Eh. An intelligence with perfect knowledge of the entire universe, unlimited memory, and infinite processing speed, would have a tendency to go boom. But the real world has limits, and intelligence, even superintelligence, does not equate to godhood. Some tasks are still hard no matter how smart you are.
Plus, we have no real reason to think LLMs are anywhere close to AGI or ASI. So arguments like these are just distracting from the very real, very present danger that LLMs pose: information breakdown, societal collapse and environmental destruction. In other words, this is criti-hype.
The kind of person who thinks AI contributes to information breakdown rather than information diffusal has no theory of how information spreads. The other claims like societal collapse and environmental destruction are still FUD but slightly more possible
Sometimes it's used to uncover crimes, but very often it's used to invent crimes that never actually happened, or used to deceive a courtroom when they don't actually have evidence.
It’s also a fairly traumatic thing to people through and I can imagine it does a lot of damage to people’s faith in law enforcement. Personal anecdote: when I was a teenager some cops gave me a list of fabricated evidence that I’d committed a crime, not intending to ever show a court; just trying to get me to confess. They said they’d go easy on me if I confessed but if I held out then they would petition the court to have me tried as an adult and sent to “big boy” prison. They also told me my parents were cooperating in the investigation and didn’t tell me. The whole ordeal basically made sure no one in my previously quite pro-cop family would ever trust an LEO again.
My first experience with the police was just as bad. A friend and I were waiting on the porch of another friend (all like 14 years old). We were waiting for him to come home. He knew we were there waiting for him.
His neighbors yelled something to us out of their window. We went to see what they wanted, but they didn't say anything when we got near.
We went back to the porch and waited for maybe 10-15 minutes, but decided to leave as we felt really weird about those neighbors. As we started walking, a police officer pulled up screaming at us, telling us we were under arrest for throwing rocks at the windows of those neighbors. The police officer took us to the police station, put handcuffs on us, as well as shackled our feet to the floor, where we remained for like 2 hours. He made us write a statement, and then told our parents to come get us.
It was truly the most confusing thing I ever experienced. Angers me a bit today thinking about it.
Fabricating evidence in an interrogation to try to get a confession out of someone versus "I'm not a cop" when infiltrating a drug ring, or lying to hide important information
Lying about evidence specifically is illegal in a lot of countries (not the US)
Those are rocks, which are not made from the same stuff as satellites. (Also, the article says it's 44 tons, and other sources suggest around 50 at most.) In any case, I don't think anyone here is "freaking out", I just think this issue merits investigation.
No, in a much more direct sense. By the time a Starlink sat re-enters its fuel is gone so it’s mostly a pile of silicon, solar panels, lithium batteries, aluminum, etc.
The circuit boards are probably the goofiest chemical compositions but they represent a drop in the bucket mass-wise for the sats and pale in comparison to how many circuit boards get blown up every day in Iran/Ukraine/Russia.
No, there was no a priori evidence when the big "fuss" around the ozone happened. I happen to agree with it. Why spend millions of choice your choice of first world currency to worry about 0.000000000001% of the pollution the earth, our earth is facing.
Perhaps you're not living in the same world as I, but I've both experienced the wettest and driest year on record.
The USA opioid epidemic was caused by gross government negligence and corruption. Is it really a stretch to think that a policy solution could have prevented the majority of the harm? And do you really think there wouldn't be enough food and shelter to go around, if the government decided to get serious about poverty relief?
The government policy might have caused it, but a reversal of the policy might never fix it. The real world is like that, unfortunately.
Besides, it's not the policy you're thinking of anyway, that causes this specific problem. This specific problem (theft for scrapyard sales) is primarily caused by piss tests. If people supposedly would suck cock for a hit of crack, then they'll also scrub toilets at minimum wage for crack too. But piss tests short circuit that. Here's the problem: the government doesn't mandate pre-employment piss tests. So they can't fix it easily. It would be far harder to convince legislators to prohibit them than it would to convince them to legalize drugs. There is a corporate culture that has gone on nearly 50 years now that has normalized piss tests, and they are true believers in it. They would lobby against prohibiting the tests.
But, even if all that could be done (very doubtful), we've also taught crackheads and tweakers to steal copper wire and whatever else not nailed down. We've taught them to do this for 50 years. Multiple generations of junkies and dope fiends have done this, passing down the knowledge (or what passes for that) of how to steal to feed a drug habit. They aren't going back to scrubbing toilets, even if they would have done that way back if only they hadn't been forced to stop.
>And do you really think there wouldn't be enough food and shelter to go around, if the government decided to get serious about poverty relief?
I think that even without the government getting serious about poverty relief, housing prices are insane and there's not enough to go around. And my grocery bill's not exactly nothing, either. And all for what, even if it did work the way you think it would, I'd get to pay for that welfare so this guy's radio station wasn't held hostage by Rudy's desperate need for bathtub meth? No thanks.
Who is "we"?? Some places do have water shortages. And regardless of whether the power goes out or not, more power consumption = higher prices + more pollution.
Most people who believe that data centers use a lot of water aren't mislead about how much water data centers use, but they are unaware of how much water everything else uses. In the great scheme of things data centers simply do not evaporate that much water. They are too small and too few. As a comparative example, all the data centers in Arizona combined use less than 1/50th of the water evaporated by Arizona's own thermal power stations. Or, to choose another benchmark, the evapotranspiration of the rice crop in California is more than 250x the water used by data centers in California.
I think also to a degree, even if someone knows those other water use figures, it's easy to see an intrinsic value to the community from those sources. Many people do not see much value in pushing AI to such a degree where all this new compute is required, and others see a negative impact from this activity. It's much easier to argue against something you feel is wrong or bad than something that is arguably crucial for day-to-day life like electricity and staple crops.
Of course. The American consumer is the greatest hypocrite of all time. Their cars, fuel, airline travel, hamburgers, and paper goods are beyond reproach. Your matrix multiplication is an abomination.
You believe lies, 99% of data shows that data centers do not use appreciable amounts of water compared to almond farms, or gold courses, or bog standard lawns.
That source says data centers use a lot of water. Less than all almond farms combined, sure, but it doesn't support the parent argument. It's also 3 years out of date, and not relevant to protests against all the data centers that have not yet been completed.
You say that like environmentalists support those things. We don’t. We regularly criticize golf courses as a waste of water and land. We regularly call out the water waste and ecosystem impact of manicured, uniform lawns.
I don't want any of those things, really (besides solar panels I suppose). I avoid plastic as much as I can. But, let's take your boots example. I recently went looking for a pair of well-made boots that don't contain plastic. But that eliminates something like 99% of the available offerings, and most of the remaining are luxury brands that can cost upwards of 600 dollars. I don't have that kind of budget, so I had to compromise. Do you see the problem here? If I want decent boots without a luxury brand fee, I HAVE to give these chemical companies my money. Extend that to clothing, groceries, furniture, devices, etc etc.
I avoid this stuff as much as I can without upending my life, and I'm still forking over much of my spending to companies that can pollute my land, water, and air with near impunity. I didn't choose this shit!
Plus, we have no real reason to think LLMs are anywhere close to AGI or ASI. So arguments like these are just distracting from the very real, very present danger that LLMs pose: information breakdown, societal collapse and environmental destruction. In other words, this is criti-hype.
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