> They're preparing for it by blocking it off completely.

No we don't. Quite the opposite. Several dams have been made into movable mechanic contraptions precisely to NOT stop the tide coming in.

A lot of the water management is living with the water, not fighting it. Shore replenishment and strengthening is done by dropping sand in strategic locations and letting the water take care of dumping it in the right spot. Before big dredgers, the tide was used to flush sand out of harbours using big flushing basins. Big canals have been dug for better shipping. Big and small ships sailed and still sail on the waters to trade with the world. A lot of our riches come from the sea and the rivers.

The water is a danger and a tool. It's not stopped, only redirected and often put to good use. Throughout Dutch history, those who worked with the water generally have done well. And similarly, some places really suffered after the water was redirected away from them. Fisher folk lost their livelihoods, cities lost access to trade, some land literally evaporated when it got too dry, a lot of land shrunk when water was removed, biodiversity dropped...

Anyway, if you want to use the Dutch waters as a metaphor for technological innovations, the lesson will not be that the obvious answer is to block it. The lesson will be to accept it, to use it, to gain riches through it: to live with it.

As the other commenter noted, you are simply wrong about that. We control the effects the tide has on us, not the tide itself.

But let me offer you a false dichotomy for the purposes of argument:

1. You spend your efforts preventing the emergence of AI

2. You spend your efforts creating conditions for the harmonious co-existence of AI and humanity

It's your choice.

Your concern is the environmental impact? Why pick on LLMs vs Amazon or your local drug store? Or a local restaurant, for that matter?

Do the calculations for how much LLM use is required to equal one hamburger worth of CO2 — or the CO2 of commuting to work in a car.

If my daily LLM environmental impact is comparable to my lunch or going to work, it’s really hard to fault, IMO. They aren’t building data centers in the rainforest.

I broadly agree with your point, but would also draw attention to something I've observed:

> LLMs will NEVER become true AGI. But do they need to? No, or course not!

Everyone disagrees about the meaning of each of the three letters of the initialism "AGI", and also disagree about the compound whole and often argue it means something different than the simple meaning of those words separately.

Even on this website, "AGI" means anything from "InstructGPT" (the precursor to ChatGPT) to "Biblical God" — or, even worse than "God" given this is a tech forum, "can solve provably impossible task such as the halting problem".

There are two different groups with different perspectives and relationships to the "AI hype"; I think we're talking in circles in this subthread because we're talking about different people.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44208831. Quoting myself (sorry):

> For me, one of the Beneficiaries, the hype seems totally warranted. The capability is there, the possibilities are enormous, pace of advancement is staggering, and achieving them is realistic. If it takes a few years longer than the Investor group thinks - that's fine with us; it's only a problem for them.

> it's the environmental impact of MINDLESSLY using one.

Isn't much of that environmental impact currently from the training of the model rather than the usage? Something you could arguably one day just stop doing if you're satisfied with the progress on that front (People won't be any time soon admittedly)

I'm no expert on this front. It's a genuine question based on what i've heard and read.

Overinvestment isn't a bug. It is a feature of capitalism. When the dust settles there'll be few trillion-dollar pots and 100s of billion are being spent to get one of them.

Environmental impacts of GenAI/LLM ecosystem are highly overrated.