How can we, as a community, talk about the existential risk of climate change or the benefits of adopting renewable energy or cheer the development of ever-more-efficient power consumption

Well I have a good/bad news thing about that one

my god, you found the good HN comment

It's as if, practically overnight, everyone went from, "we need to do everything we can to reduce our demands on the environment or we're cooked" to "oooh, shiny new toy, and it only ruins everything around it, cool!"

Definitely this one for me. I can only describe it as some fucked up denial psychology, the way people are pretending the environment isn't collapsing, and the LLM boom on top of that is like a bad joke. Even in discussions critical of the tech sector this is treated as almost an afterthought—the very real, very violent damage done to all of us from poor countries by people in rich countries to prop up their toy fantasy schemes. Even if LLMs did everything they claim to do, it would still be a moral imperative to form insurgent guerillas to blow up these datacentres, on the environmental damage they do alone which is not a minor detail Karen it's kind of a big deal

I hate LLMs because I am under enormous pressure, from many different angles, to also use them. I'm being asked -- required, in some cases -- to ignore all of my concerns about them and use them anyway because everyone else does and "obviously" they are the future. Because, somehow, all of my positions against LLMs make me unreasonable and a less valuable member of society.

oof. yeah that's me.

Ooh. I love these. I'm "I don't think Sam Altman or most of his social circle are good people and I don't want to give them more wealth and power."