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There's no such thing as "Just a Tool" (deadsimpletech.com)
submitted 4 days ago by [M] to c/technology@piefed.social
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How many times have you seen someone say "LLMs are just a tool" in a discussion about AI?

Too often.

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[–] [S] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 child)

I think that use-case will be one of the few that survive the bursting of the bubble. It is relatively high return on investment.

The way we use 'agents' though, I'm more doubtful about. An agent uses many many times more tokens than a basic search / text chat does. This article claims 600x more tokens - https://piefed.social/c/climate@slrpnk.net/p/2262610/the-real-energy-use-of-agentic-ai-agents-use-about-600x-more-energy-than-simple-ai-prom. No doubt the numbers are debatable but still a useful ballpark kinda thing.

It's hard to see the economics of that being viable once the VC money runs out.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago

    Yeah I'm just kind of a rubbernecker here, but from the last couple articles I read, it sounds like group-wise they're not remotely profitable yet. At the same time, in the States and I guess elsewhere, the data centers have been rammed through against local taxpayer objection, meaning that at least to some degree they and the state are going to be subsidizing the DC's. Also being harmed by their irreplaceable aquifers being tapped.

    Far as I know, Nestle is a big player in pulling that shit, and is arguably a benefitee of regularity capture, which naturally means a certain degree of politicians enriching themselves, ultimately paid for by taxpayers & sustainability. My point is that similar things do seem to be happening with LLM's and their DC's. So probably all that moves the profitability needle somewhat.

    Btw, this particular chart of the author's helped me understand some things:

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