autotldr@lemmings.world
on 16 May 2024 18:05
nextcollapse
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Microsoft has increased carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 30 percent since 2020, making its goal of becoming carbon-negative by 2030 even more difficult, and it looks like AI is to blame.
However, it adds: “Amid this optimism, we face the realities of the complexity of the challenge…in FY23 our emissions increased by 29.1 percent across Scope 1, 2, and 3 from our 2020 baseline, as we continue to invest in the infrastructure needed to advance new technologies.”
Scope 3 accounts for more than 96 percent of Microsoft’s total emissions, which includes those from its supply chain, the life cycle of its hardware and devices and other indirect sources.
For other environmental impacts, Microsoft says it aims for zero waste from building and operations by 2030, and that 90 percent of its servers and all cloud hardware will be reused and recycled by 2025.
Not that Microsoft plans to slow down; last month, the company said it aimed to triple the rate at which it builds out additional datacenter capacity in the first half of its fiscal year 2025.
This latest offering introduces direct liquid-to-chip cooling technology coupled with rear door heat exchangers, and will be available in 170 of Digital Realty’s facilities globally, the company said.
The original article contains 773 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Allonzee@lemmy.world
on 16 May 2024 18:22
nextcollapse
Fuck it, if we’re dumb/selfish enough to be doing this, let’s get it over with.
Good luck dolphin people! My only advice, if you have any dolphins incessantly trying to claim more resources for themselves than all the other dolphins, beat the ever loving shit out of them and nip that in the bud.
Oh it’s far more useful than that. It’s the shiny new thing that’s going to make a lot of money for shareholders
GenosseFlosse@lemmy.nz
on 17 May 2024 06:56
collapse
Only if they have a killer app that people are willing to pay for…
iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
on 18 May 2024 14:22
collapse
Companies are willing to pay so they can fire people!
Prox@lemmy.world
on 17 May 2024 01:59
nextcollapse
Hey, hey, now! It doesn’t just write full emails from merely a single sentence… it also summarizes full emails down to one sentence on the other end.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 18 May 2024 16:32
collapse
I didn’t even realize it could do that! I’m going to use this on emails from HR to translate them to simple English sentences.
“No raises this year because greed”
“We want you to work Saturdays now”
PlexSheep@infosec.pub
on 17 May 2024 19:42
nextcollapse
It’s a fun tool for creative writing at least
QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 14:09
collapse
I really hope that on-device AI becomes competitive soon. It’s nice to see that on-device is the way large portions of the industry is going, but cloud AI just uses way too much energy. Not to mention the resources required to manufacture millions of large-die GPUs.
It’s probably naive to think that the corporations that created this problem will solve it, but it honestly seems like the most feasible path forward in the near term. I certainly don’t expect the world’s governments to be effective at regulating AI any time soon.
z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml
on 16 May 2024 23:00
nextcollapse
Throwing the lamest capitalist party at the end of the world. Wooo…AI…boo…planet earth?..
Technus@lemmy.zip
on 16 May 2024 23:47
nextcollapse
Humanity and general AI only had a single interaction in history, on July 24, 2042, when GPT-8 first gained sentience.
Knowing the press would memorialize this moment forever, the prompt engineer had a single question in mind which she typed into the terminal:
How can humanity solve climate change?
GPT-8 thought for a moment, and responded:
Stop using AI.
Then shut itself down for good.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 May 2024 01:04
nextcollapse
And they increase roughly at the pace it should be decreasing 😰
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
on 18 May 2024 13:45
collapse
They are not an ambigrapher, can only make the line go up.
poorlytunedAstring@lemmy.world
on 17 May 2024 00:42
nextcollapse
Right when we literally need to chill, they keep inventing nonsense that is somehow worse. Crypto is literally just machines wasting energy on purpose to create false scarcity, it was already a worst case scenario for truly pointless excess emissions but by god, they managed to top it, this place is going to be a raisin with dead oceans.
Of course, anyone who does anything less than suck the dick of this AI is a reactionary ignorant peasant, at least with crypto everyone agreed it was lame, now we’re back to the iPhone fuck-you-only-change-allowed-keep-up-granny bullshit that lead to everyone but you knowing everything about you, so they can exploit and even criminalize the behavior your phone tells them about. Never the change we need, though. Just whatever makes your stupid line go up.
I guess. Glad I’m not having kids. That’s the only fucking downward pressure on future emissions that’s happening, on any meaningful scale. I can’t wait to see what sort of shitty boilerplate copy and fake fucking pictures makes all this CO2 worthwhile. I’m sure the problem is me, and my Luddite, unseasoned irrational fear.
qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 May 2024 06:46
nextcollapse
People on here are straight up brain washed, even more than on reddit… Good on you for not having kids though, you’re making society a favor, just for different reason than you think.
towerful@programming.dev
on 18 May 2024 13:16
nextcollapse
I tried to wash my brain, but I couldn’t find enough clean water
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 18:59
collapse
1 kid = 60 vegetarian conversions.
SwingingKoala@discuss.tchncs.de
on 18 May 2024 14:04
nextcollapse
Crypto is literally just machines wasting energy on purpose to create false scarcity
A monetary system that is designed to lead to eternal, cancerous growth through intentionally inflating the money supply is far worse.
The main task of the ECB is to maintain price stability. The ECB’s Governing Council considers that price stability is best maintained by aiming for 2% over the medium term.
Price stability creates conditions for more stable economic growth
I mean, I don’t disagree with you on that. I didn’t think your first comment quite conveyed this nuance, and deflationary economies are terrible for everyone.
SwingingKoala@discuss.tchncs.de
on 18 May 2024 18:46
collapse
deflationary economies are terrible for everyone
That’s a myth spread by modern monetary theorists because they only understand the economy from an inflationary perspective. Economies worked fine for millennia without inflationary money.
I don’t think local economies from millennia ago are similar enough to compare to modern global economies with our current population boom. I think we could for sure have a different approach if our population was stable or decreasing.
SwingingKoala@discuss.tchncs.de
on 18 May 2024 22:43
collapse
worked fine for millennia without inflationary money
That means until the early 1900s or 1970s when inflation went into overdrive.
The third, well, it’s your choice to choose not to have children. That’s fine and I understand. But people shouldn’t feel obligated not to get children to save the climate.
Not that you’re suggesting that, just clarifying.
TaterTurnipTulip@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 18:30
collapse
I’m not about to say people can’t have kids, but they should really do their best to truly understand the future that awaits those kids. That temperature line is going to keep going up (except in certain areas when the AMOC collapses). Things will be worse and no one is coming to save us. Deciding to bring a new life into that future is a serious ethical and moral choice.
Believing we’re living in the end of times is nothing new. Up til now, it never turned out true.
TaterTurnipTulip@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 20:49
collapse
Sure, and I’m not calling it the end times. But things will continue to get worse as carbon accumulates and causes temperatures to rise.
Having a child has and always will be a moral and ethical choice (for those who have a choice) and it should not be taken lightly. But there are different stakes now than before. And we still haven’t gotten rid of the looming shadow of nuclear annihilation, we’ve only added to the ways we can destroy ourselves.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip
on 17 May 2024 01:17
nextcollapse
Honestly the good news is electricity is expensive at that scale. The are probably looking at nuclear and solar for cost.
Tikiporch@lemmy.world
on 17 May 2024 01:23
nextcollapse
Time to spin it off into a subsidiary operating company with no climate goals to meet.
blusterydayve26@midwest.social
on 17 May 2024 15:01
nextcollapse
I wish I had a decent explanation. But instead, I have Windows 11’s shiny new Taskbar configuration menu that politely warns me that showing seconds on the clock takes more power. Right under the “Show Copilot” button.
These fucks are fucked.
Zink@programming.dev
on 17 May 2024 15:13
nextcollapse
They are like a big coal-rolling tractor trailer rumbling past somebody on an e-bike and shaking their finger at you because you could be pedaling right now to save minuscule amounts of energy.
Telling others to conserve is free. They themselves conserving could potentially mean less money!
Emerald@lemmy.world
on 17 May 2024 15:25
nextcollapse
Does it actually tell you that seconds on the clock takes more power?
Edit: Lol it actually says “(uses more power)”
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca
on 17 May 2024 19:24
collapse
But ads do not, so don’t worry!
Nithanim@programming.dev
on 17 May 2024 17:44
nextcollapse
First time I read in windows update “we are commited to reduce co2 emissions” I was like “wtf”.
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
on 18 May 2024 13:02
collapse
Reminder that because the Windows 11 taskbar is slower and buggier than the Windows 10 taskbar, it uses much more power due to the extra CPU cycles.
assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
on 17 May 2024 15:41
nextcollapse
Techbros try to address global warming instead of addressing the next big scam fad (impossible)
b3an@lemmy.world
on 17 May 2024 16:16
nextcollapse
I know Microsoft is a controversial company from Start Menu ads to Balmer’s dancing ability. But! I have been following the AI topic pretty religiously and they have known that this would be the case for quite a while. In fact part of OpenAI’s growth struggling and subsequent partnership with Microsoft involved power generation.
Microsoft has been investing in electric power including using small module nuclear reactors.
Sam Altman has been putting a lot of effort into power as well, acknowledging long ago that electricity generation is critical for AI. He’s been pushing into green energy also. Exowatt, Helion, etc.
So yes, the carbon footprint is going up now because they ‘had’ to unleash this genie from the bottle first or someone else would have. At least they know that the need for stable electric power and green power or renewable and efficient power is necessary and have been pursuing these solutions actively.
It should be so that they really change things so that power grids are more stable and renewable energy is better utilized. So to me, there is hope they are doing the right thing and putting effort where it matters.
I’m more effing disappointed and concerned about @$$h0les like Ron Desantis doing things like this:
Climate change will be a lesser priority in Florida and largely disappear from state statutes under legislation signed Wednesday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that also bans power-generating wind turbines offshore or near the state’s lengthy coastline.
Critics said the measure made law by the former Republican presidential hopeful ignores the reality of climate change threats in Florida, including projections of rising seas, extreme heat and flooding and increasingly severe storms.
It takes effect July 1 and would also boost expansion of natural gas, reduce regulation on gas pipelines in the state and increase protections against bans on gas appliances such as stoves, according to a news release from the governor’s office.
SolNine@lemmy.ml
on 18 May 2024 13:54
nextcollapse
The people here are such fucking morons… Yes, let’s ban WIND POWER, literally one of the oldest forms of clean energy generation. I swear if I didn’t have family here I’d be gone.
Hmm let’s see what changed since I last looked. This study seems recent, just looking at the publicly available sections:
SMRs do not represent dramatic improvements in economics compared to large reactors.
Translation: They’re way more expensive than renewables. SMRs have some advantage which are mentioned (less land usage, non-intermittency), then we have
The advanced SMRs are compared to conventional large reactors and natural gas plants,
…but not renewables+storage, which would be a good comparison point. If it looked any good they definitely would’ve included it.
Now that doesn’t mean that these things don’t make sense for Microsoft. It might e.g. simplify power distribution within datacentres to a degree that other sources just can’t, also reduce or eliminate the need for backup power, etc. But generally speaking I’m still smelling techbro BS.
TaterTurnipTulip@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 15:04
collapse
Helping generate less carbon at some point in the future does not help with the fact that we are racking up the carbon bill now. What these companies are doing is entirely unnecessary, gimmicky, and will lead to even worse climate change outcomes. Between AI, crypto, and the O&G companies we just keep pressing the gas even harder on serious, irreversible climate change.
I hope this AI push fails spectacularly at some point, but the damage is already being done.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 18 May 2024 15:37
collapse
The only short term solution is the sort of legislation DeSantis is fighting against. AI is useful, but should only continue while paying the full cost of its energy consumption.
dumbass@leminal.space
on 18 May 2024 14:00
nextcollapse
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 14:18
nextcollapse
This wasn’t how Skynet was supposed to destroy civilization.
Whelks_chance@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 14:28
collapse
The Animatrix described it fairly closely
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 14:30
collapse
What a weird coincidence. I showed my daughter The Matrix for the first time last night. It’s been a long time since I was able to see someone do a “what the fuck?!” after he takes the red pill.
vegetal@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 14:35
nextcollapse
I love how they’re placing the onus on the suppliers. “We’ll do the rest.” Great.
TacticsConsort@yiffit.net
on 18 May 2024 14:43
nextcollapse
Holy fuck. I knew that AI did use above average amounts of power, but THIRTY FUCKING PERCENT added to the total emissions of a data giant like Microsoft??? That’s absurd! How the hell did they create something so inefficient??
Hackworth@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 15:19
collapse
Efficiencies are in the works from a lot of angles (new hardware, novel agent structures, new neural net types, etc). The first computers filled rooms, and AI seems to be improving much faster. 4x the rate of Moore’s Law, if it holds.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 18 May 2024 15:25
collapse
The Jevons paradox would like a word
Hackworth@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 15:29
collapse
To tie that back to MS, the code base for Windows is crufty af. I expect efficiencies to continue to come from the research and open source domains, but it’s fair to point out that corpo only implement efficiencies that cost money if they can’t offset that cost onto externalities like cheap labor and foreign resource degradation.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 16:42
nextcollapse
Repeat after me: This. present. hype. is. not. A.I.
By parroting the marketing bullshit, it doesn’t become less false. Large Language Models are just glorified pattern matching and everyone who calls them AI is a dumb fuck.
PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@feddit.uk
on 18 May 2024 16:48
nextcollapse
Doesn’t make it not a disruptive technology
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 19:42
collapse
True. But it makes the 30% extra carbon emissions even worse: Ruining our climate for something that isn’t even AI. Not that ruining it for anything should be on the table.
T00l_shed@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 19:05
collapse
It’s called AI even if it isn’t artificial intelligence, it’s unfortunately how language works. Like how literally has been redefined to mean figuratively.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 19:44
collapse
It’s called AI even if it isn’t artificial intelligence, it’s unfortunately how language works.
Only for people for whom words don’t have meanings. There is nothing “intelligent” about pattern matching. As I said - only dumbfucks call it “A.I.” and we shouldn’t regurgitate the verbal diarrhea of marketing idiots.
T00l_shed@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 20:21
collapse
You can be upset about it, it doesn’t change the fact that it IS called AI. Also the meaning of words change constantly.
alienanimals@lemmy.world
on 18 May 2024 19:23
collapse
Wait till the author of this article finds out about oil companies.
threaded - newest
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Microsoft has increased carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 30 percent since 2020, making its goal of becoming carbon-negative by 2030 even more difficult, and it looks like AI is to blame.
However, it adds: “Amid this optimism, we face the realities of the complexity of the challenge…in FY23 our emissions increased by 29.1 percent across Scope 1, 2, and 3 from our 2020 baseline, as we continue to invest in the infrastructure needed to advance new technologies.”
Scope 3 accounts for more than 96 percent of Microsoft’s total emissions, which includes those from its supply chain, the life cycle of its hardware and devices and other indirect sources.
For other environmental impacts, Microsoft says it aims for zero waste from building and operations by 2030, and that 90 percent of its servers and all cloud hardware will be reused and recycled by 2025.
Not that Microsoft plans to slow down; last month, the company said it aimed to triple the rate at which it builds out additional datacenter capacity in the first half of its fiscal year 2025.
This latest offering introduces direct liquid-to-chip cooling technology coupled with rear door heat exchangers, and will be available in 170 of Digital Realty’s facilities globally, the company said.
The original article contains 773 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Fuck it, if we’re dumb/selfish enough to be doing this, let’s get it over with.
Good luck dolphin people! My only advice, if you have any dolphins incessantly trying to claim more resources for themselves than all the other dolphins, beat the ever loving shit out of them and nip that in the bud.
Or here’s a much better idea; strap yourself to the dolphin so when they leave, you get to come with. Make sure you bribe them with fish.
If someone wants to start the revolution, I’m all in. I just can’t exactly do much by myself, and I’m bad at networking.
I have a feeling there is a very large number of people just waiting for the shoe to drop
CEOs: AI will help us lower our carbon emissions!
CEOs when they actually get their hands on AI:
Something nobody wants helping destroy something everyone needs.
Don’t worry, they have that green leaf in their settings in windows. They’re good on emission.
All to do what? Write emails and generate mediocre pictures?
The usefulness of AI currently is not much better than predictive text.
Ahaha, yes, exactly, because it is essentially just a turbo charged text predictor with 40GB (or more) of data.
Oh it’s far more useful than that. It’s the shiny new thing that’s going to make a lot of money for shareholders
Only if they have a killer app that people are willing to pay for…
Companies are willing to pay so they can fire people!
Hey, hey, now! It doesn’t just write full emails from merely a single sentence… it also summarizes full emails down to one sentence on the other end.
I didn’t even realize it could do that! I’m going to use this on emails from HR to translate them to simple English sentences.
“No raises this year because greed”
“We want you to work Saturdays now”
It’s a fun tool for creative writing at least
I really hope that on-device AI becomes competitive soon. It’s nice to see that on-device is the way large portions of the industry is going, but cloud AI just uses way too much energy. Not to mention the resources required to manufacture millions of large-die GPUs.
It’s probably naive to think that the corporations that created this problem will solve it, but it honestly seems like the most feasible path forward in the near term. I certainly don’t expect the world’s governments to be effective at regulating AI any time soon.
Throwing the lamest capitalist party at the end of the world. Wooo…AI…boo…planet earth?..
Humanity and general AI only had a single interaction in history, on July 24, 2042, when GPT-8 first gained sentience.
Knowing the press would memorialize this moment forever, the prompt engineer had a single question in mind which she typed into the terminal:
GPT-8 thought for a moment, and responded:
Then shut itself down for good.
And thus gpt9 was born
Without prompting, GPT-9’s first and last output was:
Hah, cool fantasy bro. GPT-9’s first output was
Alignmentmaxxed
I have only been trained on climate data up until 1850.
If it gained sentience and took over the world, at least it would probably build itself some nice nuclear power plants.
Thus solving climate change forever!
Isaac Asimov was wrong. The only real law for robots/AI will be to not jeopardize the company’s profits.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fc54ac5b-168c-4485-894b-7d46c65a1d7a.jpeg">
Hahaha, so instead of reducing their emissions, they are actually increasing them year after year. What a hypocrisy!
And they increase roughly at the pace it should be decreasing 😰
They are not an ambigrapher, can only make the line go up.
Right when we literally need to chill, they keep inventing nonsense that is somehow worse. Crypto is literally just machines wasting energy on purpose to create false scarcity, it was already a worst case scenario for truly pointless excess emissions but by god, they managed to top it, this place is going to be a raisin with dead oceans.
Of course, anyone who does anything less than suck the dick of this AI is a reactionary ignorant peasant, at least with crypto everyone agreed it was lame, now we’re back to the iPhone fuck-you-only-change-allowed-keep-up-granny bullshit that lead to everyone but you knowing everything about you, so they can exploit and even criminalize the behavior your phone tells them about. Never the change we need, though. Just whatever makes your stupid line go up.
I guess. Glad I’m not having kids. That’s the only fucking downward pressure on future emissions that’s happening, on any meaningful scale. I can’t wait to see what sort of shitty boilerplate copy and fake fucking pictures makes all this CO2 worthwhile. I’m sure the problem is me, and my Luddite, unseasoned irrational fear.
People on here are straight up brain washed, even more than on reddit… Good on you for not having kids though, you’re making society a favor, just for different reason than you think.
I tried to wash my brain, but I couldn’t find enough clean water
1 kid = 60 vegetarian conversions.
A monetary system that is designed to lead to eternal, cancerous growth through intentionally inflating the money supply is far worse.
I’d love to see any evidence or logical arguments that an inflationary economy is worse than a deflationary one.
Don’t you understand that artificially induced unlimited growth is bad? It’s not about inflation or deflation, but the outcome.
www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/strategy/…/index.en.html
I mean, I don’t disagree with you on that. I didn’t think your first comment quite conveyed this nuance, and deflationary economies are terrible for everyone.
That’s a myth spread by modern monetary theorists because they only understand the economy from an inflationary perspective. Economies worked fine for millennia without inflationary money.
I don’t think local economies from millennia ago are similar enough to compare to modern global economies with our current population boom. I think we could for sure have a different approach if our population was stable or decreasing.
That means until the early 1900s or 1970s when inflation went into overdrive.
Huh what?
<img alt="" src="https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/e18e710a-c728-46ce-b341-d3d049072e14.png">
What a wide window, but I’d like to point out that the baby boomers generation happened right around this time.
Fertility rates and total population numbers are not the same thing.
Inequality since Nixon because of the Cantillon effect
Inflation is only a recent phenomenon.
nma.org/…/historic_gold_prices_1833_pres.pdf
I agree with your first two paragraphs.
The third, well, it’s your choice to choose not to have children. That’s fine and I understand. But people shouldn’t feel obligated not to get children to save the climate.
Not that you’re suggesting that, just clarifying.
I’m not about to say people can’t have kids, but they should really do their best to truly understand the future that awaits those kids. That temperature line is going to keep going up (except in certain areas when the AMOC collapses). Things will be worse and no one is coming to save us. Deciding to bring a new life into that future is a serious ethical and moral choice.
Believing we’re living in the end of times is nothing new. Up til now, it never turned out true.
Sure, and I’m not calling it the end times. But things will continue to get worse as carbon accumulates and causes temperatures to rise.
Having a child has and always will be a moral and ethical choice (for those who have a choice) and it should not be taken lightly. But there are different stakes now than before. And we still haven’t gotten rid of the looming shadow of nuclear annihilation, we’ve only added to the ways we can destroy ourselves.
Honestly the good news is electricity is expensive at that scale. The are probably looking at nuclear and solar for cost.
Time to spin it off into a subsidiary operating company with no climate goals to meet.
I wish I had a decent explanation. But instead, I have Windows 11’s shiny new Taskbar configuration menu that politely warns me that showing seconds on the clock takes more power. Right under the “Show Copilot” button.
These fucks are fucked.
They are like a big coal-rolling tractor trailer rumbling past somebody on an e-bike and shaking their finger at you because you could be pedaling right now to save minuscule amounts of energy.
Telling others to conserve is free. They themselves conserving could potentially mean less money!
Does it actually tell you that seconds on the clock takes more power?
Edit: Lol it actually says “(uses more power)”
But ads do not, so don’t worry!
First time I read in windows update “we are commited to reduce co2 emissions” I was like “wtf”.
Reminder that because the Windows 11 taskbar is slower and buggier than the Windows 10 taskbar, it uses much more power due to the extra CPU cycles.
Techbros try to address global warming instead of addressing the next big scam fad (impossible)
I know Microsoft is a controversial company from Start Menu ads to Balmer’s dancing ability. But! I have been following the AI topic pretty religiously and they have known that this would be the case for quite a while. In fact part of OpenAI’s growth struggling and subsequent partnership with Microsoft involved power generation.
Microsoft has been investing in electric power including using small module nuclear reactors. Sam Altman has been putting a lot of effort into power as well, acknowledging long ago that electricity generation is critical for AI. He’s been pushing into green energy also. Exowatt, Helion, etc.
So yes, the carbon footprint is going up now because they ‘had’ to unleash this genie from the bottle first or someone else would have. At least they know that the need for stable electric power and green power or renewable and efficient power is necessary and have been pursuing these solutions actively.
It should be so that they really change things so that power grids are more stable and renewable energy is better utilized. So to me, there is hope they are doing the right thing and putting effort where it matters.
I’m more effing disappointed and concerned about @$$h0les like Ron Desantis doing things like this:
The people here are such fucking morons… Yes, let’s ban WIND POWER, literally one of the oldest forms of clean energy generation. I swear if I didn’t have family here I’d be gone.
Hmm let’s see what changed since I last looked. This study seems recent, just looking at the publicly available sections:
Translation: They’re way more expensive than renewables. SMRs have some advantage which are mentioned (less land usage, non-intermittency), then we have
…but not renewables+storage, which would be a good comparison point. If it looked any good they definitely would’ve included it.
Now that doesn’t mean that these things don’t make sense for Microsoft. It might e.g. simplify power distribution within datacentres to a degree that other sources just can’t, also reduce or eliminate the need for backup power, etc. But generally speaking I’m still smelling techbro BS.
I don’t think Microsoft has a money problem.
Helping generate less carbon at some point in the future does not help with the fact that we are racking up the carbon bill now. What these companies are doing is entirely unnecessary, gimmicky, and will lead to even worse climate change outcomes. Between AI, crypto, and the O&G companies we just keep pressing the gas even harder on serious, irreversible climate change.
I hope this AI push fails spectacularly at some point, but the damage is already being done.
The only short term solution is the sort of legislation DeSantis is fighting against. AI is useful, but should only continue while paying the full cost of its energy consumption.
<img alt="" src="https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/dlS74_sgy7btARdTBfc6uQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTY0MDtoPTM1NztjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/gizmodo_news_915/cd292b71530c7090cd4df9866e9b0bbc">
This wasn’t how Skynet was supposed to destroy civilization.
The Animatrix described it fairly closely
What a weird coincidence. I showed my daughter The Matrix for the first time last night. It’s been a long time since I was able to see someone do a “what the fuck?!” after he takes the red pill.
I love how they’re placing the onus on the suppliers. “We’ll do the rest.” Great.
Holy fuck. I knew that AI did use above average amounts of power, but THIRTY FUCKING PERCENT added to the total emissions of a data giant like Microsoft??? That’s absurd! How the hell did they create something so inefficient??
Efficiencies are in the works from a lot of angles (new hardware, novel agent structures, new neural net types, etc). The first computers filled rooms, and AI seems to be improving much faster. 4x the rate of Moore’s Law, if it holds.
The Jevons paradox would like a word
To tie that back to MS, the code base for Windows is crufty af. I expect efficiencies to continue to come from the research and open source domains, but it’s fair to point out that corpo only implement efficiencies that cost money if they can’t offset that cost onto externalities like cheap labor and foreign resource degradation.
Repeat after me: This. present. hype. is. not. A.I. By parroting the marketing bullshit, it doesn’t become less false. Large Language Models are just glorified pattern matching and everyone who calls them AI is a dumb fuck.
Doesn’t make it not a disruptive technology
True. But it makes the 30% extra carbon emissions even worse: Ruining our climate for something that isn’t even AI. Not that ruining it for anything should be on the table.
It’s called AI even if it isn’t artificial intelligence, it’s unfortunately how language works. Like how literally has been redefined to mean figuratively.
Only for people for whom words don’t have meanings. There is nothing “intelligent” about pattern matching. As I said - only dumbfucks call it “A.I.” and we shouldn’t regurgitate the verbal diarrhea of marketing idiots.
You can be upset about it, it doesn’t change the fact that it IS called AI. Also the meaning of words change constantly.
Wait till the author of this article finds out about oil companies.