[Ragnarork]

It's interesting also how these takes consistently ignore spectacularly the environmental cost of these as well.

I'm a bit on the fence myself, as I think it's very harmful, but I can also see ways it can be useful. But it's absolutely mindblowing how this is nearly always completely out of the discussion even though our current way of living and powering things is on a timer and we still haven't addressed it as a whole.

[rel_ic]

Thanks for posting this! I was also flabbergasted and it's nice to see at least one mention of the huge environmental impact!

[slashdev]

Do you know what the environmental footprint of a software developer is?

I’m only half joking.

[jes5199]

the “environmental costs” argument is based upon like fifteen false assumptions. by 2030, AI will be running almost entirely on solar+wind+battery, because that is by far the cheapest option

[Nullabillity]

> by 2030, AI will be running almost entirely on solar+wind+battery

Bullshit.

Even if this was true (and so far that doesn't seem to be the case), that's not how commodities work.

You can't just measure how much your thing uses, because even if it was running purely on green energy you also have to keep in mind other consumers that end up displaced onto worse sources. The only fair way to measure this is by the worst generator on your grid, because that's who would be shut down w/o your demand.

And even if we assume that the entire grid was green, building out that capacity also has (environmental) costs! As does producing those GPUs, for that matter.

[wvenable]

What's the environmental cost a human doing the same thing?

[GardenLetter27]

What environmental cost? The uranium is going to decay on its own anyway, we might as well use that energy for useful things.

Maybe LLMs will help lead to a breakthrough in nuclear fusion or battery research.

Degrowth is the philosophy of poverty, and a poverty of philosophy.

[timdiggerm]

Degrowth and "Maybe this uses too much electricity" are not the same thing, particularly when a nontrivial portion of US generation is fossil-fuel based.

As for the breakthroughs, maybe they will, maybe they won't; it's not much of an argument.

[rel_ic]

This mindset is cancerous

[GuinansEyebrows]

endless growth is the philosophy of an economic system that does not regard the long-term health of the planet and its flora and fauna. what's your point?