More generally, the pessimists are doing a lot better than the optimists. We now have the pervasive surveillance of 1984, the media obsession of Max Headroom, the huge gap between rich and poor of most cyberpunk. We're well on our way to the environmental collapse and mass extinctions of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the social isolation and over-dependence on technology of The Machine Stops, the hypercapitalism of Snow Crash.

On the other side, the optimistic predictions are doing really badly. Do you see any sign of a Star Trek economy? Asimov's provably benevolent robots? The open frontiers of most space opera?

Neither do I.

I'm against online devices that have no reason to be online. My oven can connect to the internet. Why would anyone think I want my oven to connect to the internet? My dishwasher can connect to the internet. Why would anyone think I want my dishwasher to connect to the internet? I just can't figure out any scenario where an internet connection helps these appliances to do their job better.

Even the justifications from the manufacturer hardly make sense. If I installed their app on my phone, I could scan the barcode on a frozen dinner and it would automatically set the oven to the correct temperature. Is that actually supposed to be easier than entering the temperature myself? It's obvious the only reason the online feature exists at all is to get me to install an app on my phone, which they can use to spy on me.

Another important use is airplanes. For cars, current batteries are "good enough", though higher density would still be good. For airplanes, current batteries are just barely usable for very short flights. Doubling the density would be a big deal.

I don't see that it's really raising those questions in any new way. We've already been dealing with them for a long time. You can't give medical advice if you don't have a degree in medicine. You can't give legal advice if you don't have a degree in law. You might disagree with the requirements, but that's how it's worked in the offline world for a long time.

You've got the time scales a bit wrong. The current cool period (the quaternary glaciation) has been in progress for 2.5 million years. When you speak of it being 5 to 10 C warmer for most of history, that refers to geological history, not human history. That was long before humans existed.

And no, the current warming trend did not start 17,000 years ago. It started about 1850. The world had already passed its temperature peak and was starting to cool toward the next ice age. Then, entirely due to human activity, it began to shoot up, and continues doing it today.

Although it's nice to be able to blame someone else, there really is no "us" or "them" in this issue. The only "us" that matters is all of humanity, and we (humanity) are failing badly.

Emissions from the US are down from their peak in 2007, but given how high they were then, it's not saying a lot. Europe is doing better, but also still has a long way to go. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... In 2023 US per capita emissions were 17,608 kg CO2 equivalent, compared to 7264 for the EU. But that's still higher than the global average of 6594. China is in between at 11,113, not as bad as the US but still far too high. And worryingly, its emissions are still increasing.

Another way to look at it: if emissions from the US continue to decrease at the same rate they have since 2007, it won't reach zero until 2089.

So I would say no, Europe and the US have not demonstrated the problem can be solved.

Profits? Very funny!

Their expenses are much larger than revenue. They're nowhere close to producing a profit. And since they're now committed to spending $1.4 trillion over the next ten years, they need to get to $140 million per year revenue (and do it really fast) just to break even. Increasing their current revenue by 10x wouldn't be enough to do it.

To reference my own signature, which is meant entirely sarcastically: why do you assume I haven't researched it? Why do you assume my opinion on it was uneducated? Perhaps you formed your opinion on insufficient information?

But as for your specific example, that's completely unlike anything I do. Database migrations are the sort of mechanical, simply defined task that AI can handle. My work involves things that are much more open ended, and often involve inventing new methods or even new algorithms to do things no one else has ever done before.

I accept there could be fields where that's useful. Not for the sort of work I do. In my field, doing even basic work requires specialized knowledge, high level problem solving, and strong design skills. When you take on a junior developer, you have no expectation it will make you more productive right away. Initially it will probably make you less productive. You're doing it to mentor them, so they can grow into a senior developer.

So I can have my own permanent junior developer who isn't learning from working with me and will remain a junior developer no matter how long I mentor them? That doesn't sound useful.

All those things decrease the need for energy. EVs use much less energy than ICEs. Heat pumps use much less energy than gas furnaces. Electric stoves use much less energy than gas stoves.

But that's unrelated either to the story or to my post. We were talking about the energy used by data centers to run AI models. My point is that the amount of energy used is unrelated to the needs of any specific real world application. It's driven by companies competing for business. No amount of computing power is enough. Each of them needs to have more than their competitors, no matter how much that is.

And yet the demand for more power has never gone away. It keeps increasing. The more computers can do, the more people ask of them. However powerful they get, people will always want more so they can do even more.

Increasing efficiency won't solve this problem. Right now, the economic imperative is to build bigger companies running bigger models on bigger data centers. Bigger than what? Bigger than their competitors, of course. Everything else is secondary, including whether they destroy the planet in the process.

We need to declare that not destroying the planet is the new economic imperative. Everything else is secondary to that. But that's not happening, because the super-rich are the ones who get to make the decision. They would have to put humanity's needs above their own. You don't become super-rich by thinking like that.

If you want to play VR games but avoid Facebook, the main options are PC VR (Steam has a huge library of games) or PSVR2 (which can also be used with a PC with an optional adapter). Those are headsets that you hook up to a PC or console, not a self contained system like Quest. They can provide much better graphics than Quest, but the games are mostly the same.

Comfort is an issue with most VR headsets. They're big and heavy enough, you don't want to wear them for hours at a time. The main exception is Bigscreen Beyond, which has gotten it down to a remarkably small and light package. You pay extra for that, of course. I think it's about $1000 for the basic version, a little more for the version with eye tracking.

Yes, there's no question of that. Humanity is seriously screwed at this point. But there's still a lot of wiggle room for just how bad it's going to get. All the futures are bad, but some are a lot worse than others. The choices we make today will determine which one we get.

I mean, it's a tough choice. The German car industry or the future of humanity? They're both really important. Which should we put first? I'm sure there are good arguments on both sides...

China's per-capita emissions are 3.5x higher than India's. I really do not want India to emulate China on this!