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- cross-posted to:
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When you picture the tech industry, you probably think of things that don’t exist in physical space, such as the apps and internet browser on your phone. But the infrastructure required to store all this information – the physical datacentres housed in business parks and city outskirts – consume massive amounts of energy. Despite its name, the infrastructure used by the “cloud” accounts for more global greenhouse emissions than commercial flights. In 2018, for instance, the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually.
This is a hugely environmentally destructive side to the tech industry. While it has played a big role in reaching net zero, giving us smart meters and efficient solar, it’s critical that we turn the spotlight on its environmental footprint. Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. It is hardly news that the tech bubble’s self-glorification has obscured the uglier sides of this industry, from its proclivity for tax avoidance to its invasion of privacy and exploitation of our attention span. The industry’s environmental impact is a key issue, yet the companies that produce such models have stayed remarkably quiet about the amount of energy they consume – probably because they don’t want to spark our concern.
A large part of creation is trying things and seeing what sticks. Nobody is claiming that every way LLMs are being tried out today will always be here. We are just doing what we think of and seeing what is useful. The useful things will stick around and evolve, other things won’t. Go back to videos from the early 90s when computers were starting, people talked so much shit on them. Now, we all have the future generations of them in our pockets.
And nothing bad ever came of this. That’s true, that’s true.
Do you think that people were better off before computers? How so? Do you think there was more or less war? Do you think people died at an older or younger age? Do you think people had more or less years of sickness? Do you think more or fewer mothers and children died at childbirth? Do you think there were more or fewer rapes? Do you think there were more or fewer murders? Do you think we knew more or less about the universe beyond our planet? Do you think we knew more or less about the laws of physics? Chemistry? Biology?
In nearly all measurable ways, the lives of humans have improved since the advent of computers. To act otherwise is naive.
Let’s imagine that there are 16 good things about computers, and 3 bad ones.
I don’t like the bad ones.
So, what shit were these morons saying then, hm?
Yeah, sure, there are things to dislike about computers. In the same way, ambulances suck because they are noisy. Ovens suck because they can overcook your food…
It is wild how people mocked computers/internet back in the day. Lots of people are too young to remember it. Here is Letterman mocking the internet while a crowd laughs along. It’s basically the same as when people mock LLMs/AI or blockchain or whatever other new technology that they don’t understand.
And how ads on TV are sometimes so much louder than the show they’re cut between. And the glitches! Sometimes, you have to completely power cycle your phone to fix something simple. And how Facebook’s curated, algorithmic feed sends people down extremist pipelines, fueling things like public shootings and the January 2021 Capital riots. And how the continued atomization of society into smaller and smaller pieces (e.g. suburbia) has made people lonelier than they ever have been. And how the displacement of work onto capable machines never seems to yield benefits onto the people whose work is being displaced, only their bosses.
I guess if all you remember are Letterman’s fumbling grandpa jokes about what the Internet is, gosh dang, even useful for, I could see why you’d think nobody’s criticisms are real.
And amazingly, despite all these awful things you listed, nearly everything is better. People kill strangers less. People kill their families less. People rape each other less. People torture each other less. Countries go to war less. People live longer. People live healthier. People starve less. These things all used to be much much bigger than they are now.
Pick someone out of history and ask them if they would rather watch all their children die of a horrible plague, or they have to live in a world where some idiots are messaging each other about Q-Anon. What do you think they will say they prefer?
Personally, I’d much rather some idiots running into a special building wearing stupid costumes than deal with the absolute living hell of the pre-technology world absolutely any day. So would you.
And what part of this requires the facebook engagement algorithm?
I prefer an internet where anyone is free to share the code they want to as opposed to an internet where everything has to be submitted to an authority who has to ok it. Imagine all the innovation that would be stifled in a society where such a system was in place. If you think would prefer that, then maybe North Korea is the place where you would be happiest.
The reason websites have things like engagement algorithms is because they are advertisement based, and they sell user data. This seems shitty at first glance, but it is what people prefer. The alternative is subscription based. Both models have been presented, and people chose what they wanted. Nobody forced them. As time goes on, things evolve. I like to think that in the future, people will move more towards decentralized, community run websites. That’s why I am on Lemmy, and I am not on Facebook. I am certainly happy that I have the freedom to choose. I am also happy that anyone has the freedom to make whatever options they want to offer.