2 Jun
2025
2 Jun
'25
1:14 p.m.
Alexander Schreiber wrote in
<aDxwjRhrUNJ5-Dm-(a)mordor.angband.thangorodrim.de>:
|On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 12:00:11AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
|> There are surely useful tasks for AI, when it is driven with green
|> energy, and after is has been fully understood.
|
|What is currently being sold as "AI" is mostly LLM (Large Language
|Models), which are - to grossly simplify things - massive brute-force
|pattern matching engines.
|
|There are plenty of use cases where a well setup pattern matching engine
|is exactly what you need. My favourite example: SBB (Swiss Railways)
|uses "AI" (an in-house trained pattern matching model) to sift through
|the massive incoming stream of noise recordings from rail mounted
|vibration sensors, to identify (by matching known qualified patterns)
|those caused by damaged train carriage wheels. Additional support
|infrastructure then identifies train, carriage, wheel and notifies
|the owner/operator to fix the wheel - before gets worse and does
|more damage to the rails.
That is possibly a great thing. I can assure everybody that Swiss
freight trains pass by here in the many dozens / hundreds each
day, and they are very well maintained. Most often they are
quieter than even the much light German passenger trains.
(Yes, there was that judgement in 2015 that the German (freight)
trains have to become silent by December 2020, before that it was
sheer unbelievable, especially during braking. And i still can
recall the female DB speaker saying "und die Zeit brauchen wir
auch" "and that time we really need". Unfortunately now the
brakes are a bit more silent, but wheel imbalance and wheel
bearings have massively increased (again).)
I say possibly because i could imagine sensors in the locomotive
should be capable to detect vibration irregularies? Not that
i know. But vibrations is understated given the hammerings. Does
this really need sound recordings? Interesting.
|There are lots of similar tasks where pattern matching engines are
|a great fit (e.g. optical QC on finished surfaces during manufacturing).
|
|If you try to use pattern matching engines for tasks that require
|knowledge, thinking, understanding (in short: a trained human mind),
|then you will be sorely disappointed while drowining in - potentially
|even superficially plausible sounding - bullshit (See Harry Frankfurt,
|"On Bullshit").
|
|> Before that it is just another race that is raced at whatever cost
|> there may be. The price is payed by the environment, and the
|
|The current forecasts of both the use and the costs (some claim that
|we need to feed 90% of all power production to data centers eventually,
|which is clearly .. ill advised) of "AI" are looking wildly exaggerated.
I also do not use cryptocurrencies btw.
I .. have heard Microsoft wants to buy a turned off nuclear plant
to reactivate it, only for training AI? They also meddle within
the "small nuclear plants" scene. I am thus against it.
|> grand children, but no longer further down the line. That is
|> possibly the good thing about it. Exactly as said by the Club of
|> Rome in 1972, and at least ever since also by the Catholic Church.
|
|Club of Rome did not see a lot of scientific developments coming that
|enabled growth way beyond their expectations. But then, predicting
|the future is never a sure business.
I would think at the 50th anniversary of the publication there was
a profound review, and the pretty well got it. That was the great
thing on Gore's campaign, in between the lines of that duel he
mentioned it. With favouring "technology", of course, which
i never believed will outgrow the bad effects. Not with that
overall mental state, anyway.
|That said, cheerfully burning down the planet for short-term profit
|is not exactly a sustainable business model, to put it politely.
Thank you.
|Kind regards,
| Alex.
|--
|"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
| looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
--End of <aDxwjRhrUNJ5-Dm-(a)mordor.angband.thangorodrim.de>
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)