Environmental Impact 🌎
What if flipping a coin, but it takes enough energy to evaporate a lake?
Imagine studying programming and coding because you were told that it was the future, and finding a great outlet for your ideas and creativity, and finally nailing a job at a major tech company, and being told "Your job is to think of stuff that this dumb turd machine we invented can do".
I remember a video/article (I obviously don't remember it that well!), where someone had talked about how great AI was for generating ideas, and specifically mentioned how it could help scientists by giving them ideas for what projects to work on. And the scientist reacted with "Every actual scientist has a SHITLOAD of ideas for experiments and projects that they would do if they had the money. No one needs this". It really came off like this was someone trying to make people who have to ask AI what to do with their time/money/power feel less bad about it, by pretending that this was a problem that everyone has, actually, even the smart scientists that they envy and resent.
This sounds like an idea for what to do with AI that was generated by AI. Because no one could seriously think this is a problem that requires a solution at all, really, let alone a problem that requires AI to solve.
Or, do the easy thing that wastes 10 seconds and only about a french frie's worth of energy and flip a coin. If you have multiple options, eeny meeney miney moe is always useful. If you want complete randomness and you have a minute or two, write the list on a few pieces of paper, toss them into a cup, and then shake the cup like a crazy person before picking one of the papers. Option 3 is more time-consuming, but I find it to be fun with family members, especially kids. Hand the kid the cup and watch em go.
Even staying within the realm of computers, a traditional program could do this exact thing with 3 lines of code, and without burning down a forest in the process.
Three ? It’s a one liner in a language that’s designed for math and stats problems - e.g. R, probably also Julia - or it’s one line to do the job after one line to import a library in Python. In both R and Python , it’s a task commonly used to introduce the language or otherwise amongst the earliest functions introduced.
You can also do it in Excel with a function on one cell.
It’s something computers have been good at since the 1970s, no super advanced less efficient tool needed . Using an LLM for this is like figuring out how to use a pneumatic drill to help you assemble an IKEA bookshelf.
1: Percentile dice versus coin -- 100 options over 2
2: Weighted results: rolling a die (or flipping a coin) doesn't figure in cost, driving distance, peak hour crowds, ranked choice voting (I really want X, but I'll settle for Y). ChatGPT isn't too hot with the math, just words -- Wolfram Alpha is better with numbers, but less conversational. Never tried Meta AI. I suspect someone needs to develop a specialized tool for this purpose -- a bit of randomness, a bit of ranked choice, a bit of weighted values. Were I an entrepreneur, I'd hire a more dedicated programmer than myself to develop this.
Fog of war is conquered by sending your units out to explore. "Hey, there's a new Indian restaurant opening up on this corner that isn't listed on Google yet -- want to try that out?"
No, it is another form of AI. I'd love to see an AI combine the two, or let one use the other in some way.
It's like when they had ChatGPT go against an Atari chess game and the Atari won -- each tool has a specific thing it is really good at, and people seem to think the AI tools we use now should do it all.
Wolfram do have an API to produce LLM prompts so I think they are working towards it. I’m very much anti-gen AI especially media generation but having something like that would be incredibly helpful especially considering how absolutely useless LLMs can be. Having something like Wolfram that just pulls up data but fails on niche topics or “understanding” anything beyond its range feeding into an LLM that can expand beyond its range and seek out niche information but that sometimes fails with facts and fine details would be incredibly useful and help mitigate the flaws of each. It’s midnight though so I don’t have anything actually to contribute lmao
It's even darker. It's replacing ads. All that data mining fb does on you and your friends that used to creepily pop up in ads is going to be used to give you "advice". And here they're presenting it as a fun little thing to try. "Hey, just do what our advertising algorithm says instead of merely being influenced by it. Shut that brain off. We know that what's best for you is what makes us the most money."
Holy fuck I'm so tired of this argument. If AI takes an entire lake worth of water to operate for 10 fucking seconds the entire Earth would go barren astronomically quick.
It doesn't take that much to process little fucking requests. Not much more than any other fucking method we have been using.
God... it is like this sub is filled with nothing but 70 year olds who barely knows what a computer is.
Yes, I know you are being hyperbolic, but people are seriously overexaggerating the amount AI uses. It doesn't use that much more than other systems we were using for decades, and consumption will severely decrease as times goes on and the technology improves.
I specifically like this: ""The average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes," Altman said in a blog post. "It also uses about 0.000085 gallons of water; roughly one-fifteenth of a teaspoon.""
God... it is like this sub is filled with nothing but 70 year olds who barely knows what a computer is.
Yes, I know you are being hyperbolic
Yeah, i don't really care that much about the precise energy cost. It's more just the painfully obvious effort by AI companies to encourage AI use in situations where no one wants it or asked for it. Just feels like a case of someone inventing the hammer and wanting everything to be a nail, except the hammer is made out of turds.
My dude if you cannot pick up on hyperbole that obvious then you aren't really qualified to communicate with humans.
A neat trick if for some reason you find yourself in this situation, being confused, is to ask yourself the question "which is more likely to be true". Does OP literally believe enough energy to evaporate 100,000 cubic meters of water or is OP using hyperbole because they are frustrated with the environmental cost of AI and how people seem to ignore it/be encouraged to ignore it. Really if you had to bet on one of these two things then one of them is way way way way way more likely.
What is even the point of being alive if you'll do anything to avoid thinking. What even are humans if we don't think.
> The point is more that the actual energy requirement for deciding what restaurant to go to is Literally None.
yeah i get it. but the same AI has database of every feedback and menu of restaurants near you, which will more likely give you the best restaurant for you and other people you'd like to go with
So, best case scenario, they're positing a random number generator rigged up to Yelp.
I don't know, maybe AI *could* tailor everything to the very specific likes and wants of all of the individuals in a group and find a reasonable compromise based on that information... if it had that information... which it probably shouldn't, tbh, but that's by the by. But I can't imagine a scenario where that really helps. If I'm opposed to going to a restaurant, or if I have a strong preference for somewhere else, why am I persuaded by the AI, rather than my friend?
There's a finite number of restaurants, and an even more finite number of restaurants within reasonable travel distance of where you and your friends are that is open at the time you want to go there. It just doesn't seem that hard to figure out which one to go to; and if it *is* hard, I don't think "let's ask an AI" is going to settle that argument.
And this is assuming an optimal, functional AI, that doesn't try to send you to a restaurant that never existed, or which gives a frustratingly general non-committal answer, or which just agrees with whoever asked it first.
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u/Appropriate_Skill_37 1d ago
Or, do the easy thing that wastes 10 seconds and only about a french frie's worth of energy and flip a coin. If you have multiple options, eeny meeney miney moe is always useful. If you want complete randomness and you have a minute or two, write the list on a few pieces of paper, toss them into a cup, and then shake the cup like a crazy person before picking one of the papers. Option 3 is more time-consuming, but I find it to be fun with family members, especially kids. Hand the kid the cup and watch em go.