this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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OpenAI boss Sam Altman wants $7tn. For all our sakes, pray he doesn’t get it::The man behind ChatGPT is wooing the UAE to invest in energy-hungry AI. But if it turns out his tech can’t fix the world, he’s got his escape plan

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[–] RonSijm 2 points 9 months ago (13 children)

For all our sakes, pray he doesn’t get it

It doesn't really go into why not.

If governments are going to be pouring money into something, I'd prefer it to be in the tech industry.

Imagine a cold-war / Oppenheimer situation where all the governments are scared that America / Russia / UAE will reach AI supremacy before {{we}} do? Instead of dumping all the moneyz into Lockheed Martin or Raytheon for better pew pew machines - we dump it into better semiconductor machinery, hardware advancements, and other stuff we need for this AI craze.

In the end we might not have a useful AI, but at least we've made progression in other things that are useful

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (7 children)

Why not? Here's one reason - because the planet is burning from climate change and we need a shit ton more resources for solving it. It's unlikely that AI would help much with that. Of course the UAE isn't too interested in the world moving away from fossil fuels.

[–] RonSijm -4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Ok, sure. So in a tech race, if energy is a bottleneck - and we'd be pouring $7tn into tech here - don't you think some of the improvements would be to Power usage effectiveness (PUE) - or a better Compute per Power Ratio?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Every time we make tech use 1/2 as much power per unit of work , something comes along to need 3 times as much work. AI, Blockchain, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

The phenomenon you describe is called Jevons paradox. Absent a law to safeguard the increased efficiency, the waste will follow quickly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Not producing any apparent value (above less wasteful alternatives) at that. Like ballast.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

There may be PUE. However AI adds significant net new energy expenditure. Even if you get higher efficiency per compute unit, you're still burning more coal and gas, or using renewable capacity that could be going towards replacing coal and gas. And then in this particular example 7T is a huge amount of capital that could move the needle on so many difficult climate problems like decarbonizing steel, concrete and ag. I think spending that on AI that will likely only accelerate us towards planetary ecosystem destruction is .. not great to say it politely. 😂 Climate change is an existential problem for our species. The lack of AI advancement, even the lack of AGI is not. If there was any likely solution to climate change that could come out of AI, I might think differently. However we have all the computation methods needed to analyze and solve what we can about climate change. We just need much more resources in doing those things now.

Speaking of compute optimization, someone who's actually built chips just chimed in on the matter.

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