Very much so, people try to sell it like it's a magical solution to all the world problems. Even if it was as amazing as people tout it to be right now (it isn't) it wouldn't make our lives better. Maybe faster, a bit cheaper (for some) but not better in the most fundamental sense. We can do better right now but choose to ignore our most important issues to chase the new shiny thing.
AI R&D definitively has its place but certainly not like this, this feels like just another hype bubble.
Water heating, AC, fridges and freezers, maybe even EV charging (in some cases) could be done at any time during the 24 hour period, if setup with proper hysteresis.
Making thermostats that are aware of dynamic energy pricing or, better yet, are in part controlled by the energy company (I want my house to be 21-24 C, I don't care when the cooling happens) would give us massive flexibility.
All power hungry devices should at least have that capability (maybe other than the kettle, lol). This is literally a cost of $20 hardware in many cases.
I feel like this is one of the biggest missed opportunities. Why do we insist on our energy system to be infinitely flexible and full power available 24/7? Is a habit of doing the laundry at night worth more than additional millions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere?
I understand convenience, laziness and inertia (resisting change) but I also think changing the times when we click "power on" is a simpler solution than mining millions of tons of more lithium, no?
I get the joke but let me just mention that wood campfire is one of the worst solutions (if done at scale). This may sound idealistic (like the other comments mentioned) but I think we just have to reduce our energy footprint and then many solutions will be green again.
One great example (some will say absurd and impractical) is just using energy whenever it is available, with minimum storage. That means cooking, heating water etc. during the day (or when the wind is high) and only using lighting and low-energy devices at night. Factories could work on a similar principle (producing more in the summer) but then we would have to rearrange a lot more stuff to suit the seasonal renewable energy production capabilities.
This may sound absurd but it only shows how much we are locked in our way of thinking about how reality is supposed to work, not what it is. There's no reason to have high quality on-demand electrical energy available 24/7/365 other than convenience. Convenience that fossil fuels brought us.
We really have to think this all through before jumping 100% on any particular bandwagon. Researching, testing, seeing how it goes and adjusting is a must.
Why can't they just walk or bike to their friends? 2-3 km walking distance is perfectly fine, bike extends that range significantly (10 km at least). This was the case for me.
Sorry if the question is naive, I don't live in USA.
That's why so many people are cautious about "EVs to save us all", to put it mildly.
We are so focused on climate change and greenhouse gases that we do not see a lot of other issues and may exacerbate some of them in the process of decarbonisation.
I've been washing dishes by hand my whole life and just recently got a dishwasher. When washing by hand pre-rinsing and soaking is essential so I kept doing that even after getting the machine, only recently discovering that I am wasting water this way.
Tangentially I want to mention that rinsing dishes before running the dishwasher is a known anti-pattern. The first washing cycle is exactly that - a rinsing cycle. I know this is off-topic but saving water is always a good idea.
In my experience visual tools like RoseRT can quickly turn into an obstacle. I think it's super important to not only know what the non-code solutions may be good at but also keep the solution limited or at least be prepared to go back to code if the problem domain is complex enough.
We are easily manipulated into thinking how stupid people must be but in reality it is often a bad process, tiredness, mismanagement or cost cutting that are responsible for it.
I encourage you to read about the "Hot McDonald's coffee" case which has unfortunately been a meme for a long time:
Same here. A great advantage of such devices is they can later be easily repurposed to control home automation, audio system or make a simple DIY project with them. It is much harder with other types of hardware, like a laptop for example.
AI R&D definitively has its place but certainly not like this, this feels like just another hype bubble.
A good read explaining some of it: https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/