interesting read, i do disagree however that generating music/images/videos is a wholly un-needed role for AI to play. the value it brings to society in my opinion does not justify the environmental impact. the alternative to human-coding is vibe coding, which is faster, can form a good foundation for human programmers to iterate on and is generally more efficient. the AI alternative to these art forms/media types on the other hand is slop, low effort art that requires multiple prompts. the dataset for these generation models is ethically questionable as seen in previously documented violations of IP/copyright law. generally, i and many other young people are frankly tired of seeing AI-generated images of people styled in studio ghibli or other things because you could have just asked a real human artist to do that better for you. it seems like something that we should have never seen the need for AI to be trained to do because i figured the whole point was for AI to automate our white collar labour work so we could spend more time on leisure/the arts, so why are we training and using AI for what is the uniquely a human pursuit of expression?
it genuinely seems like a waste of water and compute for one to just generate a portrait of themselves in "insert style here" just to use as their profile picture when a simple selfie/random picture from the internet could suffice, like genuinely what societal utility did that image serve?
as i suspected, the author only concerns themself with sycophantic pro-AI comments that glaze them and this "profound" writing and refuses to engage with anything that challenges the notions presented
Very good information, but all of it is outdated. The numbers are so much lower. The issue at hand is they keep building outdated plants when there are small companies that can do the same thing these massive water and electricity consuming plants do in a piece of hardware the size of a Mac mini.
Good, but overlooks likely efficiency gains and the ongoing growth of low / zero carbon power. I liken this to the conversion from incandescent to compact fluorescent and finally LEDs. A brief period of flux followed by a cost driven drive to efficiency. Even the coal analogy, when run to its end, resulted in far more efficient and cleaner energy sources.
I love how you cited sources for everything. Fear mongers hate facts.
Thanks! I thought it was important for this piece. I really do care about reporting stuff that matches reality.
super helpful. thank you!
Really thought-provoking and a much needed, balanced analysis. Thank you for writing
Awesome article ❤
Great article, I too am about 20 minutes from the colossus. Your points are all correct from my read of the situation.
Good to discover another systems thinker in the area!
interesting read, i do disagree however that generating music/images/videos is a wholly un-needed role for AI to play. the value it brings to society in my opinion does not justify the environmental impact. the alternative to human-coding is vibe coding, which is faster, can form a good foundation for human programmers to iterate on and is generally more efficient. the AI alternative to these art forms/media types on the other hand is slop, low effort art that requires multiple prompts. the dataset for these generation models is ethically questionable as seen in previously documented violations of IP/copyright law. generally, i and many other young people are frankly tired of seeing AI-generated images of people styled in studio ghibli or other things because you could have just asked a real human artist to do that better for you. it seems like something that we should have never seen the need for AI to be trained to do because i figured the whole point was for AI to automate our white collar labour work so we could spend more time on leisure/the arts, so why are we training and using AI for what is the uniquely a human pursuit of expression?
it genuinely seems like a waste of water and compute for one to just generate a portrait of themselves in "insert style here" just to use as their profile picture when a simple selfie/random picture from the internet could suffice, like genuinely what societal utility did that image serve?
as i suspected, the author only concerns themself with sycophantic pro-AI comments that glaze them and this "profound" writing and refuses to engage with anything that challenges the notions presented
Good article. We increased the computational speed but its not intelligent.
Fragment, a serialized novel.
Very good information, but all of it is outdated. The numbers are so much lower. The issue at hand is they keep building outdated plants when there are small companies that can do the same thing these massive water and electricity consuming plants do in a piece of hardware the size of a Mac mini.
Good, but overlooks likely efficiency gains and the ongoing growth of low / zero carbon power. I liken this to the conversion from incandescent to compact fluorescent and finally LEDs. A brief period of flux followed by a cost driven drive to efficiency. Even the coal analogy, when run to its end, resulted in far more efficient and cleaner energy sources.