Links, quotes & articles (Week 22, 2024)

Neven shares his feelings on receiving an AI generated email from someone who sounds like they were a close friend. Until reading this post it's not something I thought much about too, but reflecting on it I think I'd also be extremely put off if this happened to me.

... prior to this email, I never even pondered whether I wanted AI to call me up on behalf of people in my life. It had simply not occurred to me—and now that it has occurred to me, I definitely do not want small talk and relationships outsourced to server farms. This stuff shouldn’t feel hard or taxing; it’s what our presence here on Earth is mostly made up of. The effort, the clumsiness, and the time invested are where humanity is stored.

Chris writes a note about the state of current conversation on Green IT and Digital Sustainability. He explores the focus on efficiency being elevated above most other steps, and how that takes the conversation away from implementing deeper, more impactful change.

A very interesting panel discussion episode of The Carbon Copy this week covering how, unlike traditional advancements in IT, AI is likely to find itself constrained by the energy grid rather than by chips or other technologies. In it, there's this fantastic line from Brian Janous, co-founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which ties in nicely with Chris' article above.

I had someone ask me the other day, well, what happens if NVIDIA comes out with a chip that's twice as efficient? And my response to that is, well, then, Meta or Microsoft or Google will plug in twice as many chips. If I have the power, they're going to build as big of a model as they can build. And so that's where I think AI is a little different than what we've seen, not to say there's not incentives for efficiency because there very much is.

Finally this week, a great Changelog Interview pod with Bryan Cantrill who talks about his history at Sun, Oracle, Joyent, and other stops along the way.

... there is a line that I do love in Halt and Catch Fire, which is “We’re not the thing. We’re the thing that gets us to the thing.” And to me what that means is computing is a tool for humanity. And it’s a tool to allow people to do extraordinary things.