this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
1140 points (97.5% liked)

Technology

59287 readers
5759 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago (2 children)

requires an intensive carbon footprint

Maybe we should focus on the collapsing ecosystem then instead of training AI datasets.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nuclear power means they can do both.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Hear me out:

What if we used that nuclear power only to fix the environment?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Ok, find someone willing to pay for one for that purpose.

Microsoft isn't 'we'

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No. Nuclear power is not anti climate like the other fossil fuels, but still anti ecosytems.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How exactly is a nuke plant antiecosystems? Under that guise, pretty much anything humans do is as such.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Uran mining & nuclear waste.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're free to invest in nuclear power for that purpose if you want.

Microsoft is investing in nuclear power to run their AI projects. They likely wouldn't be investing in nuclear power if they didn't have projects that needed it like this.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

And the U.S. government wouldn't have invested in all of the development that went into the Apollo program if they didn't want to beat the Russians, but we still all benefitted from the science and the research and the development.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nuclear power still requires huge front costs (goal of SMR is to reduce that, but first generations will not solve it), so it could be better to use them for every day life needs rather than a prospective commercial venture.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only if there's a meltdown, and that's near-impossible with current reactor designs. Just don't build in very disaster-prone areas like Florida or Japan.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you have misread the comment you replied to.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

AI might be a fantastic tool to help fix the environment, though.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

People aren't listening to human scientists and you think they'll be happy with an scary AI saving the planet?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they're not listening to humans or AI, then they're not going to be happy with anything and should probably be ignored.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately it's hard to ignore the people running your country.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I doubt the people running the country are worried about a "scary AI saving the planet." Their main concern is ignorant masses of voters who are scared of it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It will be used to drive more consumption.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

It will be used for both. The way out of global warming is going forward in technology, not backward.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

We already use AI in climate change models. This is a large language model that honestly, we don't need.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

bold of you to assume microsoft is interested in that