this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
19 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37717 readers
407 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Speaking at a Bloomberg event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Altman said the silver lining is that more climate-friendly sources of energy, particularly nuclear fusion or cheaper solar power and storage, are the way forward for AI.

"There's no way to get there without a breakthrough," he said. "It motivates us to go invest more in fusion."

Right, surely the energy intensive AIs will make the world invest in climate-friendly energy instead of just burning more fossil fuels as they always did.

Also shows how unsustainable the current neoliberal system is.

all 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] MonsiuerPatEBrown@reddthat.com 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not sure that I'm willing to care about what multi-billionaires think any longer.

If someone becomes a billionaire they should be ritually sacrificed for the republic by the hands of children as we all drink the billionaire blood in the starlight.

[–] sculd@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes and no. We shouldn’t care about these people but we need to stop them from destroying our world (which they are doing).

[–] shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 4 points 10 months ago

we need to stop them from destroying our world

Yeah that's what the ritual cannibalism is for.

[–] tardigrada@beehaw.org 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

At least to some (large?) extent this is another red herring to distract from other and arguably more important AI topics such as copyright issues as well as legal and ethical issues imho.

[–] sculd@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago

Yup. That is definitely the biggest issue.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Admitting that your tech requires fusion power is admitting that it is a fantasy.

[–] sculd@beehaw.org 3 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately the VC and also MSFT are betting the future on this kind.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Huh, wasn’t this what they also said about why it was ok for bitcoin to be using as much power as Bulgaria?

Honestly these hype bait things seem increasingly just excuses to build out more centralized computing capability.

[–] sculd@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago

Very on brand for Altman.

[–] explodicle@local106.com 1 points 10 months ago

The whole point of mining/staking/whatever is to be expensive. Governments can pigouvian tax it to high hell, mine workers can unionize, and it won't make any difference to users whatsoever. So there's literally no benefit to more energy use.

Bitcoin mines can't do general computing. They use ASICs that can only mine.

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 10 points 10 months ago

Sam Altman is a clown. Nobody should trust this guy.

[–] noxfriend@beehaw.org 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The human brain can run on a hamburger once every day or two. Investing immense amounts of energy into statistical models is only taking us further away from true, meaningful AI, not closer.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 6 points 10 months ago

I'm confident that we are not using compute resources optimally today, and I bet that the potential gains on the (immature) software AI side are a lot bigger than on the (mature) power generation side.

[–] averyminya@beehaw.org 6 points 10 months ago

Analog computers Sam, analog computers.