I thought a few years back already that owning a bigger house will be cheaper than ever due to the progress of cheap renewable energy, cheaper and cheaper heat pump technology and batteries.
Nice to see blog
Readit Newsk8sagic commented on Batteries: How cheap can they get? aukehoekstra.substack.com... · Posted by u/hoerensagen
I think it's more nuanced than that. I used to walk to my bank, I can't do that any more because many branches closed. The bank now directs all interactions to happen via their app. In terms of emissions (and social interaction, particularly for vulnerable and isolated members of society) I think this is bad news.
But this is a complex calculus and - frankly - feels like a distraction from the issue. I don't want to get into the weeds of calculating micro-emissions of daily activities, I want climate responsibility and reduction in energy consumption across the board.
I did made the point that AI/ml is helping us and the type of energy location and load is much easier to get green than lets say concrete.
We need AI/ML for getting there faster and helping more people around us. Alone for weather simulations but also for medicine, material research for batteries etc.
This is a very limited perspective. There are many parts of the world not beholden to automobiles for transportation. Where I live, I can walk to the bank, and walk or ride a bike to entertainment. The alternative to data centers does not have to be driving an automobile somewhere.
Your bank building has to be maintained and heated. Heating which is added to your use of the local bank.
My perspective is not limited. Just because people live in a city center, doesn't mean that most people do. Open Google Maps and take a look.
For most of your points it's may not will.
How many battery breaktroughs did we have before AI? They rarely lead to new batteries.
>AI/ML big datacenters are crucial for all the illneses we have which no one cares enough to solve.
Too bad that companies like OpenAI and MS buy most of the hardware for their data centers to write summaries of articles and emails and to create pictures.
And even if they find a cure, doesn't mean it will be available for people in need, not without a hefty fee.
Just look at the profit margin of insulin.
Insulin is a bad example and a good one. A bad one because what happens in the USA is some super weird shit (and it only happened in the USA, thats why USA people drive to canada or mexico). Without insulin though, they wouldn't be alive.
ML on x-ray pictures is super easy technology which partially already is better than x-ray experts. Its not far away to have build in diagonstics or cheap online services. And yes they will reach poorer people than before. It will also allow a lot more people to get better diagnosis.
My sister has a type of blood cancer, she would have been dead by now if research wouldn't have found a solution 13 years ago.
And no MS and OpenAI and google are not just using their DCs to write summeries. They use it to do research. A LOT actually.
And take a look at google ios and the research papers, plenty of medical papers coming from those big companies.
Alpha Folde 2? Changed a lot too
You are missing the point too.
Driving too the cinema to watch a movie produces more CO2 than watch one movie online but online makes it more convenient so you watch more. That sums up to more CO2 emission.
The point is that higher efficency is wortless in terms of CO2 emissions if it leads to higher usage that compensates for the savings.
If a programmer can program faster with AI it's good if he only needs 1 hour instead of 8 but if he still programs 8 hours a day AI's energy consumption comes just on top of his previos consumption.
Climate change doesn't care how efficient you produce more CO2, more is simply more.
I. believe that watching mulitply movies is still a lot more co2 efficient than driving a car to a big independent room, which gets heated and than also shows a movie through a big projector than having a tv running and streaming it from the internet.
But it's realistic that we watch movies online than in cinemas.
And don't forget the datacenters of the movies need to run even if no one watches.
My car doesn't produce CO2 whe I don't drive.
Datacenters always run because there is always something to do.
For everything else, there are already plenty of energy saving mechanism build into the CPUs, Mainboards, Disks etc. A Datacenter doesn't run on 100% Energy just because the load is reduced.
My issue was with "we know what modern entertainment looks like" as if humans are now incapable of enjoying themselves without a screen. And you should care about a massive market increase when it's directly relevant to the point at hand. If the initial point was "we know what modern entertainment looks like, nobody plays board games or reads books", pointing out that the board game market has more than doubled in the past decade is far from irrelevant. It actually directly counters the point.
I agree with your second paragraph, and selling the "make better choices to save the world" argument is an industry playbook favorite. Environmental damage needs to be put on the shoulders of those who cause it, which is overwhelmingly industrial actors. AI is not useful enough to continue the slide into burning more fossil fuels than ever. If it spurs more green energy, good. If it's the old "well this is the way things are now", that's really not good enough.
AI and ML will help a lot of people and already does. Alpha Fold / protein folding will help us with cancer.
We will have better batterires thanks to ml material research.
We will be able to calculate and optimize everything related to flow like wind.
The last thing we need to optimize is compute and compute is what has the most money anyway. One of the first industries going green is datacenters. Google for example is going green 24/7 (so not just buying solar power but pulling green energy from the grid 24/7 through geo thermy and others).
AI/ML big datacenters are crucial for all the illneses we have which no one cares enough to solve. For example, i have one of these and we need data to make a therapy for this and i'm not alone.
Proof of Work is far superior to Proof of Stake in a network with absolute fairness (security) being fundamental. Satoshi himself said he could find no other way.
Compare energy spent on global hash rate to all energy spent by mining metals, physical banking, financial services middle persons, etc. if you want to talk about energy usage and make any kind of sense.
Yes, start comparing energy spend on bitcoin mining and the missing features. You will see that bitcoin already consumes a lot more energy than our proof of stake system.
What do you do when you want to exchange 1 bitcoin for 1 car and the person with the car doesn't give you the car after the 'absolut fairness/ security' of transfering bitcoin to their wallet? You go back to our Proof of Stake system. You talk to a lawyer. You expect the police to help you.
The smallest issue in our society is just transfering money from left to right. This is not a hard problem. And pls don't tell me how much easier it is to send a few bitcoins to africa. Most people don't do this and yes western union exists.
Or try to recover your bitcoins. A friend has 100k in bitcoins just doesn't know the password anymore.
What do you do when someone breaks into your home and forces you to give them your bitcoin key? Yes exactly anonyms moving of money from you to them. Untraceable, wow what a great thing to have!
And no Satoshi 'himself' is not an expert in global economy. He just invented bitcoin and you can cleary see how flawed it is.
> how much co2 is saved when i can do my banking online instead of having to drive to a bank is significant.
And if the online bank wasn't sending a bunch of requests to a bunch of third party ad networks on every click, it would save even more.
Yes. But what are you implying? Entertainment + ad garbage still is a lot more co2 efficient than printing flyers and sending those out.
Thats so fun because apparently everyone doing bitcoin does it for a different reason.
Anyway do you believe that when the world goes down and you need your gold, you will be able to use bitcoin?