677: I Accept the Battery Costhttps://atp.fm/677
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@vmachiel And as for the environmental impact of AI's energy usage, despite the fact that it is somewhat overblown as a percentage of total human energy use, it surely will be a short-term problem. And I'd argue that crypto mining (a much more clearcut case of harm with little practical use) shows we are not good at dealing with things like this. But advances in *other* tech (renewable energy) does give me some hope.
@siracusa @vmachiel Energy usage is also often overstated. Nobody is arguing that AI does not consume energy, or that aggregate demand does not add up. But this has to be evaluated in relation to the use and that it is spread across hundreds of millions of users. When broken down per individual and compared with what a typical Western European or American uses energy for, AI usage is negligible.
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@atpfm Not looking good. @marcoarment turning to the dark side. What happened to "Think different”?
@Casey having a meltdown against the rest of the world, and we are losing @siracusa to the Borg…@pfernandes @atpfm @Casey @siracusa I think at this point, reevaluating some non-Apple options after years of using Apple's offerings nearly exclusively IS ”thinking different”.
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@pfernandes @atpfm @Casey @siracusa I think at this point, reevaluating some non-Apple options after years of using Apple's offerings nearly exclusively IS ”thinking different”.
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@atpfm The bad news about so-called AI (and LLMs aren’t really AI) is already known. From the real bad things like pollution of people’s air, and loss of water, through job loses, stolen data, right down to pure greed causing the RAM apocalypse.
It can write some code or can hallucinate some plausible answers doesn’t counter the damage done.
@lordsplodge @atpfm Honestly same. We're about to enter the world's first water crisis due to AI. To use it is completely amoral, and to encourage it is just....disappointing. We should be moving away from AI and treating it like the fad that it is, relegated to the likes of NFTs and crypto. Nobody should be embracing it. Not to mention it severely impacts intelligence and mental health. We've already seen people literally stop working due to a Claude code outage - you really want everyone to get dumber due to AI? Go ahead I guess...
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@lordsplodge @atpfm Honestly same. We're about to enter the world's first water crisis due to AI. To use it is completely amoral, and to encourage it is just....disappointing. We should be moving away from AI and treating it like the fad that it is, relegated to the likes of NFTs and crypto. Nobody should be embracing it. Not to mention it severely impacts intelligence and mental health. We've already seen people literally stop working due to a Claude code outage - you really want everyone to get dumber due to AI? Go ahead I guess...
@USBTypeSTeve Estimating AI water usage is not straightforward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc But if/when we do enter a "water crisis" (really the "world's first"?) I'm currently inclined to blame climate change (and politics) rather than AI.
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677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm The argument that because Celsius has decimal units it already lost is not bery good, come on. Pretty much nobody uses decimal units when measuring air temperature because it doesn’t make sense. We cannot feel the difference and it is going to be different in another side of the same room anyway. The thermostats that let you set half units are likely converting to Fahrenheit.
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677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm This Celsius rant was so stupid, I wonder how many brain cells were collectively lost across all ATP listeners.
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677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm "We don't have a choice. This is here. This is happening. It's happening with or without us…You can be a part of it or you can fall behind…You kinda have to get on board." is really fucking disgusting and indistinguishable from the bullshit spewed by crypto/NFT bros or every other propaganda pusher for the last several decades.
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@atpfm "We don't have a choice. This is here. This is happening. It's happening with or without us…You can be a part of it or you can fall behind…You kinda have to get on board." is really fucking disgusting and indistinguishable from the bullshit spewed by crypto/NFT bros or every other propaganda pusher for the last several decades.
@atpfm
Also: "we discuss the downsides and negatives"When exactly? It's been months of nothing but Marco pushing OpenAI chatbots or John pushing Claude etc. Gonna discuss any of the lawsuits against OpenAI or vibecoding killing open source, or continuing environmental destruction, or nah?
OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions
OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
AP News (apnews.com)
Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source Software, Researchers Argue
‘If the maintainers of small projects give up, who will produce the next Linux?’
404 Media (www.404media.co)
Overrun with AI slop, cURL scraps bug bounties to ensure "intact mental health"
The onslaught includes LLMs finding bogus vulnerabilities and code that won't compile.
Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)
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@atpfm "We don't have a choice. This is here. This is happening. It's happening with or without us…You can be a part of it or you can fall behind…You kinda have to get on board." is really fucking disgusting and indistinguishable from the bullshit spewed by crypto/NFT bros or every other propaganda pusher for the last several decades.
@Bachus Though I didn’t say that and I don’t believe that, I do think AI will turn out differently than crypto and NFTs. Don’t you?
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@Bachus Though I didn’t say that and I don’t believe that, I do think AI will turn out differently than crypto and NFTs. Don’t you?
@siracusa That's a direct quote from Marco. And no, I don't.
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@atpfm
Also: "we discuss the downsides and negatives"When exactly? It's been months of nothing but Marco pushing OpenAI chatbots or John pushing Claude etc. Gonna discuss any of the lawsuits against OpenAI or vibecoding killing open source, or continuing environmental destruction, or nah?
OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions
OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
AP News (apnews.com)
Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source Software, Researchers Argue
‘If the maintainers of small projects give up, who will produce the next Linux?’
404 Media (www.404media.co)
Overrun with AI slop, cURL scraps bug bounties to ensure "intact mental health"
The onslaught includes LLMs finding bogus vulnerabilities and code that won't compile.
Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)
@Bachus After a quick search, here are three links to older episodes that cover some of those topics. (See the links in the show notes.) I'm sure there are more.
Accidental Tech Podcast: 658: Your First Mistake Phone
Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.
(atp.fm)
Accidental Tech Podcast: 645: More Frosting
Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.
(atp.fm)
Accidental Tech Podcast: 594: We Just Found It on the Doorstep
Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.
(atp.fm)
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@siracusa That's a direct quote from Marco. And no, I don't.
@Bachus I'm not Marco.
Also, I would take that bet on crypto and NFTs. I think AI will prove to be both more widely used and more useful than both of those things combined (even if you consider crime as a valid use case for crypto).
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@atpfm
Also: "we discuss the downsides and negatives"When exactly? It's been months of nothing but Marco pushing OpenAI chatbots or John pushing Claude etc. Gonna discuss any of the lawsuits against OpenAI or vibecoding killing open source, or continuing environmental destruction, or nah?
OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions
OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
AP News (apnews.com)
Vibe Coding Is Killing Open Source Software, Researchers Argue
‘If the maintainers of small projects give up, who will produce the next Linux?’
404 Media (www.404media.co)
Overrun with AI slop, cURL scraps bug bounties to ensure "intact mental health"
The onslaught includes LLMs finding bogus vulnerabilities and code that won't compile.
Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)
@Bachus @atpfm I think I'm one of the few people that if I could press a button to make AI never happen I would, especially considering it's current uses seem to take away from humanity. (this might be a bit extreme though considering potential help in medicine etc.)
But even then it's crazy to ignore it's usefulness. It's honestly insane how good at is at lots of things. Just take math and computer science for example. It is big, will be bigger, the only question is how useful / big.
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@atpfm Always her for team fahrenheit.
️It's good to use the browser that works best for you so not shame there. I'm forced to use Chrome at work and I use Safari at home. I would say my experience is largely the opposite.
However, I’m using content blockers. Is it a slight cheat removing the problem? Maybe, but I wouldn't call the Chrome experience on an ad heavy website great but even if was, so much of the web is ugly and hard to read with the ads. I just would choose to avoid the web tbh
@fds @atpfm I’m always here for the fahrenheit rant
I don’t think anyone is working on taking it away from @caseyliss - we can have both
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@DanEngler @atpfm With Apple turning rotten, Android here we come
I do wonder how the future will look just a few years from now?
From killing open source (https://www.404media.co/vibe-coding-is-killing-open-source-software-researchers-argue/) to making it possible to offer your application on any platform without much effort. Why not offer Overcast and Callsheet on Android, etc.?
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@USBTypeSTeve Estimating AI water usage is not straightforward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc But if/when we do enter a "water crisis" (really the "world's first"?) I'm currently inclined to blame climate change (and politics) rather than AI.
@siracusa @USBTypeSTeve We could start by eating less burgers: https://bryantresearch.co.uk/insight-items/comparing-water-footprint-ai/
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@vmachiel Like electricity, AI will (eventually) live or die based on the ratio of its usefulness to its harm. Crypto mining lives on because it’s useful for crime and blackmail and speculation, but it seems like it will never reach the mass market in the way that, say, smartphones have.
I think AI is already more useful than crypto, and it also has a much better use-to-harm ratio. Your opinion depends on your own estimate of those use and harm values.
@siracusa @vmachiel I think the issue with this line of thinking is that the usefulness of AI comes mostly to rich software dudes in the global North (that’s all of us in this conversation) while the harms disproportionately go to those in the global South.
As long as the harms don’t come for us, we won’t care, and when they do, it will be too late.
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@jamesnvc The only “compliance” required will be your continued use of technology products and services. Even today, there are few tech products and services that are not using ethically dubious LLMs without your knowledge or consent. That’s why I say “barely a choice” today.
@siracusa @jamesnvc you still have a choice in how much you use them though. Just because there are restaurants serving the flesh of murdered animals everywhere does not excuse anyone from “having a choice”.
I think you’re trying to move the conversation from “should we be doing this” to “let’s examine what happens as a result of us doing this”, which I totally respect as a way to move the discussion forward, but I don’t think the framing of inevitability is accurate.
(This is coming from someone who eats animal products and uses LLMs — I’m not trying to establish some moral high ground, just trying to remain somewhat objective).
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@siracusa @vmachiel Energy usage is also often overstated. Nobody is arguing that AI does not consume energy, or that aggregate demand does not add up. But this has to be evaluated in relation to the use and that it is spread across hundreds of millions of users. When broken down per individual and compared with what a typical Western European or American uses energy for, AI usage is negligible.
@secundus
I would be interested in references if you have them. I’ve been having a hell of a time finding numbers on this stuff.
