Character.AI discovered the one conversation its bots couldn’t keep going: the one with its accountants. $56 million in compute costs in eight months, and the monetization strategy was apparently: hope the next investor is even lonelier than our users. Silicon Valley keeps confusing engagement with a business model.
If LLMs can’t be made more power efficient, then the technology isn’t ready yet for general use. There may have to be fundamental engineering breakthroughs before what these systems do can be more than a very expensive and inefficient worldwide proof of concept.
Of course, the military and the surveillance industry will still want to keep it, even if no one else can afford it, and we’ll be the ones paying for it.
There may have to be fundamental engineering breakthroughs before what these systems do can be more than a very expensive and inefficient worldwide proof of concept.
Controversial thought after reading this sentence: It’s cryptocoins all over again.
Well that is an alternative. But I bet each query to a local 27b model takes less energy anyway than the same query to Claude Opus or Fable in some data centre. So it is also a case of improving energy efficiency by running smaller models.
But without widespread usage there won’t be any breakthroughs… Anti-LLM folk could redirect their attention to the core problem (energy source, wind and solar shouldn’t raise any concerns) but they prefer to attack the LLMs themselves. Early implementations of every technology were crazy energy ineffective at the moment when becoming practically useful.
No one should be arguing if LLMs are useful or worth investing into, they are and it can be a really useful tool, but the rich (seemingly spinless) lizards have managed to skyrocket the price of RAM, pushed global warming to new extrimes and jacked up electricity prices. Oh and while making an AI bubble so big and fradgile, that when (not if) popped will send us back to the great depression! All in the percute of “the next big thing”.
to;dr LLMs are a cool tech but in the percute of it have managed to fuck up a whole bunch
Character.AI discovered the one conversation its bots couldn’t keep going: the one with its accountants. $56 million in compute costs in eight months, and the monetization strategy was apparently: hope the next investor is even lonelier than our users. Silicon Valley keeps confusing engagement with a business model.
If LLMs can’t be made more power efficient, then the technology isn’t ready yet for general use. There may have to be fundamental engineering breakthroughs before what these systems do can be more than a very expensive and inefficient worldwide proof of concept.
Of course, the military and the surveillance industry will still want to keep it, even if no one else can afford it, and we’ll be the ones paying for it.
someone else replied with what i said
Controversial thought after reading this sentence: It’s cryptocoins all over again.
Hm, I don’t see the harm in powering local models with solar.
Well that is an alternative. But I bet each query to a local 27b model takes less energy anyway than the same query to Claude Opus or Fable in some data centre. So it is also a case of improving energy efficiency by running smaller models.
But without widespread usage there won’t be any breakthroughs… Anti-LLM folk could redirect their attention to the core problem (energy source, wind and solar shouldn’t raise any concerns) but they prefer to attack the LLMs themselves. Early implementations of every technology were crazy energy ineffective at the moment when becoming practically useful.
Oh no, we won’t get breakthroughs in slop.
Whatever will we do?
No one should be arguing if LLMs are useful or worth investing into, they are and it can be a really useful tool, but the rich (seemingly spinless) lizards have managed to skyrocket the price of RAM, pushed global warming to new extrimes and jacked up electricity prices. Oh and while making an AI bubble so big and fradgile, that when (not if) popped will send us back to the great depression! All in the percute of “the next big thing”.
to;dr LLMs are a cool tech but in the percute of it have managed to fuck up a whole bunch
LLMs in the context of capitalism will always be used against the working class.
pursuit*