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The AI Investment Boom

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271 points m-hodges | 8 comments | 20 Oct 24 14:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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_heimdall ◴[21 Oct 24 12:44 UTC] No.41903569[source]▶
I'm always surprised when articles and discussions similar to this lead to anything other than the realization of how absurd it is that we have found ourselves investing unimaginable resources into a LLMs while simultaneously claiming that we've ruined the planet and it could be as little as 5 or 6 years from fundamental damage.

Eventually we have to either give up on the hopes of what could come from LLMs with enough investment, or give up on very loud but apparently hollow arguments related to the damage we are causing to the planet.

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1. gchokov ◴[21 Oct 24 12:47 UTC] No.41903595[source]▶
Or maybe, just maybe, now that we have a need for more energy, we can finally come up with more sustainable ways of producing that energy?
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2. tempfile ◴[21 Oct 24 12:51 UTC] No.41903620[source]▶
Why would needing more energy make it easier to satisfy the total demand for energy with renewable sources?
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3. _heimdall ◴[21 Oct 24 13:26 UTC] No.41903932[source]▶
We don't have that tech though.

Its a reasonable hope that we could discover a new energy source that can produce orders of magnitude more energy with even less impact than today's sources, but that is just a hope. In the meantime we would be committing ourselves to a new, much higher baseline of energy needs whether we make that discovery or not.

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4. jjk7 ◴[21 Oct 24 15:37 UTC] No.41905308[source]▶
Nuclear exists.
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5. _heimdall ◴[21 Oct 24 16:16 UTC] No.41905681{3}[source]▶
Sure, nuclear may fit the bill. That avoids needing a new advancement if we're happy enough with the environmental impact of nuclear generation, but it doesn't avoid all the external costs beyond just the nuclear reaction.

Reactors themselves take a large amount of resources, some rare, to build. Infrastructure is another huge resource suck, all that copper has to come from somewhere. Nuclear has the nice benefit of being on-demand, so it does at least dodge resources needed for energy storage.

6. barryrandall ◴[21 Oct 24 18:36 UTC] No.41907017{3}[source]▶
It does, but the general public does not seem to believe anyone can operate it safely enough to allow it in their communities. That position may or may not be supported by facts, but that only matters in countries where politicians don't answer to the electorate.
7. pilgrim0 ◴[21 Oct 24 18:37 UTC] No.41907024[source]▶
I think because settling for less is just not an option, progress at large would be hindered with a pressure for using less energy, even though it’s the right thing, arguably. Hence demand for more energy itself propels progress and innovation.
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8. _heimdall ◴[21 Oct 24 18:59 UTC] No.41907233{3}[source]▶
If we're meant to believe climate predictions coming out of the UN and similar, potential innovation spurred by an increase in energy production would slam face first into the wall of climate catastrophe even faster.

I'm not even saying I put much faith behind those predictions, but in the context of contradicting climate concerns with tech "innovation" requiring such massive amounts of energy it seems pertinent. We can't have it both ways, either most agree that the climate concerns are baseless or we accept that we collectively would be choosing to destroy the planet faster in the name of progress and innovation.

"Progress" itself is such an interesting term. There's no directionality to it, the only meaning is that we aren't standing still. There's nothing baked into progress that would stop us from progressing right off a cliff, I suppose unless we're already off the cliff and progress could change that.