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OpenAI boss Sam Altman wants $7tn. For all our sakes, pray he doesn’t get it
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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It doesn't really go into why not.
If governments are going to be pouring money into something, I'd prefer it to be in the tech industry.
Imagine a cold-war / Oppenheimer situation where all the governments are scared that America / Russia / UAE will reach AI supremacy before {{we}} do? Instead of dumping all the moneyz into Lockheed Martin or Raytheon for better pew pew machines - we dump it into better semiconductor machinery, hardware advancements, and other stuff we need for this AI craze.
In the end we might not have a useful AI, but at least we've made progression in other things that are useful
What benefits to “AI supremacy” are there? Going to hand the keys to defense and the internet to it? What could go wrong…
There are many uses for AI that governments are interested in. Deepfakes, cheaper and more subtle ways to influence public opinions on the internet (by being able to instantly deploy thousands or millions of fully automated bots that are able to express their "opinions" in a way that is indistinguishable from humans), accurate and automated analysis of public discourse on the large scale, etc. And if you have an edge over other countries then you are able to influence their public opinions and detect (and possible counteract) when they try to influence you.
AI is very good at analysing human-generated data, as well as generating data that looks human-created. Any entity that deals with (and desires to control) a large number of people (of which governments are prime examples) will find many uses for it.
"... all I see is blonde, brunette, redhead ..."
I think these are already widely used.
It's already there, the way the Web seems.
It's not an AI.
Yes it's possible to do this now. However with further advancement of AI or whatever you call it this can be made even more effective and efficient. And any edge over the "enemy" is useful.
I wasn't saying there was any, I was saying there are benefits to the race towards it.
In the sense of - If you could pick any subject that world governments would be in a war about - "the first to the moon", "the first nuclear" or "first hydrogen bomb", or "the best tank" - or "the fastest stealth air-bomber"
I think if you picked a "tech war" (AI in this case) - Practically a race of who could build the lowest nm fabs, fastest hardware, and best algorithms - at least you end up with innovations that are useful
Why not? Here's one reason - because the planet is burning from climate change and we need a shit ton more resources for solving it. It's unlikely that AI would help much with that. Of course the UAE isn't too interested in the world moving away from fossil fuels.
Climate change again, as if there were no constant wars partly financed by developed countries.
China already produces more carbon by itself than the entire West combined
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/
That just shows you can still use electricity, as long as it's not from coal
Ok, sure. So in a tech race, if energy is a bottleneck - and we'd be pouring $7tn into tech here - don't you think some of the improvements would be to Power usage effectiveness (PUE) - or a better Compute per Power Ratio?
Every time we make tech use 1/2 as much power per unit of work , something comes along to need 3 times as much work. AI, Blockchain, etc.
The phenomenon you describe is called Jevons paradox. Absent a law to safeguard the increased efficiency, the waste will follow quickly.
Not producing any apparent value (above less wasteful alternatives) at that. Like ballast.
There may be PUE. However AI adds significant net new energy expenditure. Even if you get higher efficiency per compute unit, you're still burning more coal and gas, or using renewable capacity that could be going towards replacing coal and gas. And then in this particular example 7T is a huge amount of capital that could move the needle on so many difficult climate problems like decarbonizing steel, concrete and ag. I think spending that on AI that will likely only accelerate us towards planetary ecosystem destruction is .. not great to say it politely. 😂 Climate change is an existential problem for our species. The lack of AI advancement, even the lack of AGI is not. If there was any likely solution to climate change that could come out of AI, I might think differently. However we have all the computation methods needed to analyze and solve what we can about climate change. We just need much more resources in doing those things now.
Speaking of compute optimization, someone who's actually built chips just chimed in on the matter.