Comment by boothby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boothby | Hacker News Reader

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> There's plenty to hate about how AI is transforming the world, but one thing it's not, is "robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up".

There's a way that many people fear this is true: what you're getting for "free" has some external cost that you aren't taking into account.

Cost 1. The environment. Tech companies were once significantly interested in efficiency, their carbon footprint, etc. With the advent of LLMs, this was thrown out the window. Concerned people are now thinking about water footprint, heat footprint, noise footprint, and probably more. These things are hard to put a dollar figure on in a short comment, but the sustanability of a liveable climate for the billions living on this planet is literally priceless.

Cost 2. Employment. We face a significant cull of employability -- graphic artists, programmers, mathematicians, paralegals, and more are rightly fearful for the end of their career. If we're getting intelligence for "free" in 2026 dollars, but we can't get jobs in 2030, will all that content still be affordable in 2035?

Cost 3. Infinite investor dollars. The AI companies are burning cash at a historically unprecedented rate. This has attracted a lot of attention from traditional investors, like pensions, banks, etc. If all of this ends up in a free product, that doesn't sound like it'll return those investments. And that can crash the economy -- I ask again about real affordability in 2035.

Item 2 is the big one. Because not only is AI about to destroy jobs wholesale; it's doing so in an environment that abhors wealth and income redistribution that could blunt the harms.

2. and 3. I agree with.

1. is mostly bullshit that's used by anti-AI crowd to gather further support. Data center companies did not stop caring about footprint, they're still pursuing that for the same reason they did it before: it aligns with overall lowering of costs. AI added an extra incentive to improve efficiency because the demand far outstrips supply of compute.

For 1., also the general argument stands: yes, these data centers use energy, just like everything else humans do. What matters is the value it provides to people, and in case of AI, it's one of the most objectively useful expenditure of watts on compute (your point 2. notwithstanding).

I heartily disagree on 1, and you've taken a cheap out on that point. What I said was, the environmental externalities are not in your cost model, and you've said nothing to even acknowledge that. Your point about efficiency is particularly obtuse: efficiency doesn't mean burning less fuel, and getting more compute per Joule. Not reducing the overall carbon footprint, but accelerating the burn rate as fast as we can build.

I'm not even sure I agree that demand is outstripping compute -- nvidia's circular demand-inflating investment/buildout/loan situation certainly muddies the waters on that, see my point 3.

I'm saying that environmental externalities are hugely overblown[0] and to a large extent are part of the cost model. Datacenters are not like the legacy industries, they have to pay for the land and energy they use.

> Your point about efficiency is particularly obtuse: efficiency doesn't mean burning less fuel, and getting more compute per Joule. Not reducing the overall carbon footprint, but accelerating the burn rate as fast as we can build.

Efficiency does mean getting more compute per Joule. They are doing that. They are also building out as fast as they can, because both of those address the same problem: demand for compute outstripping supply for it. They can't just pursue the build-out strategy, because hardware production is now supply-constrained too - that's where the "RAMpocalypse" came from.

Yes, this is a huge build-out, and little to none of that is 100% carbon-neutral, so ecological footprint adds up. But that's normal and expected and a kind of tradeoff humanity has been making forever: building new stuff, be it hospitals or airports or data centers, has an environmental footprint, and we only hope what we get from it is more important to us on the margin, and that we can offset the environmental costs some other way.

> I'm not even sure I agree that demand is outstripping compute -- nvidia's circular demand-inflating investment/buildout/loan situation certainly muddies the waters on that, see my point 3.

I'm not talking about financial "demand". I'm talking about real demand, for compute. There's nothing to doubt here, it's pretty clear that all major AI players are constantly running at capacity - it's obvious in the very structure and limits they place on even the highest tiers. Unless you believe half the data centers are just spinning busy-loops and burning energy to inflate stock prices and generate a fake reason to build out more compute capacity - if yes, then I don't know what to tell you.

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[0] - Like the water story, where the reported datacenter usage numbers look big in isolation, but once you relate them to "how much water is there" and "how much is used by other industries", it turns out to be a nothingburger. The only numbers that survive are those showing the story is really about those other industries having a competitor for cheap water now, and having to pay a bit more than they're used to.

> reported datacenter usage numbers look big in isolation, but once you relate them to "how much water is there" and "how much is used by other industries", it turns out to be a nothingburger.

Water scarcity is a problem around the world; even my rainy hometown of Vancouver had steep water restrictions this year. The question "how much water is there" is incredibly disingenuous, to the point of feeling like a motte and bailey: yes, the universe, or the earth contains vast oceans of the stuff but datacenters are using drinking water which is quite scarce. Just because "other industries" use a lot of water doesn't make it okay -- I level exactly the same criticism at other industries which waste water at such an egregious degree.

To be clear: if data centers only charged up a pool of water to use as coolant, that's fine. But when the weather is warm, they run millions of gallons of tapwater down the drain just to cool off. And heat spikes are happening with increasing frequency, severity and duration.

We as a species need to conserve water and emit less CO₂, full stop. The tech industry doesn't get a pass just because other industries are dirty.

> Infinite investor dollars

This has another side effect in that it breaks the power that consumers have in the market to have a say in how resources get allocated, by voting with their wallet.

The entire AI buildout is non-consensual. Individuals have zero say. We could all refuse to buy AI subscriptions and it would not matter because businesses will still buy, and, investors have decided that we are moving forward with this no matter what, seemingly whether anyone is actually buying or not.

AI isn't necessarily unique here, but it is one of the biggest new examples of wealth inequality and how society at large are no longer the ones who get to decide how resources are allocated under a capitalist system, especially when the investor dollars behind it amounts to the GDP of a small nation.

And Businesses will buy, because the AI promise is a promise to automate workers away.

> the sustanability of a liveable climate

And this is fuel for climate change denial. See? Are the wealthy and powerful people acting like they are concerned about the climate? No. They are doubling down on energy use and consumption. It's all a fraud!

The idiocy of those arguments around AI and climate are indeed a fuel for climate change denial, because the only consistent views are that either the AI is not an environmental disaster, or the whole climate change thing must be overblown. The numbers don't add up, but if you're so blind with hatred towards "AI companies" while still desiring to have a remotely consistent worldview, it's seriousness of climate situation that has to go.

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