@glyph I think I disagree with almost every word in that post, but it's at least clear enough what I'm disagreeing with, which is refreshing?

I do think it's telling, though, that he describes one of the pillars of opposition to AI as he sees it as being an intellectual property argument and not a labor rights argument — in fairness, he does revisit labor rights later, but I still wouldn't have thought of IP issues in genAI as being moral, per se?

@glyph Mostly it's this part that strikes me as being something I deeply object to, and for three reasons.

We don't know the actual energy usage impact of AI, partly in thanks to corporate secrecy.

Whatever progress we've made in renewable energy, that doesn't change that many genAI companies are using non-renewable sources for training and inferencing energy (to wit, Musk in Memphis).

And finally, genAI eating up capacity means that progress in renewables has a reduced impact on energy use.

@xgranade @glyph Knowing the author outside of that post a bit, I would not consider them pro-AI, but that said, I do disagree with their analysis of the environmental aspect, at the very least. I think it brushes it aside by offloading it to the "power" aspect (in a form of rhetorical irony) while ignoring what is actually happening.

I think the post also ignores the harms done to labour, including those who are recruited at low wages to filter out CSAM and other filth from the training data.

@glyph @gwozniak @xgranade

you *can't* use renewables for these things

slightly OOTL but I assume this amounts to renewables being more intermittent than "fuel goes in, power goes out"?