Let the Water Wars begin.
Blockchain currencies and now ‘AI’ (glorified pattern matchers)… I wonder what the next huge energy/resource sink grift will be? I want to know so I can get in early, make a zillion and dump before everyone realizes how stupid and wasteful it all was.
What pisses me off is that LLMs are such a brute-force ‘solution’ that goes against one of the major goals of Computer Science – to find algorithms that take less time and energy, instead of just throwing more compute cycles at things.
Hell, blockchain at least had a mathematical justification for why it needed such huge compute/power resources (proof of work).
I agree that LLMs being used as they are is a major waste. However, I don’t think it goes against any goals of CS. Computer Science has traditionally followed this pattern: discover a solution that works, enhance it, and then repeat the process as needed. Transformers are the newest best solution for some NLP tasks, and a hype was created. We’ll be back to the enhance phase shortly. Hopefully with a little less overhype and more consideration this time.
Consumers: which product should I buy that gives big corporations more money to fuck up the planet?
Uh, maybe try not to buy it or look for an ethical brand?
Consumers: nah, too much work. I’ll get a BIG BRAND phone so that I can fit in.
Also consumers: WHY IS THE PLANET BEING FUCKED BY CORPORATIONS!?!??!
Can we just give them coke Zero instead?
This is fine.
