue to point out that you clearly realize there is an environmental impact by defensively listing all the environmentally friendly things you do?
Turn the heat up on your shower and walk away from the AI, it’ll put you in a better mood.
Nah you specifically 100% are justified to gripe about it now, good work tbh.
You are demonstrating self awareness in avoiding hypocrisy, so yeah, you actually are walking the walk and thus get to talk the talk.
Its people that dont put in the work who still complain while simultaneously doing things 100x worse that are absolutely hypocrites.
Tell it to your AI girlfriend