[HN Gopher] Generative AI could generate tons of e-waste by deca...
___________________________________________________________________
Generative AI could generate tons of e-waste by decade's end
Author : bikenaga
Score : 24 points
Date : 2024-10-29 21:24 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techxplore.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techxplore.com)
| wildrhythms wrote:
| But have you considered all the money to be made storing and
| running ads on that e-waste?
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Even in death, old TVs still command attention.
| drewbeck wrote:
| Fortunately we will just be able to ask AI what to do about it.
| I'm sure it will come up with something.
| pimlottc wrote:
| It keeps telling me to allocate more resources to making paper
| clips
| lagrange77 wrote:
| "Oh, thank you for pointing that out, you're totally right! My
| previous answer would have killed humankind as a side effect.
| Here's an updated version of the solution: ..."
| louwrentius wrote:
| The current AI craze doesn't feel like it's really about AI. It's
| Silicon Valley being desperate for (growing) growth and
| shareholder value.
|
| Another obvious aspect it that it may help do work that could be
| done by people, thus helping to keep the worker class - that's
| you! - subdued, fighting amongst yourselves.
|
| Meanwhile the 'good stuff' can only be offered by those large
| companies, who have the power to make them 'good enough' thus
| making the rest more dependent.
|
| It's been a while since 2007, all the incentives are there to
| keep the ball rolling, but it will stop at some point.
|
| Then we IT people with six figure salaries will learn that we
| should have listened more to David Graeber.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Don't you think people will get bored of it? I am starting to.
|
| Apple has a few new cool AL based components in iOS 18. But one
| of the ones they've spent the past year harping on is the
| Cowboy frog emoji generator.
| digging wrote:
| Getting bored of it isn't the same as having no use for it.
| This stuff is 2 years old; we haven't figured it all out.
| Even if all development on the actual models stopped now,
| we'd still be seeing new uses of LLMs emerging for years to
| come.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| We have no use for crypto-currency or Carriages. In 1910
| there were 240,000 carriage manufactures in the U.S, only 4
| years later, there were 5. There are still 2. Technology
| does that. It does not matter how old... If its useless,
| its useless. Did we figure a use for the appendix?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| > But one of the ones they've spent the past year harping on
| is the Cowboy frog emoji generator.
|
| You know it sounds like a line from a David Foster Wallace
| novel, but nope it's real life. I get that a lot these days.
| gruez wrote:
| >The current AI craze doesn't feel like it's really about AI.
| It's Silicon Valley being desperate for (growing) growth and
| shareholder value.
|
| Isn't this true statement about literally any other technology?
| Do you think the railroad craze[1] was really about railroads?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania
|
| >Another obvious aspect it that it may help do work that could
| be done by people, thus helping to keep the worker class -
| that's you! - subdued, fighting amongst yourselves.
|
| >Meanwhile the 'good stuff' can only be offered by those large
| companies, who have the power to make them 'good enough' thus
| making the rest more dependent.
|
| If you replaced the preceding paragraphs to be about weaving
| machines, this could pass for ned ludd's writings.
| xnx wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41974159
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| One Person's Trash is Another Crypto Miners Treasure.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Funny because "e-waste" is also how I would characterise the
| content that these generative AI models output.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Saying AI will generate tons of e-waste is redundant. AI is
| waste.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| These "generates e-waste" articles are _political hit pieces_. I
| hope we're all intelligent enough to recognise the absurdity of
| the statement.
|
| In case it is unclear, a similar article was going around the
| Internet a few years ago complaining about the "tons of e-waste
| created by Apple Airpods".
|
| Yes, that's true in the sense that Apple was producing "tons" of
| e-waste annually... two of them. One ton wouldn't be "tons", you
| see, so the article was technically correct in the dumbest and
| most nakedly deceptive way possible.
|
| Waste is about inefficiency. It implies no or negative utility.
| There's a hint of huge landfills and truck after truck of bulky
| stuff filling that up.
|
| AirPods and AI chips are the _opposite_ of inefficient! They're
| some of the smallest, densest, _most concentrated_ and space-
| efficient products ever made by man.
|
| To invoke the word "waste" in juxtaposition to these things is so
| absurd, so contrary to their essential nature that it's clearly a
| deliberate falsehood, signalling membership in a group by its
| absurdity. It's like the official statements on RT that yet
| another oligarch "fell out" of a window. Everyone _knows_ what
| really happened there. The claim of defenestration is a coded
| signal telling the listeners a very different message to the
| verbatim text.
|
| Someone who is scared of AI wrote this article or had it written
| on their behalf. It's the product of a Luddite, or someone whose
| job is about to be replaced.
|
| "Stop the efficiencies! My career as a copy editor is at risk! I
| mean... it's surely _wasteful_ to optimise my job away with a
| chip that's a mere square inch in size and weighs a gram!"
| 94b45eb4 wrote:
| It's a race to create an AI good enough to solve the e-waste
| problem before the e-waste problem becomes such a large problem
| that it prevents AI advancement.
| soco wrote:
| It's a race to ignore all this, calling it "woke snowflake
| worries lol", and enjoying the short term economical benefits
| of AI making the shareholders happy. And I'm not even
| sarcastic.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Until of course, "Demon Seed" comes true.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-29 23:00 UTC)