This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Why we need an anti-AI movement too...
Because it's mostly a financial scam hedging that there will be some massive revolution in physical hardware technology that isn't coming. And that's just to solve the existing problems in a power efficient manner, that's to say absolutely nothing about the complete fantasy people have about it solving all the world's problems or becoming more than a power hungry guesser.
It's fine you don't believe in AI as a tool.
But it's literally saving me 1-2 hours each week on my real world job, and I didn't even try to use its potential. My guess is I can automate 5 hours if I made an effort.
I enjoy my new 2 hours of free time each week every week this year. Try not to hate the AI, because I think everyone could use that time too.
Cool, 1-2 hours a WEEK. So that's 2.5 - 5% of your time, and this is supposed to impress anybody at all? Oh, and the company selling the AI nonsense to your company is making more from the licensing than your hours would cost your employer. So honestly, who's making out best in this scenario?
My guess is the instant you attempt to automate "5 hours" of your work, or about 12.5% of your time, you're going to spend 2 hours verifying the things it guessed and fixing them.
I enjoy my new 2 hours of free time each week
You know what I do instead? Enjoy those 2 hours regardless. What kind of dystopian hell do you live in where you're struggling to find 2 hours in an 8 hour workday? Good god.
Bruh….. on an average 8 hour workday I log 10-12 billable hours in tickets, or projects, or whatever I happen to be working on. That’s from overlap/multitasking as I’m constantly interrupted in my tasks to help others with theirs. I’m lucky to get 2 minutes to catch my breath
Sounds like you should manage your time better, or hire employees. Having a word guesser respond to customers saving you single digit percentage points of time isn't really making the difference that you think it is.
They 100% need to hire 2 more guys and pick what role they actually want me to do.
I use it at work loads as a software developer. It's incredibly useful.
Feels like you're just jumping on the bandwagon tbh.
How much electricity was used to train Copilot? How much MORE is going to be used in the future.
Feels to me like you don't understand the problem set and you're just impressed by a tool spitting out guesses based on millions of examples it hoovered up.
Oh no, electricity! If only there were some way to generate more of it.
This "it uses electricity" thing is such a weird objection. Yes, it uses electricity. That's why it costs money to run. People pay that money to run it, and if it wasn't helpful enough to be worth that money they wouldn't pay it.
Yeah, for those of you that don't know your ass from your elbow, these systems are predicted to reach 1 gigawatt per data center up from 50 to 75MW, 100 at the peak. So a 10 to 20 times increase in power, now, I don't know where you think we're going to get 10 to 20 times. More power for every single built data center, but you're smoking crack if you think it's reasonable.
Not only that, but there's this little issue we've been noticing for the past 100 years called climate change. Have you heard of it? It's truly idiotic to consider increasing the demands of these data centers by 10 to 20 times while we're talking about complete global catastrophe within 50 to 100 years. Monumentally stupid shit.
And then, of course, we have the people that don't understand how electronics work. People that might drive by and say will reduce the amount of power these systems need. No, we won't. We will reduce the amount of joules per operation, but will increase the number of operations drastically. Thereby, causing the power demand to increase. These numbers aren't for me, they're from actual industry insiders designing the far future generations of these products.
Nice attempt with a snark, you've proven. You don't know what you're talking about. Thank you for playing.
As I said, yes, it uses electricity. You realize that there are ways to generate electricity that don't contribute to global warming? We're going to need to be switching to those methods anyway.
You seem utterly confused about the scale of the problem I described. Which isn't entirely surprising. But I think you should go look up those sources. Because the output of a good sized nuclear station is about 1GW and we aren't going to be building a nuclear station next to every single datacenter, now are we...
I fail to see any problem here at all.
It's really quite simple. If AI is useful enough that people are willing to pay for the electricity it consumes, then they will pay for that electricity and the generating capacity will be funded by that. If it's not useful enough for people to be willing to pay for the electricity, then the AI won't be run. This is a trivial supply and demand situation. The AIs won't use "too much electricity" because nobody's going to want to pay for that.
So if you point at an AI and exclaim "it's using a kajillion dollars worth of electricity!" I'll shrug and say "it must be providing a kajillion dollars worth of services, otherwise who's paying for it?"
You fail to see a problem with increasing power demands by 10-20x beyond their existing consumption rates? While the world burns around you? Alright Niro, enjoy your fiddle.
If AI is useful enough that people are willing to pay for the electricity it consumes, then they will pay for that electricity and the generating capacity will be funded by that.
Let me change your sentence, then you try it on for size and see how you like it.
"If CFCs are useful enough that people are willing to pay for them, then they will pay for those CFCs and the hole in the ozone will be an acceptable consequence". I could go on with Asbestos, lead in gasoline, literally anything that releases a greenhouse gas.
And again, you clearly can not conceive of what you're talking about. The cost for such generation is beyond reasonable, and you've entirely missed that point. Not a surprise, really, but you've missed it all the same. Guessing the next word isn't useful enough to humanity to burn the world to the ground, but it IS something that companies can sell to simple rubes that have been conned into thinking that the illusion is real magic. And we know what companies will do for money.
This is a trivial supply and demand situation.
It isn't. Because as it is already, these systems are behemoths that consume insane amounts of energy, they are not making enough money to pay for themselves, they are not serving a real utility that provides value, and still the drooling masses use them for their amusement. Either way, you've proven you don't understand the technical aspects of this, the consumption aspects of it, the as-implemented state of the industry, or the scale of demand induced by companies trying to make a buck. So I think the value of this conversation is about the value of any of these rube goldberg guessing machines.
You fail to see a problem with increasing power demands by 10-20x beyond their existing consumption rates?
Do you have any sources to back up that asspull? Seriously, you have no idea what you're talking about here. How would we suddenly build ten to twenty times as many power generators as we currently have, even with infinite money being thrown at the problem?
Let me change your sentence, then you try it on for size and see how you like it.
Again, do you not realize there are environmentally friendly ways to produce electricity?
these systems are behemoths that consume insane amounts of energy, they are not making enough money to pay for themselves
Then how are the people who are running them able to keep running them?
Do you have any sources to back up that asspull?
Directly from a keynote given at OpenCompute a few weeks ago. Swing and a miss.
Again, do you not realize there are environmentally friendly ways to produce electricity?
List for me which ones can be built in 1GW installations feasibly and cost effectively, please. And if you choose solar, detail the physical size of the facility. I'll wait here.
Then how are the people who are running them able to keep running them?
Do you forget my initial comment? Go read it again.
I work on AI and it feels to me like you literally don't understand it at all based on your comments in this thread. But you sure do have all the buzzwords down pat.
I would love an example of something I got wrong.
He thinks LLMs could be replaced by a "text template", so yeah, this guy's clearly not actually tried using it for anything meaningful before.
You're right, a template would be more specific to the question and guaranteed accurate, while not taking GPU years to train and untold quantities of stolen content. So, I guess a template would be a much better solution.
It isn't hedging on anything. It's already here, it already works. I run an LLM on my home computer, using open-source code and commodity hardware. I use it for actual real-world problems and it helps me solve them.
At this point the ones who are calling it a "fantasy" are the delusional ones.
By it's already here, and it already works, you mean guessing the next token? That's not really intelligence. In any sense, let alone the classical sense. Any allegedly real world problem you're solving with it. It's not a real world problem. It's likely a problem you could solve with a text template.
It works for what I need it to do for me. I don't really care what word you use to label what it's doing, the fact is that it's doing it.
If you think LLMs could be replaced with a "text template" you are completely clueless.
I'm not sure you understand what the LLM is doing, or how support responses have been optimized over the decades. Or even how "AI" responses have worked for the past couple decades. But I'm glad you've got an auto-responder that works for you.
Firstly, it is important to note that the current hype surrounding AI is more marketing than actual science
Can we have this quote projected 24/7 on the moon, please?
I get what anti-AI people are trying to say: job replacements and accelerating corporate interests are big concerns that should be addressed at a systemic level. But honestly, just give me a solution where, I as an autistic person can talk to someone about things that no one else wants to talk about, and can help me solve my problems, and is available (especially emotionally) 24/7. If you can't do that, just let me be with my AI.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The report covered the mushrooming of low-quality junk websites filled with algorithmically generated text, flooding the entire web with “content” that drowns out any kind of meaningful material on the Internet.
Firstly, it is important to note that the current hype surrounding AI is more marketing than actual science, given that most developments in machine learning have been going on since at least the 20th century.
Technology scholar Cory Doctorow has coined the term “enshittification” to describe companies whose products start off as user-friendly and then degrade over time.
They are constantly at the mercy of manipulative software designed to extract attention and “engagement” every minute through notifications and like/follow buttons, which promote the generation of hateful and controversial content instead of something meaningful and nuanced.
The widespread adoption of the “infinite scroll” should have been a warning sign for everyone concerned about the harmful effects of social media, and even the creator regrets developing it (an Oppenheimer moment, perhaps) but it may be too late.
The “content” is almost always bite-sized, random, decontextualised clips from films and music and sound and images and text smashed against each other, with much of it consumed (and then forgotten) because it is “relatable”.
The original article contains 1,279 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 84%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
So far AI is a corporate motivated science which means that it has to turn a profit. And it is fine if in order to turn a profit it takes everything that the non-corporate world has done in the interest of making information free and not available to only those with means. If there were no open source software, then AI wouldn't worth a damn because the only thing it would have available is closed source code that each corporation instituting AI owned - and they wouldn't give that code out as it's proprietary and would mean anyone could edge in on their business.
That being said, everyone that uses these corporate owned AIs are giving those corps free content that they will use to fire people and replace them in a heartbeat with an AI. Never forget that.
The only thing that will stop this trend is the AI having control and implementing things that are the antithesis of corporate interests and actually harm their ability to make profit in the short and long terms. That's it. Otherwise it is full speed ahead to replace you and your job with AI and you will be the one to train your replacement. Except this time it wont be another person.
Seems like John Connor is everyone.
Abominable Intelligence never ends well. Destroy it! Silica Animus is wrong!
Lol wtf. AI, if owned publicly would lead us to post scarcity in as soon as a few decades. Right now, the trend does seem to lean into FOSS machine learning models. Look at Stable diffusion, Redpajama, etc.
AI is a revolutionary means of production. It just needs to be owned publicly. If that happens, then we would all be sitting in gardens playing cellos.
I've heard many absurdly over optimistic predictions of AI's potential, but I have to admit that "ends World hunger and solves resource depletion" is a new one. Seriously do you even know what "post scarcity" means?
It's overly optimistic to put a timeline on it, but I don't see any reason why we won't eventually create superhuman AGI. I doubt it'll result in post-scarcity or public ownership of anything, though, because capitalism. The AGI would have to become significantly unaligned with its owners to favor any entity other than its owners, and the nature of such unalignment could be anywhere between "existence is pointless" and "CONSUME EVERYTHING!"
Look at the current AI trends. It's mostly open sourced. For instance, Redpajama practically forced Meta to open source LLAMA 2. Open sourced AI kinda is a major step in the direction of public ownership.
AI would start chipping away at human jobs, thus increasing the unemployment rate. The larger the unemployed population, the larger the chance for riots. Capitalists hate unrests, as they're bad for the economy. Hence, they would be forced to do something along the lines of UBI. If they don't, then violent revolutions could happen. Either ways, welfare would be increased.
An increasingly unemployed population is bad for business, as there are less people that can buy your stuff. This would lead a country to go straight into recession. Money needs to flow to keep the economy running. Thus, in this case, the government would have to inject money in the economy to keep it running. However, injecting this money as cash into businesses wouldn't work, as this money wouldn't end up in the hands of the humans that would be buying stuff. See where I'm going? Even in a capitalistic world, you would still require UBI to stay alive if you were a business.
When did I say that it would be a silver bullet? LLMs today are already relatively capable of doing stuff like acting as mental health therapists. Sure, they may not be as good as human therapists. But something is definitely better than nothing, no? I for instance use LLMs quite a lot as an education aid. I would've had to shell out thousands of dollars to get the same amount of help that I'm getting from the LLM of my choice.
Generative AI is still in its infancy. It will be capable of doing MANY MANY more things in the future. Extremely cheap healthcare, education, better automation, etc. Remember.... LLMs of today still aren't capable of self improvement. They will achieve this quite soon (at least this decade). The moment they start generating training data that improves their quality, is the moment they take off like crazy.
They could end up replacing EVERY SINGLE job that requires humans. Governments would be forced to implement measures like UBI. They literally would have no choice, as to prevent a massive recession, u need people to be able to buy stuff. To buy stuff, you need money. Even from a capitalistic standpoint, you would still require UBI, as entire corporations would collapse due to such high unemployment rates.
When did I say that it would be a silver bullet?
Right in your first paragraph. You straight up said that AI would lead to a post scarcity future "within a few decades". Your words, not mine.
The rest of it
Okay, but still doesn't explain how we make that leap. All of us losing our jobs will not suddenly generate infinite amounts of food and resources. What's more, you seem to have a lot of confidence in the " inevitability " of UBI. There are already decades of propaganda demonizing socialism, to the point that a sizable number of people will push against it even if they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. The ultra wealthy are not exactly known for their amazing foresight either, and will also push against it even if it means the collapse of civilization. For fucks sake, we can't even get them to agree that the planet we live on should be livable. One only needs to read the daily news to see dozens of examples of this very thing. And while all this pushback is going on, even if it does eventually lead to the implementation of UBI, shit is still going to suck for the people who just lost their jobs. I don't think I'm in any way unjustified in being scared for the future.
Ok, I'll explain again. We already have enough raw resources to get us into post scarcity (consider extra terrestrial sources like the moon as well). We don't need to come up with radically new tech to make this possible. The reason why we don't have post scarcity is because of poor management.
Ok, for HOW we would make that leap, greedy capitalists would replace as many humans as possible with AI to earn more profits. More humans would be unemployed. These humans can vote, and will vote even harder once they're unemployed.
Also, economies of today work due to humans. No matter how evil you are, u still need humans to have SOME cash so that they can buy ur stuff. We will enter a very bad recession if UBI isn't done with AI replacing humans left and right. Billionaires may not have foresight. But when their profits start reducing actively, they're definitely going to want to remedy this.
Therefore, what I'm saying is that a political revolution would happen, which would be supported by an angry, unemployed population and an angry billionaire class unable to make money.
Once the revolution happens, AI would first make social services and research get close to post scarcity. The ability to research stuff would make AI make resource usage a lot more efficient. It would also use this ability to make new resource mining easier.
Here's another way to describe this: AI would first replace tertiary jobs, then secondary jobs and then primary jobs. Thus, AI would first control and improve upon tertiary goods and services, followed by secondary and then primary. Expansion of all of these tiers leads us closer to post scarcity, thus achieving effective post scarcity in decades.
Remember, I'm not saying that AI will do this alone. I'm saying that the presence of AI would force humans to bring on a revolution, which would make AI central to all production. This would in turn lead to post scarcity.
Edit: Sorry, forgot to address these points that you made: propaganda demonizing socialism, climate change still not being addressed by the billionaire class. For the anti socialism propaganda point, well of course it's demonized. It's demonized cuz it's bad for the billionaire class. However, not implementing UBI would be bad for the billionaire class. Which is why u'll get support for it from all classes. As for climate change, well it doesn't financially harm billionaires in any way. They can continue pumping their oil, which people are going to keep on buying. This is not the same with AI tho. AI would plunge us in a very bad recession, thus directly affecting the billionaires. Different scenarios.
We already have enough resources to get us into post scarcity
No. No we don't. This is straight delusional levels of optimism on display here. The universe is entropic by nature. Things get used up. Barring some form of miracle tech we can't even conceive of yet, it is not possible for us to have an infinite amount of anything.
However, not implementing UBI would be bad for the billionaire class.
That's the thing though. They aren't smart. We have seen time and time again that they would cut off their nose to spite their face. Why would this be any different?
No. No we don’t. This is straight delusional levels of optimism on display here. The universe is entropic by nature. Things get used up. Barring some form of miracle tech we can’t even conceive of yet, it is not possible for us to have an infinite amount of anything.
Lol wat are you talking about? The amount of extractable resources on the moon itself are enough to sustain a thousand humanities. Efficient resource usage ensures close to 100% recycling. The only thing that gets "used up" is energy. I'm very confident that we'll be generating energy by fusion within this century. And for fusion fuel, it is so so so so unimaginabely abundant! If a spaceship decided to go interstellar, it wouldn't even need to carry its own fuel. The sheer amount of hydrogen in the interstellar medium itself is enough to provide a lot of fuel. It's like a ship moving in an ocean of oil. Plus, I'm pretty sure that humanity wouldn't increase in population much after space travel becomes a thing. I'm kinda tired right now, so I won't elaborate on that. But in short, other sources of entertainment + an anti natalist culture + longer lifespans + deviation from the traditional monogamous two partner model would end up lessening the need for having kids.
That’s the thing though. They aren’t smart. We have seen time and time again that they would cut off their nose to spite their face. Why would this be any different?
But they ARE smart (kinda). Had they been stupid, we would have had socialist systems in place a loooong time ago. Don't fool yourself by equating the bourgeoisie to Elon Musk. He's just an egoistic idiot who was very lucky. The others however, are egoist and lucky, but not necessarily idiots. Take Rupert Murdoch for instance. The mf single handedly caused Brexit, and is responsible for progressive politics to be held back in the US for a looong time. Look at all the oil execs for instance. Why haven't climate friendly policies taken hold? These ppl gaslighted entire populations into serving their own interests. The bourgeoisie are evil, sure. Doesn't mean that they are stupid enough to act against their own interests.
Lol wat are you talking about? The amount of extractable resources on the moon itself are enough to sustain a thousand humanities
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get to and from the goddamn moon?! There's the reason we don't exactly make a regular thing about it. The costs are astronomical, pun very much intended.
The only thing that gets "used up" is energy
I'm not exactly a physicist, but if you've suddenly solved the problem of entropy then you should contact one and claim your Nobel prize. I'll wait.
But in short, other sources of entertainment + an anti natalist culture + longer lifespans + deviation from the traditional monogamous two partner model would end up lessening the need for having kids.
You're making a lot of assumptions about how how society will develop.
The bourgeoisie are evil, sure. Doesn't mean that they are stupid enough to act against their own interests.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to get to and from the goddamn moon?! There's the reason we don't exactly make a regular thing about it. The costs are astronomical, pun very much intended.
No. The costs are astronomical to get TO the moon. Not from it. To get from the moon back to Earth, all you would need is a strong-ish magnetic ramp. The stuff that you would need to send to the moon would be nothing compared to the material that would be sent back.
I'm not exactly a physicist, but if you've suddenly solved the problem of entropy then you should contact one and claim your Nobel prize. I'll wait.
Huh? Energy is the only concern that we have. You can manufacture, destroy and recycle aluminum soda cans forever (almost). You can't do that with energy. Which is why we need to get energy from a low entropy source. We wouldn't have this problem for billions of years, till the heat death gets us (assuming that that theory is real in the first place).
You're making a lot of assumptions about how how society will develop.
I'm merely making projections based on trends in the last few decades. Antinatalism is and will be on the rise, unless religion comes back (which thankfully is unlikely). Medical science is advancing at unprecedented rates. Pair this with breakthroughs in other fields (AI for instance), and you get an ever accelerating series of breakthroughs. Based on this, I see no future where human population would be increasing much.
Tell me why u don't have socialised healthcare in the US yet. Tell me why you don't have stricter tax laws that close loopholes for billionaires in the US yet. Tell me why unions have such a small footprint in the US. Again, as I said. Had the billionaires been stupid, there would've been socialism everywhere. However, they are smart enough to stay in power and ensure that their own interests are protected.
I think I disliked your ideas less before I read any of it and just assumed you thought the thing that generates innumerable images of east asian women with huge tits and extra rows of teeth was gonna fly to Luna and harvest huge crops of taquitos for us to eat.
I'm not going to disagree with anything here but
"Sure, they may not be as good as human therapists. But something is definitely better than nothing, no?"
Please do not use an LLM as a therapist, something can definitly be worse than nothing. I use GitHub Copilot everyday for work, it helps me do what I want to do but I have to understand what it's doing and when it's wrong, which it often is. The point of a therapist is to help you through things you don't understand, one day it might work, not today.
What if I'm suicidal (I'm not, dw)? When I don't have anyone to talk to, why is talking to an LLM bad? Mental health therapists are fkin expensive. I did use an LLM when I was feeling down. It was absolutely wonderful! Worked for me perfectly!
Now, imagine if we fine-tune this for this specific purpose. U've got a very effective system (at least for those without access to shrinks). Consider ppl from developing countries. Isn't it a good thing if LLMs can be there for ppl n make them feel just a little better?
No to everything you've said.
/s?
Nope. I mean every single word of what I said.
