If the umbrella dissolves, it’s still in the drink. Just a different kind of ‘in’.

As long as you’re being consistent, not just reacting to enemy-of-the-week.

When did I ever say that?

The point being made seems to be that the distribution network doesn’t need upgrading for AI loads, but does need upgrading if you want to charge EVs at peak times. That’s accurate. Nothing more, nothing less.

Distribution network != the grid.

Elon is absolutely an asshole.

To clarify, I’m not trying to broadly defend generative AI. I’m arguing that it’s not so inherently evil that not only should people should quit their job for moral reasons rather than be involved with it, but others should shun them if they merely use it as a tool for their work (not even developing it). Even if that means unemployment and even if the work is physically/mentally perfectly fine otherwise.

People usually reserve that level of disgust for things like slavery, arms manufacturing, or direct pollution. Not e.g. airline pilots burning a shit-tonne of oil, which then pollutes.

Re labour: I don’t like the idea that automating jobs out of existence is inherently bad. That way lies NJ-style can’t-pump-your-own-gas laws, or railways required to double/triple-crew trains decades after the practical need was gone. A long-term goal of society should (IMO) be to reduce the need for employment.

Inadequate unemployment coverage is a somewhat separate issue and region-dependent. If you want to have make-work jobs, there’s a lot of more fulfilling jobs more valuable to society than writing office boilerplate.

This isn’t a situation where some rural town’s main source of employment is suddenly disappearing, either.

Re copyright: I find the level of overlap between pro-piracy and anti-AI people mildly amusing. If you take ‘information wants to be free’ as a base assumption, generative AI is pretty compatible with that. Attribution remains an issue, but mostly for ‘art’ applications.

Should the companies involved be prosecuted for intentional mass violation of copyright for profit? Yes. Does that extend to every use of every tool? Not so much.

So you’re attacking people who eat meat or take intercontinental holidays with the same level of vitriol? If not, why not?

Getting the energy to/from the storage can still be a big issue. You potentially even end up double-storing it.

cows with guns

You might be able to pay less if you move to a time of use plan.

That depends on how the plans are set.

At least in NZ, the law forbids cross-subsidisarion i.e. customers on one plan paying more/less than is proportional to the cost of serving them, averaged across the group.

This means that here, if you are a cookie-cutter use-power-at-peak-times household, it’s going to be cheaper to use a flat 24hour plan than a ToU plan, because the peak rate will be higher than the 24UC rate.

If you have an EV, you’ll almost certainly be better off on a peak/off-peak plan.

Note that for a while, plans where you pay the current wholesale spot price were called ToU and those can be painful to be on.

The direct damage done by AI is somewhat overblown, especially if you exclude the labour issues, copyright issues, and the effect on the hobby PC markets.

At which point you end up basically arguing about energy/emissions and water usage; hello air travel and eating meat.

A TV used to be a significant investment. There’s that meme about how they’ve gone from being several months pay to something you get for free because your roommate/flatmate moved out. Cell phones aren’t far behind.

Yes, but…

The distribution limits are almost always an afternoon/evening thing. Early afternoon for warm climates (aircon and cooking dinner) and evening for cold climates (cooking dinner, showers, heating).

Midday for solar injection.

Hence the famous ‘duck curve’.

The distribution network has plenty of capacity overnight; we just need people to wait until about 11PM before we start charging.

At that point we get the question of whether we have the generation.

‘Dumping’ is considered anti-competitive behaviour in a lot of places. This sounds a lot like that.

There’s a lot of improvements that have come about as a result of being technically feasible, in many cases over the objections of the workers.

E.g. safer working at heights - harnesses, scissor/boom lifts, scaffolding with kick guards and netting.

In other cases, both the workers and employers wanted improvements. Compare the nose end of a modern truck or freight locomotive with a WW2 era or even 1980s one, for example.

There are a number of 6-8GWe nuclear plants that dump 15+GW into the nearby sea (or in the case of Bruce, into Lake Huron). I don’t see it being much of an issue. Better than virtually any other cooling option.

The issues are maintenance, energy source, and equipment supply.

You could just say ‘Public Domain’ but then you have the issues around privatisation.

Not just jobs. AI can’t hold copyright. This could have messy legal implications.

While I agree hours probably shouldn’t be going up, I think there’s a bit of a ratcheting effect at play.

If you take the classic “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, you end up with the question of how you define ‘needs’.

As tech gets better, the standard of care goes up in healthcare - treatments that were ‘impractical’ 20 years ago are now expected standard of care. Same goes for safety and for standard of living. Electric lighting, aircon, floor space, your own bedroom not shared with 3 other kids, TV/telephone/internet. It’s now basically standard in first world countries to fully treat sewage and have aircon on buses - that wasn’t the case 50 years ago.

Every time automation displaces some drudge work, we’ll be able to find something new that technically could be done and would be nice to have. 30 years later people will be screaming bloody murder if that former nice-to-have breaks down.

That’s certainly not to say we’re efficiently using the labour we have.

OpenAI is joined at the hip with MS, right?

What’s the bet this is MS’s attempt at getting back into the corporate mobile space again? Brand it as CoPilot Phone…

Is this AI?

Why can’t both be accurate?