this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
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[–] msantossilva@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I guess some people are genuinely concerned about AI wiping out humanity. Do not worry, that will never happen. We are already doing a fine job fostering our own extinction. If we keep going down our current path, those soulless robots will never even get the chance.

Now, in truth, I do not know what will kill us first, but I reckon it is important to stay positive

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I mean it’s definitely helping, but not in the way I imagined. It is becoming a major driver of CO2 emissions due to the large computational power if needs, which will only increase in the future. The planet is boiling, and they will keep building more server farms for the next LLM upgrade, giving up on stopping/controlling climate change.

[–] mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 month ago

Wouldn’t that be something: we choke to death trying to create a supercomputer to tell us to stop doing exactly that

True irony

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

To clarify: AI is NOT a major driver of CO2 emissions. The most pessimistic estimations place it at a fraction of a percent of global energy consumption by 2030.

[–] mriormro@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean it is also true for crypto. BTC, the most energy-hungry blockchain, is estimated to burn ~150TWh/year, compared to a global consumption of 180 000TWh/y.

Now is that consumption useless ? Yes, it is completely wasted. But it is a drop in the bucket. One shouldn't underestimate the astounding energy consumption of legacy industries - as a whole the tech industry is estimated to represent just a few percents of the global energy budget.

[–] dubyakay@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Meh. Feelings are louder than facts apparently.

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 1 month ago

some myths are hard to kill honestly

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

What’s laughable are the “terminator” scenarios where it suddenly comes to life in an instant and in that moment already has the power to wipe us out, and then does so.

A more likely scenario is that we come to rely heavily on AI more and more as time goes by, until it truly does have a grip on resource supply chains, manufacturing facilities, energy plants, etc. And I don’t just mean that machine learning gets used in all of those contexts because we are already there. I’m talking about custodial authority. We’ve ceded those duties to it in large part - can’t do those jobs without AI.

Then a malicious AI could put a real squeeze on humanity. It wouldn’t need to be a global war. Just enough disruption that we starve and begin to war among ourselves. Has anyone ever noticed how many of us there are now? Our population would absolutely fall apart without our massive industrial and agricultural complexes running full time.