Comment by estearum

5 hours ago

Not really. Nuclear power (in both the weapon and energy sense) is and always was relatively easy to manage compared to AI.

If the deployment of nuclear energy required the distribution of radioactive material to every smartphone in America and for unstable isotopes to be plugged into the core operating infrastructure of every industry, then they'd be a lot closer to analogous.

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estearum

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adrians1  5 hours ago

Of course. Those people back then were stupid and irrational and couldn't see they were wrong.

Today we are much more enlightened and smart, and our convoluted arguments, that sound very smart and somehow reach the same conclusion that the technology must be stopped, are totally right. We're not opposed to AI due to irrational fear and NIMBYism, like those simpletons before.

  • estearum  4 hours ago

    Excellent work responding to the argument put in front of you!

    You are so rational!

    • adrians1  4 hours ago

      We're not much better than our ancestors. We'd like to think we are, because we're much more intelligent and have access to more information.

      But we really aren't. We're still driven by irrational sentiments and fears. We hate AI because it's new and feels icky, and will bring change and we don't like change. We would prefer the 2020s to be frozen in time forever and ever (although we're more than happy to benefit from progress that happened before our time, which upended the lives of other people long dead).

      So that's it, there's no argument. The only argument is "I hate AI because fuck it", which is much more sincere. I don't need to hear about water or electricity or cognitive decline or any other made up stuff that sounds intellectual.

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xydone  4 hours ago

I have a feeling that comparing a safe, sustainable energy source to large language models is disingenuous. If you support LLMs and the field, you can just state it outright, without insincere comparisons.

  • estearum  4 hours ago

    Obviously there are components of nuclear energy that are not intrinsically safe, which is why people freaked out about it

  • adrians1  4 hours ago

    If you oppose LLMs and the field because of pure irrational instinct, like those people in the past, you can just state it outright, no need for complicated arguments.

    • xydone  4 hours ago

      Yeah, that's also fine. However I am personally willing to side with the group which's arguments for the cause are environmental and societal impact over the one which's rebuttal to that is the fact we were wrong once 40 years ago. That's just me though.

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