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by jacobsenscott 297 days ago
Uh, we've been doing data processing for nearly 80 years, and watching netflix for nearly 20 years. Suddenly we need to tile the earth with data centers, build power plants, burn all the fuels we can, and will "need to get to fusion" (per Sam) to run AGI. He also said "if we need to burn a little more gas to get there, that's fine". We'll never get to fusion or AGI, but we will destroy the earth to put a few more dollars in the pockets of the 0.01%.

You don't see the difference, or are you willfully ignorant?

3 comments

Just a note on etiquette: starting your sentence with "Uh," is often interpreted as dismissive or condescending, even if that’s not your intent.
Do you honestly expect anyone to believe you're trying to take part in a discussion with that last statement? I appreciate this topic has your emotions running hot, but this is HN, not Reddit. Please leave that kind of talk at the door.
You do understand what "exponential" in the "exponential growth" means?

Yes, it means that "suddenly" we need to do more of everything than we did for entirety of human history until ~few years ago. Same was true ~few years ago. And ~few years before that. And so on.

That's what exponential growth means. Correct for that, and suddenly we're not really doing things that much faster "because AI" than we'd be doing them otherwise.