Has the War Against AI Already Been Lost?

[Nobody]

Good old Rip knew the devil when he sniffed him!

[Blackleaf]

[Hydra009]

This is a 100% AI-generated image:

[Nobody]

I'm afraid it won't be long before even experts won't be able to tell the difference between real and AI.

[Hydra009]

[Hydra009]

RAM/SSDs to become more expensive due to AI

[Hydra009]

The water use argument:

Hank is correct that water use is a complicated topic and that defining the exact amount that AI uses is tricky (At the misleadingly low end, you could only calculate the water usage of the individual query, which is minuscule - though this statement is misleading to the point of actually lying to people.  At the misleadingly high end, you can calculate the query, the training, the water use of the power plant supplying the power to the data center, and hell, the water use to create the computer hardware.

And yes, he's right about corn/ethanol water use, though that's a separate concern and feels like a borderline whataboutism - yes, there are bigger problems, but that shouldn't be used to minimize smaller problems.  If you cut off your finger with a table saw, the last thing you want is to have someone talk about way worse stuff while you bleed out.

Ok, so let's work from what we know for sure:

AI uses a non-negligible amount of power, projected to be more than Bitcoin mining by the end of this year.  Which necessitates the question about how much that uses, which is about 68 TWh per year, more than the annual output of 19 coal plants and roughly equivalent to all the power Switzerland generates in a year.  That's a lot.

We use power for lots of things, like turning on the lights, heating/cooling homes, charging devices, charging electric cars, etc.  Now we also use it for mining crypto and AI.  That's a non-negligible additional load equivalent to two Switzerlands and growing, and definitely not anything remotely close to a necessity.

We do know that in states with lots of data centers, electricity prices are increasing significantly.

Similarly, AI uses a non-negligible amount of water.  Regardless of where you draw the line, there's a demand now for water that wasn't there before.  All that water comes from somewhere and there's only so much water to go around, just ask Iran.

We need to take a good long look around and ask ourselves if this is a smart and ethical use of our finite resources, for our society as a whole and not just the shareholders (radical idea in the US).

[the_antithesis]

I...

I'm going to be honest.

I wasn't this kind of insight from the Nostalgia Critic.

[aitm]

The water use argument:
We need to take a good long look around and ask ourselves if this is a smart and ethical use of our finite resources, for our society as a whole and not just the shareholders (radical idea in the US).

You ask much of a country where the Dunning Krueger club does not know they are in fact part of the club.

[Hydra009]

Amazon pulls AI recap of Fallout season 1 due to significant errors

Sheesh, how hard is it to hire someone to do the friggin' recap?!  Hell, do it in-universe like some shows do.  You could even do it with VaultBoy, that'd be very natural.  I swear, these friggin' megacorps can't do anything in a sane way anymore.  It makes me sad.