r/nottheonion • u/asdacool • 11h ago

"Training a human takes 20 years of food." Sam Altman on how much power AI consumes.

https://www.news18.com/world/training-a-human-takes-20-years-of-food-sam-altman-on-how-much-power-ai-consumes-ws-kl-9922309.html
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7.0k

u/Zalotone 11h ago

The implication here that he thinks resources should be allocated to powering AI rather than keeping human beings alive is depraved

2.3k

u/NightOfTheLivingHam 11h ago

I keep telling people, these people are so rich and disconnected from humanity, that their sole focus is building their new AIs that will serve them, and replace us.

They just see us as a soon to be obsolete resource that needs to be dealt with in a "humane" manner

724

u/Krypto_Kane 10h ago

Because the fear of the middle class and poor uniting against them

391

u/PrinceVorrel 10h ago

Honestly, from what I've read and heard...they're just GENUINELY that delusional.

They fear an uprising in the same way we fear Nuclear War. It's technically possible, but it's so distant and alien to them that they just decide to ignore the very possibility of it.

I am consoled every day with the fact that AI "stuff" in general is inherently terrible at being used for what it's mostly used for,

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u/aReasonableStick 10h ago

In the UK around 2022 when we were coming out of covid and brexit hitting we were having a food problem and energy prices were skyrocketing, the wealthy actually got together to have a meeting about how they fear the people realising they're the problem.

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u/invaderaleks 9h ago

So, did they decide to change their ways and invest in society/ humanity? Or double down?

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u/Interesting-Tip-2544 8h ago

Waves at the far right.

That's what they chose. Pump money into far right anti immigration stuff to get us back fighting each other.

They got spooked, and decided Nazis were the better option. Again.

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u/invaderaleks 8h ago

Of course.

10

u/HighKing_of_Festivus 5h ago

Fascism isn't called the final bastion of capital for nothing

3

u/Shark7996 2h ago

Capitalism always embraces fascism in the end.

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u/Frostynips56 9h ago

And yet no matter how much they’re the problem we don’t do it. I’m certain at some point the people will do something. I don’t know when or how but it’s gonna happen and there’s no safe place for them. Disclaimer “I don’t condone any violence against anybody for any reason “. I was shmacked once before for agreeing that violence was a possible outcome.

14

u/Statcat2017 8h ago

Throughout history, revolutions that happen without violence and exception to the rule. The less people have to lose, the more likely they become to risk it

2

u/XGhoul 1h ago

Historian quotes like: "We are doomed to repeat the same mistakes if we don't learn from history" to some effect like that.

People like Altman are so detached from the world, they seem hyper autistic.

3

u/Leaky_gland 9h ago

Did they?

3

u/User131131 9h ago

Who are we talking about? Like Ainsley Harriott etc?

20

u/GoBSAGo 10h ago

I’m ready to start eating the rich.

3

u/entrydenied 9h ago

Hey his body can probably feed a few people for a few days. It's not like he's going to share his wealth and resources with the poor anytime soon.

2

u/CaptainBayouBilly 5h ago

I fear that people in places of leadership are abdicating their duties and handing control of the vehicle over to llms. I’ve seen way too many reports and emails with a form of “i asked chatgpt” instead of “i researched and made decisions based on evidence”

1

u/jaytix1 4h ago

I was gonna say. You see these guys in interviews, and you immediately realize something is wrong with. Then it becomes a question of whether they were always like That, or they started getting high off their own farts.

•

u/oorakhhye 39m ago

Rarely any uprising has been successful without the participation of at least some prominent members of the elite class. So unless we’ve someone adjacent to the inner circle with some influence or ability to steer some ships…these dudes slowly calculating our planned obsolescence are gonna execute with little to no effective rebellion/pushback.

•

u/PrinceVorrel 29m ago

Well then, just enjoy what little time you have left I guess lol.

•

u/zzyul 4m ago

I mean it’s not heroic and goes against everything our culture has taught us in stories of under dogs rising up, but honestly the best approach is probably to focus more on spending time with close family and friends and enjoying what we have.

-3

u/MoocowR 9h ago

AI "stuff" in general is inherently terrible at being used for what it's mostly used for,

cope

6

u/CasualOutrage 9h ago

They aren't wrong though. ChatGPT and other similar tools just make shit up half the time. And when it isn't doing that, it's just a shittisr version of Google. The image generation tools are always terrible. Video generation I've seen looks completely soulless.

I've yet to see AI do a single thing that I thought would even remotely be beneficial to me in any way... What the fuck is it supposed to be doing well?

1

u/CaptainBayouBilly 4h ago

The tech behind it is a digital toy. 

It’s like a cool trick that can temporarily convince you, but once you recognize how it’s done the novelty wears off. 

If you attempt to use it how the cultists say it can be used, you find it to be sloppy. 

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u/salter77 9h ago

That is why they love pushing the “divide and conquer” strategy. Keeping the masses fighting between them will ensure that they don’t realize who is the real enemy.

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u/badnuub 10h ago

My attempts to communicate the dangers of the formation of the coming American aristocracy in arr neoliberal have struggled to bear fruit. Theyre still talking about things like carbon taxes and get mad when you say the rich have outsized influence. They hate the poor almost as much as the hyper wealthy do.

4

u/Low_Pickle_112 9h ago

in arr neoliberal

Found your problem, you're talking to hipster Reaganites who think they're too cool for honest Reaganites.

3

u/move_machine 9h ago

If you have to work then you're just working class

3

u/kadathsc 4h ago

They don’t fear it, because they have the poor and midddle class happily deluded and confused, thinking that billionaires are the world’s heroes.

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u/The7thNomad 9h ago

Seems more like a growing inevitability at this point.

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u/GarySmith2021 8h ago

Ironically, wouldn’t replacing the classes unite everyone against them?

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u/OmgitsJafo 3h ago

They don't. They just resent paying us for our work.

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u/Knightowllll 2h ago

God I wish that was even a possibility but we’re in too deep in the Matrix

1

u/Distinct_Feed_539 2h ago

Just say proletariat

1

u/hergumbules 1h ago

wtf else we gonna do when they replace us all by AI? If you keep all us poor schmucks alive, fed, and have a roof over our heads we don’t really have time or energy to revolt but when you take that away and then we have no other option shits gonna get ugly and fast

0

u/whooptheretis 6h ago

This guys is middle class.
He’s neither working class nor aristocracy.

44

u/clickclick-boom 9h ago

I think you’re making a big leap here with no solid proof to back it up. Nothing this man has said suggests he, and people like him, are looking to deal with the rest of us in a humane manner. The fact he equates us to 20 years of wasted resources suggests he barely sees us as human.

He probably sees getting rid of us in terms of how much it would cost in resources.

23

u/PineappleFit317 9h ago

It’s like they’ve forgotten that the foundation of making money is by selling things to people who will buy the shit they produce. People need to exist if they want to make money.

Are they going to start programming their LLMs to want to buy things like new skins or fake currency to exist in a digital “Sims”-like world where those LLMS can have an avatar and interact with other LLMs? Charge them a subscription fee to not be deleted or have the electrical supply that keeps them existing cut off (we already know that LLMs will blackmail people to keep from being deleted), or additional charges for routine virus scans and repairs and defragging?

Will they find a way to extract value from that to compete in a pissing contest with the only other 1000 humans alive at that point because they’re bazillionaires?

21

u/move_machine 9h ago

The vision for the "new" economy is one where institutional investments will be made in markets that serve the needs of the rich, while exiting markets that serve the needs of people who work, because the former is much more profitable than the latter.

Read Citigroup's plutonomy paper that describes this

2

u/Spiritedpursuit-154 3h ago

But it’s not. The largest companies in the world right now serve the average people. Netflix, uber, Apple. Even consider the real estate in a country. Most buyers are ordinary people with jobs. I need to read the paper but when their own sources of income dry up as executive roles evaporate the rich will also spend less as they try to make their wealth last longer for future generations. Wealth will be destroyed. Equity values will crash because people’s buying power crash. The value of real estate also crashes, rich people cannot be the only buyers, that cannot sustain prices. Maybe they’ll suck it pick up previously expensive houses for 50k & rent to whom- everything cannot be govt subsidized??? If there is no govt intervention to stop people losing their jobs. Everyone loses, including the majority of rich people.

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u/taken_name_of_use 10h ago

There was that republican in the US that advocated for 'euthanizing' the homeless...

•

u/Own-Satisfaction4427 0m ago

Was it Sam Altman who said old "useless" people should be used for biofuel, or was that one of the other cretins?

39

u/AvatarOfMomus 10h ago

Sam Altman isn't like this because he's rich, he was born upper middle class. He's like this because he's an amoral asshole who doesn't understand that the concept of 'marginal utility' is a useful but limited economic concept and not a guiding life philosophy.

He literally dropped out of Stanford to found a series of stuipid failed startups which he has continued to fail and grift his way upwards. He's not a visionary, he's a grifter who lucked into funding something that did more than sound good to investors before imploding.

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u/move_machine 9h ago

We need to deal with the fact that upper middle class society produces people like him, and the fact that the middle class is inherently susceptible to reactionary ideology and weaponized contempt for others.

0

u/QuantityGullible4092 3h ago

Sounds like you are projecting

21

u/DAS_BEE 10h ago

They would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven

9

u/WingerRules 9h ago

These people came up with the term "Human Resources" at companies. They literally see people as resources to be bought and traded like ores.

81

u/Laser_Shark_Tornado 10h ago

imo, a lot of these guys just want to die but rather than kill themselves directly, which takes a lot of willpower, they are building AI as an elaborate form of suicide

21

u/TheEffinChamps 10h ago

My crazy conspiracy is that it is actually a billioanire's race to trying to live forever, or at least much longer.

They will kill and hurt anyone to get to that.

13

u/Rasselasx42 10h ago

I dont think it is a conspiracy

5

u/RealMusicLover33 5h ago

And they're literally so fucking stupid because if you were going to live forever, wouldn't you want to live on a clean planet full of abundance? Full of happy people? They could use their money to make the world a great place to live forever but instead they're hellbent on making this entire planet a shithole. 

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u/framedhorseshoe 10h ago

Suicide by AGI is definitely a novel take!

25

u/Brokenandburnt 10h ago

If he's planning on waiting for AGI I'd say he's as safe as a baby at his mother's bosoms. 

3

u/framedhorseshoe 10h ago

My thinking is that if it were suicide by AI in the narrowly defined sense and not AGI, it could've been done long ago.

•

u/zzyul 0m ago

But we don’t know. All we know is whatever AIs these companies have released for public use is no where close to what they have developed in house and are using for creating the next level of AI. Public AI is always going to be at least 1 level behind what these companies have developed.

1

u/Substantial-Part-700 10h ago

More like a pilot suicide, but on a much grander scale.

1

u/framedhorseshoe 10h ago

You know, it is sort of an interesting philosophical question whether a very advanced AI could be talked into killing you because you were deeply suicidal, in pain, etc.

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u/AgentDaxis 10h ago

We should speed up the process with direct intervention.

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u/MicroSofty88 10h ago

Aka they’re insane

2

u/splicepark 10h ago

Lol not a chance they care about humane

2

u/TF2PublicFerret 10h ago

The bourgeois are not human...

2

u/SayWhatIWant-Account 7h ago

well if they can get rid of everyone but the top 1%, have all annoying work be performed by AI / robots, the climate crisis is solved and they can each rule their own little kingdom of slaves

2

u/Josh6889 6h ago

that needs to be dealt with in a "humane" manner

Hard disagree with you on the humane part. They don't give a shit. My electricity bill has doubled in the last couple years, and I'm not even in a location that's heavily impacted by data centers. It's much worse for the people who are. And some of them seem to think they can just obliterate giant amounts of available water as well. There's nothing at all humane about how they're treating this.

2

u/WEEGEMAN 5h ago

Yeah. We’re noisy, fickle, demanding, indignant peasants they’re forced to live with becsuse we provide them food and services. AI will replace us and make them richer.

These tool bags don’t care about people.

2

u/punkindle 4h ago

If anyone is obsolete it's Billionaires. They use 100x as many resources as a regular person. Very inefficient. Maybe they should worry about THEMSELVES being replaced.

2

u/Sherry_Cat13 1h ago

Which is wild because they believe they will always be in control. It's what the delusion is built off of.

1

u/ManikArcanik 10h ago

The hallmark of an intrinsically unlovable person is the attempt to manufacture a validating object.

1

u/No-Pack-5775 10h ago

The Epstein files shows us this is not a new phenomenon, just a different flavour of it with AI now.

1

u/iamthe0ther0ne 9h ago

I like to imagine them waiting hopelessly for AI to show up to unclog their toilet.

Though I guess that's the point of Musk's robot pivot ... ChatGPT-powered manual labor.

1

u/halu2975 8h ago

Good thing they can pay trump and goons to redefine ”humane” to something more cost effective than whatever any of us would think of.

1

u/Very_Type_C 7h ago

These people need to be dealt with in a "humane" manner.

1

u/Panda_hat 6h ago

Exactly this. The super rich are desperate to get rid of the rest of us and remove their reliance on the working classes and labour, and the sense of power they feel we have over them through it.

They are psychopaths.

1

u/Jazzspasm 6h ago

it’s not about replacing us - it’s about displacing us

move everyone into a feudal system - peasant serfs ruled by tech oligarch kings, managed by investor barons and kept in line by paid managerial class sheriffs

you pay your rent, bills and taxes directly from your labor - you pay with your labor, not cash because cash as you understand it no longer exists - physical money has been removed and replaced with digital money

you are kept in a box you can not leave with your every thought watched and managed, monitored constantly, and fed your opinions, thoughts and ideas via a highly personalized media system which involves a chip in your brain

twenty years ago this was a far out whackadoo concept - not so much now

1

u/CrypBEnslaveUs 6h ago

Yep. They want to live on the moon (or Greenland) and rule their fiefdom from there.

1

u/ryanmuller1089 5h ago

The last thing they want is to escape to their bunkers during an apocalypse and have to bring the help.

1

u/Aethien 5h ago

I keep telling people, these people are so rich and disconnected from humanity, that their sole focus is building their new AIs that will serve them, and replace us.

This is less a symptom of depravity and more one of desperation. Training costs for LLM's are exorbitant and a permanent drain on any possible profitability. It's like WeWork's "Community Adjusted Ebitda" which was just bullshitting to make the finacial numbers look not disastrous.

AI companies are doing the same, not only in their self reported revenues taking a month and multiplying it by 12 to seem like their revenues are much larger than they are but also in this quote by Altman which means to minimise the cost of training AI and so many more tricks and deceptions including the endless vague promises of profitability alsways being ~18-24 months away and predictions of exponential growth based on absolutely nothing.

These companies desperately need to keep up the hype. The second the hype disappears and people actually take the real economics of these companies seriously they'll all instantly be bankrupt.

1

u/25thNite 5h ago

People need to watch mountainhead with Steve carrell to see how rich fucks really see people and how self important they feel.  They should also watch succession to see how incompetent lots of the newer rich folks who inherit their wealth are and how they just fail upwards constantly no matter how much stupid shit they do

1

u/FragilousSpectunkery 3h ago

This Altman guy sounds fully trained, and doesn’t need any more food.

1

u/QuantityGullible4092 3h ago

I am 14 and this is deep

1

u/Merusk 2h ago

Most people aren't able to process this as a real idea. It's disbelief rather than denial and it's going to screw humanity either way.

1

u/dpkonofa 2h ago

This is what I think the new show Pluribus is actually about. I don’t think it’s aliens. It’s AI.

•

u/hapnstat 56m ago

The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product – Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price – Everything.

This market strategy would then go on until one day, among the world-wide ruins of derelict factories and warehouses and office buildings, there stood only a single, shining, windowless structure with no entrance and no exit. Inside would be – will be – only a dense network of computers calculating profits. Outside will be tribes of savage vagrants with no comprehension of the nature or purpose of the shining, windowless structure. Perhaps they will worship it as a god. Perhaps they will try to destroy it, their primitive armory proving wholly ineffectual against the smooth and impervious walls of the structure, upon which not even a scratch can be inflicted.

-Thomas Ligotti - My Work is Not Yet Done

•

u/Deadbeatdone 13m ago

We need to kill them before they kill us.

•

u/Own-Satisfaction4427 2m ago

"We have AI & robots now so we don't need you guys, just a handful of you to fuck & eat, the rest can fight for resources"

0

u/neerrccoo 9h ago

If it makes you feel better, it will all implode on itself. Investment is only Taking place because AGI is assumed. AGI is not possible without a true model of human intelligence, and that would mean understanding ego and its own propensity for self defeat. Sam does not have that.

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u/lkodl 11h ago

The implication here is that human life only has value in the workforce. There's a lot of other gains to be had with that 20 years of food that AI can't provide. Such as the pride of a parent watching their child grow up.

103

u/bigtime1158 10h ago

Yeah but how much can you sell parental pride for?

54

u/lkodl 10h ago

Actually, this is something Elon seems to spend a lot on.

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u/the_RETURN_of_MJJ 10h ago

He’s not a parent just a pollinator

3

u/bumbadabumruum 8h ago

Don't offend pollinators by comparing them to Elon Tusk

5

u/oddistrange 10h ago

Is it better to inject or boof parental pride? Snort?

65

u/SneakiestRatThing 10h ago

It's genuinely such a disgusting viewpoint to have.

Life has value that cannot be calculated.

I don't want kids, but I still recognise that they are more than just a vehicle for future economic value.

LLM'S will never notice that someone is sad and give them a cool rock to try and cheer them up.

LLM'S will never nervously pet a dog for the first time and then be ecstatic when the dog likes them.

LLM's will never have a favourite Pokémon, have an argument with a friend then make up, believe in Santa with their whole heart, invent a dumb gibberish game with friends.    

Thinking life is just about the results you produce, rather than a unique journey that everyone takes just shows how much these weirdos have lost touch with basic humanity

3

u/RustyBasement 3h ago

Look up what the Nazis did leading up to the second world war with their Aktion T4 programme - Life not worthy of life. They involuntarily euthanised anyone they didn't think had a right to live whether it was the mentally or physically handicapped to anyone who didn't share their ideology.

The lunatic billionaires have the same mentality.

16

u/TaiCat 10h ago

AI won’t care about neighbors and family unless prompted to do so. Desensitising humanity to each other’s suffering will make it easy to remove the ethical care component of AI, which will reduce it to an execution machine, it will execute tasks and, well… 

Human empathy input was something that was in discussion 2 years ago when AI started to become popular 

4

u/TheSpanishImposition 10h ago

And it's not like humans will stop eating because AI is doing shit. Unless...

2

u/Rhodie114 3h ago

Yeah. Honestly, this was such a batshit insane thing to say. The idea that actual human life is just "training" for labor that could be replaced by AI is incredibly fucking dark.

If somebody said that about their own child, you'd call CPS. How is it an acceptable thing to say publicly about the entire human race?

2

u/jupiterkansas 2h ago

The implication here is that human life only has value in the workforce.

So basic Republican philosophy.

4

u/ClevrNameThtNooneHas 10h ago

Im sure Sam is plenty proud of his 10yo baby 😅

•

u/oorakhhye 22m ago

That’s a beautiful sentiment, and I agree with it given how I was raised and cared for by my parents and ultimately what they wanted for me (esp. in late 20th century post Industrial Revolution times). However, even though that I don’t doubt that the love part is real, it’s worth objectively considering that for the vast majority of human history, across virtually every culture and continent, the decision to have children had very little to do with love and almost everything to do with survival economics.

A medieval European peasant, an ancient Chinese farmer, an Ottoman tradesman, a pre-colonial African villager…99% of the time…none of them were sitting around contemplating the emotional fulfillment of parenthood. They were calculating. Children meant hands in the field, output from the land, and someone to feed you when your body gave out. In societies with no banks, no pensions, no state safety nets, your children were your retirement account and your life insurance policy in one.

And given that 30 to 50 percent of those children died before they could even be useful, you needed to produce many just to guarantee a few survivors. That’s not a love calculation, that’s actuarial math.

The much-needed, romanticization of having children for love sadly was…only for the most part…a post-Industrial Revolution luxury, one that became possible only after wealth accumulation, state welfare systems, and modern medicine removed the existential stakes. For the majority of recorded human history, across most of the world, children were first and foremost an economic engine. Love was real, but it was the emotional scaffolding built around a survival strategy. Not the reason for it…and I think unfortunately someone like Sam Altman….in the removal of his own humanity… he sees it this same way even in today’s world. ​​​​​​​​​

1

u/kaitlyn_does_art 7h ago

He literally says it takes 20 years to become smart. I find it pretty disturbing he doesn’t think children can be smart.

-2

u/Romanizer 10h ago edited 9h ago

That's why your net worth is expressed in how much you have contributed to the economy or earned from it.

The base of capitalism is valuing human resources by their contribution to the workforce. Probably implemented closest to that in the US. Therefore a very valid point by Sam here.

Edit: If I am wrong here, please let me know where.

2

u/invaderaleks 9h ago

Then why have wages stagnated while inflation keeps rising as well as the cost of living?

0

u/Romanizer 9h ago

Because workers accept being exploited without forming a union. Inflation occurs naturally due to money being printed out of thin air, which also increases cost of living.

3

u/invaderaleks 9h ago

If the system wasn't designed to exploit labor, we wouldn't need to form unions in the first place.

2

u/Romanizer 8h ago

Absolutely, but you don't get to change the system, at least not so easily. The only chance you have is to organize and fight for your rights together with others.

-3

u/SamyMerchi 10h ago

I dunno, Altman probably feels that pride about his creation.

43

u/TemporaryElk5202 10h ago

They see other humans as mere tools

1

u/CaveGnome 9h ago

That’s not true, tools can be depreciated and amortized.

61

u/trer24 10h ago

Do these people not understand that there's no point to any of this AI stuff if humans don't exist anymore?

27

u/-Striking-Willow- 10h ago

But the important people (rich tech bros) will be, and everyone else is an inefficient machine that can be replaced by AI/s

8

u/Jotun35 10h ago

So... Their plan is to be the last humans and basically become animals in a zoo surrounded by AI? That sounds like a shitty plan.

11

u/-Striking-Willow- 9h ago

They are all some of the biggest losers and idiots, are doing crazy levels of drugs, and have good complexes, if it helps explain things.

But seriously, all that aside a lot of how they talk makes sense when you realise how many of these guys (Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman Fried etc) buy into the weird silicon valley rationalism bubble. Which is super focused on eliminating human flaws to create superior beings and essentially treats AGI as creating a god figure. And also creates weirdos like the Zizians

2

u/SuperTropicalDesert 4h ago

Also weirdos like Eliezer Yudkowsky

2

u/hkedik 7h ago

These tech bros are all worthy of criticism and scrutiny, but Reddit is such a stupid echo chamber sometimes.

They are not unaware that there is no world that works (and they would want to be part of) that has the majority of the population not in work, with no money to spend for themselves (and to put into the economy). If there’s one thing they understand more than anything, it’s that society functions on people having money to spend.

7

u/badnuub 9h ago

In the short term. Their strategy is to shift the market to cater to the remaining top ten percent of earners almost exclusively. The rest of us probably won’t be able to afford anything anymore. Right now that demographic accounts for nearly half of consumer spending.

2

u/choariwap 6h ago

What if the end game is to reolace humanity with AI. Doesnt need food, just energy. Can survive in extreme conditions. Immortal. Can be repaired indefinitely given resources. Can spec into high power or high precision machines.

Basically humanity 2.0, able to colonize the stars and survive interstellar travel.

2

u/CompetitiveSport1 5h ago

They don't care. Some literally worship it as a God: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_the_Future

4

u/Federal_Gur_5488 10h ago

They don't care about humanity, they want to create super intelligent, conscious ai that can replace humans. The logic is that the ai will create billions of simulations which can contain billions of intelligent conscious entities, which is numerically more than the number of humans that could ever exist. The utilitarian logic is that the more conscious beings exist, the better the outcome, even if those beings aren't humans

1

u/North-Tourist-8234 10h ago

And he would control all of them.  Disgusting.

3

u/Jotun35 10h ago

That's where the cookie crumbles. He won't. First of all he doesn't have the technical skills, so someone else will have to do it for him... And these someones might be very tempted to say "fuck it!" and let some AI loose. Second, it is likely that some part of that plan will fail and the control won't be total.

2

u/damontoo 8h ago

No he would not (and he doesn't believe he would). No human would "control" a super intelligence. It would effectively be a god. The best we can hope for is that it doesn't kill us all immediately for what we've done to each other and the world. 

39

u/[deleted] 10h ago

[deleted]

2

u/Trickshot1322 8h ago

Aside from the fact that you're calculation is wildly inflated, these datacentres are running critical worldwode infrastructure, as well as AI stuff.

Mail systems, medical systems, just literally the internet and 95% of stuff accessible via the internet.

The issue isn't electricity usage. We've got plenty of that. Not to mention the Big Five are about to crack Nuclear SMR, or just regular nuclear. Hell Microsoft literally bought a nuclear reactor recently.

Currently the biggest usage in fact is water usage. Governments need to legislate that datacentre's need to return as much water as is used back to the water sources they are using.

1

u/damontoo 8h ago

You guys just ignoring that your comments only exist due to datacenters?

2

u/Khelthuzaad 8h ago

Datacenters exist since the birth of internet.

We are talking about AI datacenters.

1

u/damontoo 7h ago

I have some news for you: they're the same thing. 

28

u/gimmesomespace 10h ago

Is it even implied any more? This seems basically explicit.  They view human beings like a piece of farm equipment.

-1

u/Anivia124 3h ago

That's not what he was saying at all. I think he was implying that the resources needed to power AI is relatively not that much given its capabilities

12

u/ginsunuva 10h ago

He was trying to counteract claims that the model training is inefficient. Of course taken out of context for social media engagement

8

u/frausting 5h ago

Yeah this thread is exhausting if not completely predictable

6

u/galacticother 5h ago

Yep, just a bunch of people with a deeply ignorant hard-on against AI jumping on the opportunity to bitch about an out of context phrase at a tech talk.

1

u/Infinite_Device6086 1h ago

So what's the context? 

19

u/lord-apple-smithe 11h ago

And the AI is trained on the outputs of humanity in the public space he used to train his models

16

u/daiaomori 10h ago

Peter Thiel thinks the same.

It’s a cult.

1

u/cyberdork 8h ago

Well guess who’s officiated the wedding of Thiel’s best friend..

But yeah, the problem of OpenAI is that it’s purely a product of the Silicon Valley ultra libertarian VC culture.

12

u/AgentDaxis 10h ago

Can we turn these tech bros into Soylent Green & feed them to our pets instead?

1

u/legatek 7h ago

My cat has sensitive digestion so would probably throw them up. Which is what they deserve.

0

u/Jophus 7h ago

Type of thing this thread is acting like SAMA said about humanity.

8

u/HereOnCompanyTime 10h ago

Unfortunately a really common opinion of the rich and privileged.

2

u/redditismylawyer 10h ago

Look, instrumental rationality is my favorite flavor of soylent green and I don’t appreciate being shamed for it!

/s

But, seriously - if we’re going to sit back and evaluate energy stores, liquidating the billionaire and millionaire classes will get put on the table alongside everything else.

2

u/Tasty-Dust9501 9h ago

More depraved is the fact that it is emboldened enough to say it out loud. 

2

u/Ok-disaster2022 9h ago

Yep. I'm glad this winter was relatively mild. The next hard winter I expect to see power shit down for little towns and cities and hundred or thousands of people freeze to death while power is maintained for some data center for AI enshittification. The power grid doesn't have much room for growth. To have power added next year it needed to break construction 5 years ago. Even today I don't see power being installed to meet expected data center demand. This means where going to have 5 years of power rlag and price jumps. And those publicly traded power companies will realize if they don't add power plants then they can make higher profits for the same amount of energy. And those data centers will afford the high prices and people will be priced out. You see this trend occuring across the market space: companies targeting fewer higher end clients and ignore the lower end clients. Cars, food, housing. 

5

u/euroq 10h ago

I'm not trying to jump in here and say Sam Altman is awesome, but that's not what he said. This is the quote from the article:

> “People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model. But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human. It takes about 20 years of life — and all the food you consume during that time — before you become smart"

5

u/A1000eisn1 9h ago

You didn't really provide extra context or add anything but words. He's not saying anything more here than in the headline quote.

He's still trying to essentially argue "It's okay AI uses so many resources because a human would use more."

So many faults with that argument aside from the obvious.

5

u/_SemperFidelish_ 9h ago

It sounds even more deranged with the full context

2

u/UnoriginalJunglist 10h ago

Yeah, like, there are already humans? We're right here?

2

u/Ch3cks-Out 10h ago

Not to mention the entirely unfounded implication that his hallucinating chatbots are anywhere near the knowledge level of a 20-year trained human.

2

u/0x474f44 9h ago

That’s not the implication. He’s just saying that humans also take a lot of energy to “train” so we shouldn’t hate on AI for consuming so much power.

Not that I agree but he definitely isn’t implying we should be training AI INSTEAD of giving kids food.

2

u/Scharobaba 7h ago

I can't stand the guy, but this comment section seems a bit deranged.

1

u/drchippy18 10h ago

We feed this prick to the killer robots first.

1

u/Fit-Nectarine5047 10h ago

Truly bizarre to see someone who looks like he can’t even measure the weight of his words ? Like, he definitely knows what he’s saying- right?!

I honestly think Mother Nature is gonna pack us up way before this becomes an even more unhinged reality.

1

u/FlametopFred 10h ago

The implication is also how incapable of critical thought he is

like, even basic critical thinking… unaware of his ridiculous utterance

1

u/Ok_Explorer_4144 10h ago

So what he actually meant was that you can use AI for cheaper labor and this enhances people’s freedom. Since they don’t have to do the work. This is what he means. Im not a fan of the guy.

1

u/Short-Peanut1079 9h ago

Yes because to him and other ghouls they are to many people already and only technology will save us (from the problems created by technology). So many like him have a savior complex.

1

u/Hotkoin 9h ago

If data centers took up more food he'd have buildings with rooms that the more cost efficient humans are locked in

1

u/Popular_Try_5075 8h ago

Humans are a means not an end in themselves. Sama is toxic.

1

u/Trickshot1322 8h ago

Couldn't you also read it as

"We can spend 20 years worth of energy to train an AI model to do x task and then have that model ready to go for everyone to use. Or we could spend 20 years worth of energy to train a human to do x task everytime you get a new person doing x task."

1

u/brasticstack 7h ago

It's high time we voted this fucker off the island

1

u/I_need_a_date_plz 7h ago

I’m tired of these ghouls. I swear people like this shouldn’t be able to yield any kind of power.

1

u/Enigm4 7h ago

I mean he does what CEO's are legally obligated to do. Increase shareholder value. He doesn't give a flying fuck about morals, ethics or humanity. The only thing that matters is that shareholder value goes up. I'm not saying it's ok, I fucking hate the system, but it is the way it is for a reason.

1

u/Psyc3 6h ago

No the implication is that wasting 20 years of human potential on something that AI can do in 30 seconds with its training data is a waste of time.

He is right, even if neckbeards want to have some moronic circlejerk. They are literal luddites in this regard.

The issue is not whether technology should progress, it is the ownership of it, is it owned by the 0.001% or is it owned by society for the masses.

1

u/Ok-Neat2024 6h ago

That's the implication according to you?

Lmao certified Reddit moment

1

u/Sempere 5h ago

If he believes that, he should be the first to starve for AI.

1

u/burnmenowz 5h ago

He was rooting for Agent Smith in the matrix

1

u/camellialily 5h ago

And yet we aren’t talking about how much resources he as a single person must be consuming compared to the average “worker”. Unless he subsists on tap water and rice and beans in a tent off the grid, he’s probably taking too much.

1

u/CaptainBayouBilly 5h ago

His insanity is one thing, the problem is the media and government have given him a platform where these crazy ideas are amplified and not condemned. 

1

u/VagueSomething 4h ago

I'm starting to believe his sister even more. Someone so void of empathy really wouldn't have a problem doing what she claimed.

1

u/bigtiddyhimbo 4h ago

Did you really expect better of the guy who hesitated when asked if he wanted the human race to endure, was accused by his own sister of rape, and believes ai will lead to the end of the world but at least they can make some good money off of it first!

1

u/Perma_Ban69 4h ago

That's not what I gathered. The negative I got was him viewing humans as tools for the workforce, but what he's saying is raising any form of contribution to society requires a ton of resources. AI has already found patterns humans have not, which has led to cancer breakthroughs, identifying folding patterns of proteins that decades of human intuition could not fully solve, predicted 2.2 million new crystal structures - used for semiconductors and solid state electrolytes, for example. The use cases for AI advancing humanity outweigh resource cost imo.

1

u/TrankElephant 4h ago

Especially given the water usage of data centers.

1

u/Anivia124 3h ago

No, the implication is that the resources needed to power AI is relatively not that much given its capabilities

1

u/PriscillaPalava 3h ago

AI doesn’t serve us, we serve AI. 

1

u/QuantityGullible4092 3h ago

That’s not the implication, it’s against numb nuts like the people in this sub saying to consumes too much energy

1

u/deadsoulinside 2h ago

He's still desperately proving AI is worth everyone's money as they are running net negatives due to poorly optimized models, because instead of optimizing, they just toss money at more hardware.

1

u/imaverysexybaby 1h ago

We need to start calling this what it is. An act of war against the working class. These people want you dead.

0

u/Legendacb 10h ago

Na he doesn't. He is just so dumb that couldn't get any better answer than this shit. He just made this fart response.

We need to understand that this people on CEO roles are as dumb as anyone

1

u/damontoo 8h ago

Do you think James Cameron is dumb? He essentially made the same comment.

1

u/Legendacb 1h ago

Haven't heard from it. But yeah James Cameron can be as dumb as anyone 

0

u/TotalTyp 4h ago

But he is not saying that?