Proud Cascadian

Not using AI is an INCREDIBLE untapped power source!

https://lemmy.world/post/38250642

Not using AI is an INCREDIBLE untapped power source! - Lemmy.World

This might belong in some circlejerk sub, but I think it’s somewhat clever. Basically, if AI datacenters get shut down, the power that would’ve been used to generate AI slop could be used for magnificent things. I mean, it’s purely clean energy because instead of using gas or oil, you take energy that COULD be used for something useless and put it to better use. Think of all the applications. - We could power countless electric cars, trains, and bikes. - We could power countless medical devices like pacemakers and defibrillators. - We could power countless lights in people’s homes. All this could be accomplished by not building massive datacenters. What’s more is that there could be countless gallons of clean drinking water used for surgical cleaning and chemistry that would otherwise serve to cool the amount of datacenter power. Think of all the possibilities! If only Sam Altman could understand this…!

Nov 3 at 3:25amWeb
Show threadcecilkorikNov 3

You’re close to the real idea, but you’ve got it backwards.

Billionaires’ perspective: “Gradually reducing the human population over the coming century by 99% with wars, drugs, starvation, suicide, poverty while we develop life extension technologies to preserve and ideally immortalize the most deserving (*qualifications TBD) will ultimately reduce humanity’s long-term impact on the planet and be much more sustainable and leave us a lot more resources and land once we replace any jobs we might need with faster and more efficient AI and robots…”

They’ve completely thought this through to their conclusion already. We’re the ones who haven’t. They think they’re simply long-term thinkers and thoughtful environmentalists doing what must be done to save the planet. What they really are is power-mad eugenocidal technocratic maniacs who place no value on human lives or the lived human experience. Other than their own. Their technological utopia is built out of utter horrors and like many utopians they have fallen so deeply in love with their dream that they will accept any cost to reach it, and they have accepted this as the cost. Therefore, they must not succeed. Utopia is an illusion. But the cruelty they will do in pursuit of their utopia is real.

Show threadProud CascadianDec 2

They’ve completely thought this through to their conclusion already. We’re the ones who haven’t.

I think a lot of people are realizing that the richest of humanity is up to some evil shit. A great many people also listened to what these people have said and are incredibly disturbed. You are not alone, I am not alone, and this entire sub is not alone. I think the first steps to take are:

  • Show how big the anti-elite movement is to the people in it
  • Make a plan of action
    • Show threadNateNate60Nov 3

    The free market is generally pretty good at allocating scarce resources as long as the price reflects that. I don’t think the majority of AI usage is really for making AI slop. I think it’s far outweighed by passive, unprompted AI usage. For each person generating an AI slop anime girl, there are a hundred people who are simply making a Google Search, and that triggers an AI response whether they want one or not. And a lot of times, AI features which say “click here to generate a summary” or something like that tends to be very wasteful by having each individual user clicking “generate” triggering a separate AI prompt, when they could instead just run the generation once for the first user and then cache the result for everyone else. Instead, every user who clicks “generate” will cause all the computations to be redone. That’s incredibly wasteful, and I think it’s because AI in general encourages people to be lazy.

    I think a lot of progress could be made by simply levying a one-cent tax on AI prompts. Each prompt provided to a large-language model or to an image generation model will incur the tax, which will be used to fund renewable energy projects. That way, the legitimate uses of AI will not be hindered (research, medicine, automating boring tasks, etc.) while the junk “spammy” uses will be filtered out, because you’re now forcing any AI query which is made to generate at least one cent of value to society, which is a very low bar to reach but so many AI uses cases surprisingly fail. This also adds friction to each AI interaction, because no company can now afford to give users free AI prompts, which will be great in general for weaning users off the practice of outsourcing their thinking to AIs. Way too many people trust AI for everything, including blindly believe whatever hallucinations it gives you. Adding a paywall to the AI means that you have to really think about whether your use of AI is really actually productive or not before you do so.

    Show threadProud CascadianDec 2

    The free market is generally pretty good at allocating scarce resources

    I disagree. Heavily. This may be based on my own experiences, but reading about how Capitalism reaches a point of overaccumulation only to collapse, wherein people cannot work, makes sense, and is the reason this year is so gruesome. I have read about how grocery stores will get rid of food simply because they overproduce and then don’t have enough to give out. You should do some reading on the Great Depression and unemployment. The simple question of “why can’t people work even if they really want to?” has much less to do with government intervention and much more to do with the intrinsic parts of Capitalist production.

    This is quite long so I have provided links.

    Capitalism's Overproduction Problem: A Primer — Hampton Institute

    By Prabhat Patnaik Republished from Monthly Review . It is in the nature of capitalism to have “over-production crises”, i.e., crises arising from “over-production” relative to  demand . “Over-production” does not mean that more and more goods keep getting produced relative to deman

    Hampton Institute
    Show threadNateNate60Dec 2

    I’m talking about the idealised “free market” presented in economics textbooks. That is something which does not exist in reality, and cannot exist in reality. But we can create something which is a close enough approximation and maintain it using regulation to prevent unwanted behaviours that result in an undesirable distribution of resources. Fundamentally, the “free market” is more like a game mechanic which allows us to use the laws of game theory to manage the distribution of resources (electricity) against another resource (money). It’s just a tool that can be manipulated.

    This is not about capitalism.

    Show threadNoneOfUrBusinessNov 3
    Man this comm upvotes really weird shit sometimes. Not doing something isn't a "power source;" you're just allocating energy from one use to another, which is probably a good idea in this case but still.
    Show threadethaverNov 3
    Some people don't realize that letting AI live rent-free in their heads like this is just another way of wanking to the idea of it.
    Show threadvery_well_lostNov 3
    I say we burn Sam Altman’s body for energy.
    Show threadPearOfJudesNov 4
    Yeah, but these solutions were not solved before AI. Capitalism baby