you wouldn't understand "progress"

Gotta remember that AI is going to solve the climate crisis! \s

That already happened with Crypto.

AI will use less power over time, as hardware gets faster and we approach a ‘good enough’ level of computation power, similar to Desktops/Laptops - outside gaming, electrical power for the average desktop has only decreased since Sandy Bridge, a 2600K is still good enough for the average desktop, it can still even pull punches gaming.

Crypto, by design, will never decrease in power use and only and forever increase.

Too bad for us, yeah.

The people benefiting from this have more than enough money to stay comfortable and live a long life if the environment becomes hazardous, deadly and inimical to human life.

It’s the masses who will suffer, who will be forced to live in tiny bunkers just to survive and work for the capitalists, never going outside until an extreme weather event wipes them away despite their budget bunker

And the capitalist ruling class will say “oh look more space to expand my summer bunker”

This is only relevant to closed source AI. Not all AI is closed

ow nevermind, bitcoin mining alone is consuming 112.31 TWh annually (it's a guess). While AI is using 29.2 TWh annually (also a guess).

Tell me about it. In the Netherlands wind farms are built, and, on paper, these datacenter companies buy up all of the energy from them. Meanwhile, the reason why these wind farms were built is to burn less fossil fuels, but that won't work now because of all the extra energy consumption.

If everything is running on renewables, cool. Until then, there’s still the opportunity cost.

Power is only part of it. Concrete production is a huge greenhouse gas source.

Something something AI BAD, didn’t read.

I build the infrastructure that these data centers need to connect to the internet. Our projected power consumption is at least tripling from last year which was itself double the year before, and that’s only the power draw for the fiber optic infrastructure connecting these data centers together. They’re also building a ridiculous amount of computing power in those data centers which is another massive increase in power consumption.

There are some kind-of green efforts in progress to mitigate a bit of the environmental impacts of that increase in demand but most of what I have seen personally is just more draw from the local utility company. I have serious doubts about any data that indicates that tripling power consumption is not a major environmental problem.

Could you cite the reports for us?

You are not thinking cumulatively.

It’s not even close to triple, it’s like 15%.

1.15^7=2.66

From the article

“emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.”

then why are data centers using these fossil fuel power plants?

why are they getting lower rates to use them than an individual taxpayer?

I mean, global warming us slowly into extinction is a pretty AI way to go about it

Oh, this isn’t it. Capitalists have been doing this long before AI. Which is why I don’t understand why people are attacking AI so hard, tbh.

Every negative article I read about AI is simply an attribution to capitalism. It’s incredibly funny.

Don’t forget the garbage listicle websites which pollute every search for “the best x” where x is something like a vacuum cleaner. Judging by the utter uselessness of search engines these days, there must be A LOT of those sites…

Exactly! I was just saying the same thing in another post!

I actually got into a fight over suggesting someone to use stock photos instead of grungy-smeary AI generated images for their (sh)articles, so at least I won’t believe it was too AI generated. Then they insisted on it being their own creation, and how they became an artist through words.

Our planet is literally dying, and humankind is going to be decimated (at least) directly due to the actions of corporations.

A lot of companies buy it so their employees have acres to it. Like Microsoft 365 copilot for example

My company buys it. No idea what they use it for since I work in IT and I don’t use it for anything.

It’s good for making up stories and making suggestions. I worked with chatGPT on how to power up a mothballed Galaxy Class starship. We created the procedure to bring the ship from inert and vacuumed to ready for warp flight.

Spammers

Me. Moderate ai enthusiast and software engineer.

I see a fair amount of online adverts that use them. Usually the kind you might get orbiting an article of some kind, just using AI images as their hook.