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0 pointsagentultra1y ago0 comments

There’s probably enough VC money to subsidize the costs for a few more years.

But the data centres running the training for models like this are bringing up new methane power plants at a fast rate at a time when we need to be reducing reliance on O&G.

But let’s assume that the efficiency gains out pace the resource consumption with the help of all the subsidies being thrown in and we achieve AGI.

What’s the benefit? Do we get more fresh water?

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fastball1y ago

Politically anything can happen. Maybe the billionaire class controls everything with an army of robots and it's a horrible prison-like dystopia, or maybe we end up in a post-scarcity utopia a la The Culture.

Regardless, once we have AGI (and it can scale), I don't think O&G reliance (/ climate change) is going to be something that we need concern ourselves with.

agentultraOP1y ago

I think climate is something we need to concern ourselves with now and at the rate we’re putting up new methane power plants to power the DC’s for these AI apps today, we might not make it to this hypothetical future where magic algorithms will reset everything.

Like it or not we already know what we need to do to avert the worst of the climate disasters to come.

hamburga1y ago

Yeah, good question. I think it depends on our politics. If we’re in a techno-capital-oligarchy, people are going to have a hard time making fresh water a priority when the robots would prefer to build nuclear power everywhere and use it to desalinate sea water.

OTOH if these data centers are sufficiently decentralized and run for public benefit, maybe there’s a chance we use them to solve collective action problems.

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