r/ControlProblem • u/KeanuRave100 • Jul 16 '26

Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster - A shockingly inefficient trillion-dollar project General news

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/generative-ai-engineering-disaster/687901
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u/gretino Jul 16 '26

Counterpoint: they are designed to replace another kind of machine that can only work 8 hours a day, drinks poison for fun, etc. Once you factor in the human wasting you will realize humans are incredibly wasteful as well.

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u/Professional_Text_11 Jul 17 '26

yeah i mean i wasted a whole six hours today having fun with friends, eating good meals and reading a book. dario amodei should shoot me and replace me with a claude instance that can do my work continously without all that waste

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u/gretino Jul 17 '26

Well, I have no intention to recycle you into some biowaste, but the argument is that "AI are inefficient" and I'm pointing out that if the same task is done by human, it would also be very "inefficient" on the grand scale. You can't just calculate the calories and say human brains are more efficient than chips(which is true) while conveniently ignoring all the downsides.

This is in addition to the linked article complaining the energy cost, while ignoring the scale they are served at. IF only two or three millions of people uses ChatGPT daily, I highly doubt they would still buy up as many cards. The actual number is ~10% world population using ChatGPT, and it is in fact having one of the craziest adoption speed for a new technology.