this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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You could use this kind of argument for almost anything. For example if we stop burning coal, many coal miners will lose their jobs. That doesn't mean that we should keep burning coal.
@Freesoftwareenjoyer interesting you mention stopping burning coal. Because mining and burning coal is bad for the environment.
Guess what else is bad for the environment? Huge datacenters supporting AI. They go through electricity and water and materials at the same rates as bitcoin mining.
A human being writing stuff only uses as much energy as a human being doing just about anything else, though.
So yes, while ending coal would cost some miners jobs, the net gain is worth it. But adopting AI in standard practice in the entertainment industry does not have the same gains. It can't offset the human misery caused by the job loss.
You could say that gaming is also bad for the environment and that's just entertainment. But I wouldn't say that we should get rid of it. Both cryptocurrency and AI have uses to our society. So do computers, internet, etc. All that technology has a cost, but it is useful. Technology also usually keeps improving. For example Etherum doesn't require mining anymore like Bitcoin does, so it should require much less electricity. People always work on finding new solutions to problems.
But if a computer the size of a smartphone could do the work of multiple people, that might be more efficient and could result in less coal being burned.
Computers and automation have improved our lives and I think AI might too. If AI takes away my job, but it also improves the society, would it be ethical for me to protest against it? I think it wouldn't. I've accepted that it might happen and if it does, I will just have to learn something new.
@Freesoftwareenjoyer Gaming isn't as bad as cryptomining farms and the stuff required by an AI server, man. You need to go look up some of the load on this stuff.
And you still haven't gotten back to me on how AI improves society. People too lazy to learn to draw can say they drew something they actually didn't? That's not improvement.
If you have statistics on power usage, I would love to look at them.
If I want to make a game, but I can't create music and AI could do it for me, that would be very useful. I would be willing to pay for such program. Or if it could write a program that automates something for you, makes your job or your life easier somehow, that would be pretty nice, wouldn't it? It lets people do things that they might not be able to do otherwise, because nobody is an expert in every field. If that's not an improvement for you and you think it's silly - that's fine, but keep in mind that we barely just started to use this technology for something useful and it will keep improving.
I agree, but isn't that the job for the government?