Comment by jillesvangurp
6 months ago
We should do things because they are hard, not because they are cheap and easy. AGI might be a fantasy but there are lots of interesting problems that block the path to AGI that might get solved anyway. The past three years we've seen enormous progress with AI. Including a lot of progress in making this stuff a lot less expensive, more efficient, etc. You can now run some of this stuff on a phone and it isn't terrible.
I think the climate impact of data centers is way overstated relative to the ginormous amounts of emissions from other sources. Yes it's not pretty but it's a fairly minor problem compared to people buying SUVs and burning their way through millions of tons of fuel per day to get their asses to work and back. Just a simple example. There are plenty.
Data centers running on cheap clean power is entirely possible; and probably a lot cheaper long term. Kind of an obvious cost optimization to do. I'd prefer that to be sooner rather than later but it's nowhere near the highest priority thing to focus on when it comes to doing stuff about emissions.
In addition to being hard, we should ask if something is useful or if the benefits outweigh the harms.
It's hard to see benefits from AI systems, AGI or otherwise. It doesn't seem to produce anything that improves human happiness or general well being.
I think you just lack imagination. I can imagine a lot of benefits of AGI or near-AGI systems.
The issue is how you can also easily imagine a lot of negative.
Neither those imagining positives or those imagining negatives can really prove to the other that they're right. This becomes the source of the conflict.
If you predicted the negative outcomes, you'd also oppose it. If you believe the outcomes will be positive, you'd be a proponent.
Now it also happens that a lot of those predicting positive outcomes are currently making money off the development of AI and so have an investment in its continued enablement. Which muddies things even more, because it's an obvious bias.
I agree. The benefits are just not well distributed.
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> I think the climate impact of data centers is way overstated relative to the ginormous amounts of emissions from other sources. Yes it's not pretty but it's a fairly minor problem compared to people buying SUVs and burning their way through millions of tons of fuel per day to get their asses to work and back. Just a simple example. There are plenty.
Oh no.
AI data centers are sucking up so much power it's making everyone's electric bill go up.
That's a tangible problem that dramatically impacts the poor and average person.
This is not a data center problem but a policy one of the last 20+ years.
We have not been building and extending energy sources, instead from some time around 2000 we've been steady stating and increasing efficiency. That's perfectly fine, but if anything shows up and uses more power, that puts us in a losing game. We should have trashed our coal power plants forever ago, and looked at more things like nuclear and now solar and wind. Instead we are attempting to play catch up with a troglodyte foot on our face that is yelling 'burn more coal'.
Don't blame data centers, instead blame politicians that would blame culture wars and the closest minority for the rest of our problems instead of actually working on public goods.