The current crop of generative AIs seems well-poised to take over a significant amount of low-skill human labor.
It does not seem well-poised to yield novel advancements in unrelated-to-AI fields, yet. Possibly genetics. But things like solving global warming, there is not any sort of path towards that for anything we're currently creating.
It's not clear to me that spending 0.5% of electricity generation to put a solid chunk of the lower-middle-class out of work is worth it.
There was an important "if" there in what I said. That's why I didn't say that it was the case. Though, no matter what, LLMs are doing more useful work than looking for hash collisions.
Can LLMs help us save energy? It doesn't seem to be such a ridiculous idea to me.
And can they be an effort multiplier for others working on harder problems? Likely-- I am a high-skill worker and I routinely have lower-skill tasks that I can delegate to LLMs more easily than I could either do myself or delegate to other humans. (And, now and then, they're helpful for brainstorming in my chosen fields).
I had a big manual to write communicating how to use something I've built. Giving GPT-4 some bulleted lists and a sample of my writing got about 2/3rds of it done. (I had to throw a fraction away, and make some small correctness edits). It took much less of my time than working with a doc writer usually does and probably yielded a better result. In turn, I'm back to my high-value tasks sooner.
That is, LLMs may help attacking the great problems directly, or they may help us dedicate more effort to the great problems. (Or they may do nothing or may screw us all up in other ways).
I fully agree that any way you cut it, LLMs are more useful than looking for hash collisions.
The trouble I have is, what determines whether AI grow to 0.5% (or whatever %) of our electricity usage is not whether the AI is a net good for humanity even considering power use. It's going to be determined by whether the AI is a net benefit for the bank account of the people with the means to make AI.
We can just as easily have a situation where AI grows to 0.5% electricity usage, is economically viable for those in control of it, while having a net negative impact for the rest of society.
As a parent said, a carbon tax would address a lot of this and would be great for a lot of reasons.
It does not seem well-poised to yield novel advancements in unrelated-to-AI fields, yet. Possibly genetics. But things like solving global warming, there is not any sort of path towards that for anything we're currently creating.
It's not clear to me that spending 0.5% of electricity generation to put a solid chunk of the lower-middle-class out of work is worth it.