BLUF:
* To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’.
* Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our...
Summary
* The animal welfare movement has already seen an influx in funding and should prepare for the possibility of more.
* The EA Animal Welfare Fund is encouraging those working in animal advocacy to actively set aside time and resources now to concretely plan for scaling sustainably, and we’ll support you in doing that.
* We’re requesting advocates set concrete ambitious goals and submit plans t...
Public service announcement
1. Applications are now open for our first ever round of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program dedicated exclusively to animal welfare. Learn more about what’s different this round here and apply...
Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone - MIT Technology review.
Should the EA forum still recommend to use an AI generated picture for a post's preview image?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/01/1084189/making-an-image-with-generative-ai-uses-as-much-energy-as-charging-your-phone/
Charging your phone is a very small amount of energy. The CO2-Emissions from that are less than what humans breathe out during an hour.
(some math with example values found through quick google searches, actual values depend on lot of factors and differ from source to source: 20 Wh to charge a phone, 1kg/kWh CO2 for energy, 0.66kg/day CO2 per human breathing. So a phone charge is 20g of CO2, which is equivalent to 20 * 24 / 660 = 0.73 hours of human breathing)
Seems like the externalities of that action are either covered by the electricity cost or should be offset as a bundle.
In either case it doesn't seem worth removing the functionality.