this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] kbal@fedia.io 66 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Right, so the plan is to spend 20 years and 40 petawatt hours building a machine to answer the Great ℚuestion of what we should do about climate change. If it works, the answer will be "you should've stopped burning fossil fuels twenty years ago."

[–] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"Oh no what do about all this waste heat?"

"Generate more waste heat"

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 19 points 1 month ago

Repeat until a machine that can create God is built. Then it's God's problem.

But it must be a US God, otherwise China wins.

[–] luciole 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The model will just go "42" on and on and it'll be the first decent joke a neural network produces. It'll be worth it in a way.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago

I could absolutely see an LLM telling us that 6 times 9 is 42 unless there's special tinkering to prevent it.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 62 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is the inevitable evolution of climate change denialism - accept it's real and happening, just that it's too late / too expensive to do anything about it.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)

musn't make the eight guys who own everything sad!

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

this "view" (of schmidt's) is probably the kind of shit that Really Expensive Analysts espouse at davos and in Private Advisory sessions to the kinds of people who go in for that; I've also heard it about GRT and "the collapse" and more

would be nice if we could know who all those dipshits are, and who they've preached to

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago

it's clear this was a well rehearsed pitch - the twitter video linked is the two minute version of the same pitch

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Ford was walking north. He thought he was probably on his way to the spaceport, but he had thought that before. He knew he was going through that part of the city where people’s plans often changed quite abruptly.

“Do you want to have a good time?” said a voice from a doorway.

“As far as I can tell,” said Ford. “I’m having one. Thanks.”

“Are you rich?” said another.

This made Ford laugh.

He turned and opened his arms in a wide gesture.

“Do I look rich?” he said.

“Don’t know,” said the girl. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you’ll get rich. I have a very special service for rich people…”

“Oh yes,” said Ford, intrigued but careful, “and what’s that?”

“I tell them it’s okay to be rich.”

[–] mii@awful.systems 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This will grant us “the arrival of an alien intelligence.” Those are Schmidt’s literal words.

Speaking of alien intelligences, my new Silicon Valley blood magic startup has come up with the idea of ritually sacrificing virgins in the hope of summoning Great Cthulhu or Azathoth, as they might have some ideas of solving the climate crisis.

Not a cult btw.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is basically the plot of Charles Stross' The Jennifer Morgue.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 1 month ago

The plot? Im more and more worried this is going to turn out to be real. Reality tends to outpace his fiction at times after all. ;)

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 26 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Cyberpunk fantasy: corporations' top level hierarchy is full of greedy, soulless, ruthless, cold and calculist people

Reality: corporations' top level hierarchy is full of greedy, soulless people you thought only existed as satire in The Onion

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 25 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Where's that person who was arguing with me last time that AI doesn't actually use that much energy and the corps missing their climate goals was not AI related

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

how much it does use anyway? 5GWe was from delusional openai talk for investors, so maybe lower

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That's the fucking problem, it's impossible to tell since MSFT won't tell you directly, and only the people who run the datacenters could.

The only relatively reliable numbers I was able to find were in this research paper by Luccioni and Strubell from ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency 2024. Now, that's an obscure conference (not even ranked by CORE), by Dr. Luccioni appears to be right on the money about dangers of AI (https://www.sashaluccioni.com/).

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

they will tell total tho https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/microsoft-reveals-the-energy-impact-of-artificial-intelligence

this works out to 2.7GW in 2023, on average. that's comparable to peak daily consumption in croatia (today), if that 30%-ish figure is accurate then something closer to 700MW is ai-only, that's smaller country like macedonia

which only highlights how bizarre is their 5GW proposition. hey let's outbuild ms 2x, like, now

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

that sounds like it's much less than crypto at its peak, and even 2023 estimate differs by over an order of magnitude (14.5GW avg). there's also google and fb and whoever else (aws?)

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

i started to look up satellite photos and openinframap in order to figure out maximum capacity of their substations, but powerlines for them are probably massively oversized, and substations are probably oversized too in order to make it redundant and high-availability so there might be some way to guess it but then some of these will be underground and if they're doing load-following to match their renewables (which might be cheaper for them) then it's also oversized a bit on top of that

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well the main problem is that a datacenter is running much more than just AI. You'd need to somehow subtract "normal" cloud usage from just the promptfondling.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

ez. remember that announcement when ms said their energy use got up 36%? that's ai, and includes both training and use

this still can be fudged with more efficient office heating, shutdowns of least efficient dcs and so on, but only to a limited degree

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

AGI is going to be really pissed at us shoveling the problem onto it. "You humans could have started so many solutions decades ago, wtf?"

[–] antifuchs@awful.systems 17 points 1 month ago

It’s the parable of the drowning man turning away all help because god will save him, all over again (except it’s floods and mudslides and forest fires)

[–] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Aside from anything else, an "alien intelligence" will either:

  • Be immediately ignored and villianized for "not understanding humans" if they suggest any regulations or caps on superfluous waste that might have any economic impact.
  • Be the perfect proxy delivery-entity for whatever genocide-the-poor/build-Elysium/flee-to-seasteads plan the rich actually want, in which case its conclusions will be holy and $10000% perfect examples of divine insight.
[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'd just submit and demand for our new alien overlords. If there's a species capable of interstellar travel then they surely know their shit.

Edit: People, I was making a joke.

[–] zbyte64@awful.systems 1 points 1 month ago

By aliens they mean incomprehensible, not extraterrestrial

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 18 points 1 month ago

This is just completely deranged. What the hell.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 17 points 1 month ago

crazy people who look sort of like me but younger.

giving away the game a bit, Mr. Schmidt

[–] maol@awful.systems 17 points 1 month ago

Eric Schmidt, genocidaire

[–] nightsky@awful.systems 15 points 1 month ago

I wonder if this signals being at peak hype soon. I mean, how much more outlandish can they get without destroying the hype bubble's foundation, i.e. the suspension of disbelief that all this would somehow become possible in the near future. We're on the level of "arrival of an alien intelligence" now, how much further can they escalate that rhetoric without popping the bubble?

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago

Eric Schmidt trying to think of an AI conversation and coming up with "How do I build a house? Step 1: Hire a contractor ..." is like the Schmidt version of Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.

[–] luciole 12 points 1 month ago

"Alien intelligence" is the most pathetic excuse so far for the fact their models can't be made sense of.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago

"Analytics shows that the ROI on your doomsday bunker will increase proportionally with the all-consuming fire's consumption rate."

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 8 points 1 month ago

The system cannot be reformed.