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The AI Investment Boom

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271 points m-hodges | 3 comments | 20 Oct 24 14:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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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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_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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1. jjk7 ◴[21 Oct 24 15:37 UTC] No.41905308{3}[source]▶
Nuclear exists.
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2. _heimdall ◴[21 Oct 24 16:16 UTC] No.41905681[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.

3. barryrandall ◴[21 Oct 24 18:36 UTC] No.41907017[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.