Technology

Historically AI always got much better. Usually after the field collapsed in an AI winter and several years went by in search for a new technique to then repeat the hype cycle. Tech bros want it to get better without that winter stage though.

Yeah, I think there was some efforts, until we found out that adding billions of parameters to a model would allow both to write the useless part in emails that nobody reads and to strip out the useless part in emails that nobody reads.

That's because it IS an issue, together with many other issues like disinformation, over reliance, wrong tools for wrong (most) jobs, etc.

lemmy is just gobbling it up every day. It's so tiring.

Are you fucking serious? All I ever see on Lemmy is prople saying "AI slop" over and over and over and over again... in like every comment section of every post. It could be a picture that was actually hand-drawn, or a photograph that was definitely not AI, or articles written by someone "sounding like AI". The AI hate on Lemmy is WAY overpowering any support.

A better analogy for AI is the discovery of asbestos or the invention of single-use plastics. Terrible fucking idea.

I don't think books ever had the same amount of discussion of how they impact our global carbon footprint, and where it comes to "houses" - I doubt people in the neolithic said about their new invention what is being discussed with AI. It is a disingenuous comparison. (And sure, someone somewhere may have said something like that about basically anything, but usually not a large part of professionals from within the field, like is the case with AI.)

This is also not simply Ludditism, the nature of how AI is used currently goes far beyond where it is genuinely useful in a case of investor hype FOMO, and the hidden costs for our efforts against climate change are real, as are the problems for creatives - who sadly need a lot of the "bullshit work" that AI can substitute to survive while honing their craft - as is the quality drop in journalism, as are fundamental questions about how far generative AI models can truly evolve in quality for the massive amount of energy invested, so the usual "just wait until the tech gets better" is not the easy way out to justify draining said energy (and fresh water) on top of what crypto mining has been wasting with data centres in the past years.

Now, those problems aren't simply problems of the technology, but also of how that technology manifests within market dynamics. But the technology still is not just neutral, and even if we view it as an inevitability, that inevitability does not have to manifest without regulation and within the context of hyped, often unwanted application to basically everything.

Without mechanisms to address problems and to enforce regulation, in lieu of fundamental changes to what market/investment dynamics demand, this is indeed a very questionable technology at this point. And also: To truly love something abstract, like "technology", means being able to - sometimes harshly - criticise it. Think the meme of a "tech bro" with a fully automated house vs the IT guy who barely has tech stuff beyond their PC and some stuff tinkered on passionately in their own time.

I'm genuinely excited about the possibilities of AI, just not in the hands of a bunch of self-serving, amoral cunts.

What benefit for society does this crop of large language models and generative "AI" offer?

We already see students use it for homework, meaning they don't learn their stuff.

We also see people treat the output of LLMs as gospel truth, despite the fact that LLMs often hallucinate complete BS!

LLMs and generative "AI" rely on stolen artwork. Which is a net negative for society.

Is this /c/technology or /c/anti_technology because it’s hard to tell most of the time.

People here are generally anti-anything. That's what echo chambers are for.

Cars are literally privileged garbage that's destroying the planet. Great comparison on that one.

Is this /c/technology or /c/anti_technology because it’s hard to tell most of the time.

Well only one of those is allowed to exist so you figure it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

I found this article from last year: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364

Our preliminary estimates suggest that annual electricity use from cryptocurrency mining probably represents from 0.6% to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption.

The wide range should not be too surprising, it's a mess to keep track of, especially with the current administration. Since then, with Trump immediately pledging to support the "industry", I can only imagine it consuming even more now.

It should be clarified that it's 99.99% Bitcoin mining that's wasting all that energy, any other crypto that still uses mining is basically irrelevant when compared to it

Launch cost is astronomical.

Maintenance access is horrible.

Temperature delta is insane, upto 250C.

I don’t understand the self-cooling. Isn’t it harder to keep things cool in space since there is no conduction or convection cooling? I mean everything is in a vacuum. The only place for heat to go is radiative and that’s terribly inefficient. Seems like a massive engineering problem.

You can cool servers way better on Earth than you can in space. Down here you can transfer heat away from the server with conduction and convection, but in space you really only have radiation. Cooling spacecraft is an engineering challenge. One might imagine a server stuck inside a glass thermos that's sitting out in the sun.

If the end goal is so little Timmy can ask a robot if nazis exist and it spits out misinformation or so Ai bots can flood social media with endless regurgitated bullshit, then no, it's just more garbage in space.

Ai is interesting,... necessary? A lot of people can be fed and housed for the cost of giant, experimental solar powered Ai computers in space so that they have more excuses not to pay people a living wage.

Afaik space isn't self cooling. Overheating of spacecraft is a thing. I think they can only cool through infrared radiation or something.

Yes, "AI" is literally contributing to the burning of the planet.

https://www.cleanairfund.org/news-item/wildfires-climate-change-and-air-pollution-a-vicious-cycle/

Nothing wrong with examining potential issues for emerging technology before they become actual issues.