• @[email protected]
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      4 months ago

      It’s amazing the amount of ressources that are spent on creating an environment/platform that locks users in.

      Like, shit, if we spent like 10% on that efforts into open source stuff we’d be living in a utopia right now or something.

  • @[email protected]
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    74 months ago

    Tech Debt. So many of these companies investing in AI are doing so at the expense of out dated, broken shit that AI will never address.

      • snooggums
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        4 months ago

        Fixing the Y2k issue was a single endeavor spread across a massive number of systems worldwide.

      • @[email protected]
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        4 months ago

        I can’t speak for other companies, but in mine we do have a single line item for Tech Debt. It gets IGNORED most of the time, but we do have it! ;)

          • @[email protected]
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            24 months ago

            Largely software updates. You would not believe how old some of this stuff is.

            The problem becomes each update is tied to multiple systems, so testing has to be done across the board for each update.

            So it’s easy to go “Why are we running xxx from 2016?” but then you have test it everywhere and that’s why it’s almost 10 years out of date.

  • @[email protected]
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    24 months ago

    Fusion power or cures for diseases.

    Fusion power, should it work, would solve a lot of problems. Environmentally, in particular, but if we could get a decent distribution of reactors around the planet we’d alleviate food problems, water problems, and a whole bunch of suffering of one kind or another. Cheap power would help a lot.

    Otherwise, anything to help cure diseases. Genetic, auto-immune, cancers, misfortune, whatever. Alleviate more suffering, let people live and work again.

    • Admiral Patrick
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      294 months ago

      Kind of a two-fer right there. Without “AI” sucking up so much power, we’d already be better off climate-wise.

      • snooggums
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        34 months ago

        It is a singular endeavor with tons of moving parts, like pretty much every modern endeavor.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          14 months ago

          My problem with counting all climate change is that the goal itself is not unique: there are atmospheric greenhouse gasses to lower, which are something completely different than the acidification of the oceans, which are completely different from deforestation.

          And the effects themselves are, it’s true, all originated from an imbalance in a system, but exactly because climate is a complex system, they differ wildly.

          • lime!
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            174 months ago

            generative ai is not one thing.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              34 months ago

              I agree. Still it is a set with way fewer elements than action against climate change. Also, the nature of operations in the latter case is way more diversified than in the development of the former.

              It is only my opinion though, you may find Generative AI a hydra compared to the other.

              By the way, the money would be well spent indeed but not even close to enough for a sustainable change.

              • lime!
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                54 months ago

                idk about that last part actually. some of the stuff we can do for the climate we just aren’t doing.

                also we could just hire a few hitmen

      • @[email protected]
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        4 months ago

        Buying companies that create a lot of pollution and closing them down. (Coal mines/plants, oil firms, single use plastic suppliers, etc)

        Another big one would be buying up pharma companies an their patents and releasing everything under creative commons license.

        • @[email protected]
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          24 months ago

          Question on this, how would you expect the millions of people that heat/cool their homes to get by? Or are you advocating for a return to caves ? Unless you’re saying shut those down to build nuclear/solar/wind, which also takes a lot of dirty manufacturing to build. It’s kind of a no-win with this many humans.

          • @[email protected]
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            4 months ago

            Bio gas is a lot better than coal and fossil oil for the mean time. But long term basically the whole world should be using heatpumps for heating and cooling, they are incredibly efficient and outperform any other system on every metric. Especially because electricity will become dirt cheap in a few years/decades.

            The only reason they arent installed in every house yet is the fossil fuel lobby and their bought politicians, but even they are slowly realizing that its the inevitable solution.

            which also takes a lot of dirty manufacturing to build

            Solar compensates its production+installation footprint in around a year see here for the relevant numbers from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory

            Wind power plants compensate theirs in a matter of a few months. See this part of Climate Towns latest video analyzing the typical propaganda that made you falsely believe that https://youtu.be/wBC_bug5DIQ?t=185

            Nuclear is obviously stupid and does indeed cost way too much and take way too much effort for how bad of a deal you get out of it when its done.

            • @[email protected]
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              24 months ago

              I for one would love to live in this world where electricity becomes dirt cheap, as my rates have only ever gone up, usually in the name of installing more renewables, now don’t get me wrong I’m not against installing renewables but let’s not pretend it will necessarily make power cheaper for the end user

              • @[email protected]
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                14 months ago

                It will. Consumer electricity prices are completely artificially inflated. No matter how corrupt the the system is, eventually the prices will be pushed down because there is such an over abundance of energy output. Already we are seeing exchange prices regularily going into the negative.

                We might ofcourse dump all that excess into garbage like AI training.

  • Rhynoplaz
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    464 months ago

    I’m sure you’ll get a bunch of respectable answers, but keep in mind that secretly, everyone is actually thinking sex robots.

  • @[email protected]
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    34 months ago

    I’m not sure what technology I would choose, but surely it would be related to the climate change.