I wouldn’t say it’s the biggest issue. Even if access was free, we’d still have to contend with the extreme energy use, and the epistemic chaos of being able to generate convincing bullshit much quicker than it can be detected and flagged.
I think it’s a harmful product in general. We’re polluting our infosphere the same way we polluted our ecosphere, and in both cases there’s still folks who think “unequal access to polluting industries” is the biggest problem.
The energy use isn’t that extreme. A forward pass on a 7B can be achieved on a Mac book.
If it’s code and you RAG over some docs you could probably get away with a 4B tbh.
ML models use more energy than a simple model, however, not that much more.
The reason large companies are using so much energy is that they are using absolutely massive models to do everything so they can market a product. If individuals used the right model to solve the right problem (size, training, feed it with context etc. ) there would be no real issue.
It’s important we don’t conflate the excellent progress we’ve made with transformers over the last decade with an unregulated market, bad company practices and limited consumer Tech literacy.
All the data centers in the US combined use 4% of the electric load, and one of the main upsides to deepseek is that it requires much less energy to train (the main cost).
You’re welcome to scroll my comment history to about 6 months ago where I was using the phrase “informational equivalent of Kessler Syndrome”, or talking about accurate attribution and faithful replication as being useful effects of the current copyright regime even if the rest of it is garbage.
Wow, you really have your head deep in something. I’m not sure if it’s deep in the sand, or deep up Sam Altman’s ass.
You think people have “talking points” against bullshit fountains, as if they’re needed? You think it’s a struggle to come up with reasons why they’re bad? The truth is that they’re absolutely useless at best, and actively harmful at worst. And no, this isn’t about the monstrous amounts of energy they use. It’s that they offer nothing of value.
“Gee whiz, thanks to this bullshit fountain I can research legal cases much more efficiently!” Oops, turns out the bullshit fountain just made up those precedents and now the judge is furious at me.
“Apple Intelligence will just summarize my texts for me!” Oops, the summaries were so wrong that they were actively harmful, and now Apple has been forced to turn off that feature.
“I’ll just have the LLM generate code for me!” Oops, now I have to spend a week debugging because the perfectly plausible code that was generated has a subtle logic error.
“Let me just search the web for something. Aha, I won’t be taken in by that AI summary at the top because I know that’s unreliable bullshit from the bullshit fountain. I’ll just scroll past that and click on the actual web pages.” Oops. Those actual web pages are now LLM-generated and filled with bullshit. I guess now I have to stop using the web and rely on printed encyclopedias from the time before LLMs to actually get verifiable facts. Winning!
No, I’m a socialist. I’m against big tech and the rich in general. But I don’t let my bias cause me to latch onto every criticism blindly. Even now, we’re talking about DeepSeek, which is the furthest thing from pro-big tech and also much more energy efficient, but you’re still deflecting back to your generic and irrelevant criticisms to try to apply them to this.
Your examples give away that you don’t have significant experience with AI. You know about Altman claims that have been debunked publicly, but obviously not much personal experience that would give you more than a superficial understanding of the basics beyond that.
Ha! You think AI is “keeping up with technology”? It’s not, it’s a diversion. Technology continues to advance, but this sideshow has nothing to do with it. You keep on drinking that kool-aid. Surely there will be a use for the bullshit fountain, any day now!
I wouldn’t say it’s the biggest issue. Even if access was free, we’d still have to contend with the extreme energy use, and the epistemic chaos of being able to generate convincing bullshit much quicker than it can be detected and flagged.
I think it’s a harmful product in general. We’re polluting our infosphere the same way we polluted our ecosphere, and in both cases there’s still folks who think “unequal access to polluting industries” is the biggest problem.
The energy use isn’t that extreme. A forward pass on a 7B can be achieved on a Mac book.
If it’s code and you RAG over some docs you could probably get away with a 4B tbh.
ML models use more energy than a simple model, however, not that much more.
The reason large companies are using so much energy is that they are using absolutely massive models to do everything so they can market a product. If individuals used the right model to solve the right problem (size, training, feed it with context etc. ) there would be no real issue.
It’s important we don’t conflate the excellent progress we’ve made with transformers over the last decade with an unregulated market, bad company practices and limited consumer Tech literacy.
TL;DR: LLM != search engine
All the data centers in the US combined use 4% of the electric load, and one of the main upsides to deepseek is that it requires much less energy to train (the main cost).
You’re right about this. I was commenting in the context of “intellectual property”.
Meanwhile people running it on Raspberry PI: “I made it consume 1W less, which is 30% improvement!”
It’s been this way long before modern AI.
The infosphere already turned to shit over 10 years ago when the internet started consolidating towards a few super large companies.
I love that the anti-AI crowd is struggling to update their talking points after DeepSeek has made most of them irrelevant.
You’re welcome to scroll my comment history to about 6 months ago where I was using the phrase “informational equivalent of Kessler Syndrome”, or talking about accurate attribution and faithful replication as being useful effects of the current copyright regime even if the rest of it is garbage.
Wow, you really have your head deep in something. I’m not sure if it’s deep in the sand, or deep up Sam Altman’s ass.
You think people have “talking points” against bullshit fountains, as if they’re needed? You think it’s a struggle to come up with reasons why they’re bad? The truth is that they’re absolutely useless at best, and actively harmful at worst. And no, this isn’t about the monstrous amounts of energy they use. It’s that they offer nothing of value.
“Gee whiz, thanks to this bullshit fountain I can research legal cases much more efficiently!” Oops, turns out the bullshit fountain just made up those precedents and now the judge is furious at me.
“Apple Intelligence will just summarize my texts for me!” Oops, the summaries were so wrong that they were actively harmful, and now Apple has been forced to turn off that feature.
“I’ll just have the LLM generate code for me!” Oops, now I have to spend a week debugging because the perfectly plausible code that was generated has a subtle logic error.
“Let me just search the web for something. Aha, I won’t be taken in by that AI summary at the top because I know that’s unreliable bullshit from the bullshit fountain. I’ll just scroll past that and click on the actual web pages.” Oops. Those actual web pages are now LLM-generated and filled with bullshit. I guess now I have to stop using the web and rely on printed encyclopedias from the time before LLMs to actually get verifiable facts. Winning!
No, I’m a socialist. I’m against big tech and the rich in general. But I don’t let my bias cause me to latch onto every criticism blindly. Even now, we’re talking about DeepSeek, which is the furthest thing from pro-big tech and also much more energy efficient, but you’re still deflecting back to your generic and irrelevant criticisms to try to apply them to this.
Your examples give away that you don’t have significant experience with AI. You know about Altman claims that have been debunked publicly, but obviously not much personal experience that would give you more than a superficial understanding of the basics beyond that.
I have enough experience to know it’s utterly useless. If you keep looking for more experience once you’ve realized that, you’re in a cult.
Cool dude. Keep your head buried in the sand, and continue refusing to keep up with new technology. Surely it won’t backfire.
Ha! You think AI is “keeping up with technology”? It’s not, it’s a diversion. Technology continues to advance, but this sideshow has nothing to do with it. You keep on drinking that kool-aid. Surely there will be a use for the bullshit fountain, any day now!