@gjm For sure, burning the world (I note no remark from you about environmental impact) makes this form of AI a better integrator of efforts from diverse humans than any individual human has the attention span to be. Is it that the nearly-there low-hanging fruit are being gobbled up? @ColinTheMathmo
Oct 8, 2026, 10:26 PM@pigworker @ColinTheMathmo I listed a bunch of things reasonable people could object to; I wasn't trying to make a complete list of everything any reasonable person could object to.
But, since you bring it up, I am somewhat persuaded that the environmental impact is not as bad as it's often made out to be. It's substantial, but only in the same way as any new major industry's environmental impact is substantial. It seems likely to me that the net benefit or, more likely, harm of AI systems will come from other places.
I do think it's possible that the mathematical results OpenAI has been dumping on the world are "only" a matter of "filling in the convex hull of human knowledge", so to speak[1]. But that's not the same thing as only answering "a question you've asked already". I'm pretty sure the _huge majority_ of academic research, industrial R&D, artistic creation, etc., is also "filling in the convex hull", and that doesn't stop it being valuable and important and in some cases beautiful. "These AIs can only do 99% of the things top creative humans can do" really isn't that much of a dunk.
[1] I didn't come up with the metaphor; I believe it originates at https://birdsnfrogs.github.io/2026/09/12/Felix_qui_potuit_rerum_cognoscere_causas.html.
For the avoidance of doubt: If indeed the AIs can't do more than "filling in the convex hull" and will never go beyond that, that's a super-important limitation. But (1) I don't think we actually know even the first half, never mind the second, and (2) "they can only do things derived from what humans have already done" is very much not the same as "they can only do the same things as humans have already done".
Oct 8, 2026, 10:41 PM@pigworker @ColinTheMathmo BTW, "I note no remark from you about environmental impact" reads to me as "I have identified you as The Enemy and, gotcha, you have revealed your true colours by trying to downplay this crucial weakness" and that makes me sad.
I very much hope I am reading way too much into that "I note + observed deficiency" locution, but I don't think I've ever seen it used without that sort of subtext. (Well, it's not always very sub.)
@gjm You are not the enemy. But environmental impact is important. Even if this technology were good at what it purports to do, we should pay attention to what it costs the world we live in. @ColinTheMathmo
Oct 8, 2026, 11:07 PM@pigworker @ColinTheMathmo We very very much should, I agree. (And also if it were _bad_ at what it purports to do.) But it doesn't look to me as if "burn the world" is at all a reasonable summary of the impact of AI systems to date, or in the foreseeable future if the more extreme-doomerish scenarios don't come to pass.
For instance, see https://andymasley.com/visuals/ai-prompt-footprint/ which purports to estimate the carbon-emissions impact of an individual's AI-model use, and https://blog.andymasley.com/p/training-ai-models-doesnt-emit-that arguing that the cost of _training_ the models isn't that large given that it's a cost shared across all users. I do not claim that all his numbers are correct or that he hasn't missed anything, but it looks to me like he's making an honest and reasonably thorough attempt at quantifying these things.
Again, I am not particularly wedded to these opinions and would expect to be persuadable by good arguments/evidence in the opposite direction.
@gjm These things cash out on the ground as "data centers" which have horrifying environmental impacts on their surroundings, and which are due to mushroom in response to demand. This is not a sustainably efficient technology, even if it is a capable technology. @ColinTheMathmo
Oct 8, 2026, 11:45 PM@pigworker @ColinTheMathmo Same guy as before claims the actual impact of data centres is not nearly as horrifying as often claimed: https://blog.andymasley.com/p/why-i-think-panic-about-local-impacts
He makes an interesting point about the "due to mushroom in response to demand" thing: if he's right about the current state of play then for AI data centres to become a really big deal environmentally it would be necessary for there to be a huge amount more AI use, which will only happen if AI is utterly transforming the economy, in which case the _other_ impacts (for good or ill or both, and he and I both think "much more ill than good" is extremely plausible) will be a much bigger deal.
Same disclaimer as usual: I am very not an expert on the environmental impacts of AI; maybe Masley is all wrong (maybe he's an industry shill! but the evidence available to me is strongly against that); I am very willing to be persuaded by contrary evidence and arguments.
@gjm It's late and I have an early start, so let me bookmark a place for finding evidence that things are already bad in the present, let alone what your guy is saying is not scary about the scary future.
In the meantime, I'm just one of those old-timers who still knows how to use the back of an envelope. And the slide rule I keep in my handbag.
Oct 8, 2026, 11:55 PM@pigworker @ColinTheMathmo Sleep well, and may your envelopes never tear and your slide rule never slip.
@gjm Obvs, I am careful enough to tear the envelopes in such a way that enables me to read their contents, but still leaves the envelopes themselves as a suitable substrate for calculation. @ColinTheMathmo