Comment by perf99999999999
20 days ago
Brendan, I'm a big fan of your book, and work. I don't have a problem with you joining OpenAI; best of luck there!
However, I'm not sure your analysis is quite correct, in this case.
If OpenAI can mobilize X (giga)dollars to buy Y amounts of energy, your work there will not reduce X or Y, it will simply help them produce more "tokens" (or whatever "unit of AI") for a given amount of energy.
So in a sense you're helping make OpenAI tools better, more effective, but it's not helping reduce resource usage.
One day if openai becomes a real company (and public), like the kind that takes money from customers and employe accountants and turns a profit, etc, there may be downward pressure on the "costs" side of the equation.
Also while the thirst for training may be insatiable, I could see the energy cost of "hey chat can you check the basketball score" coming down.
Was going to say the same thing, but I'm pretty sure he already knows that. Smart people can convince themselves of everything.
Anyone can convince themselves of anything, the only thing that varies is the complexity of the rationalization.
And the consequence of burning more tokens, of course, is more widespread adoption, weaving AI more deeply into the fabric of our reality.
That's a possible second-order effect, but not guaranteed.