A report from Morgan Stanley suggests the datacenter industry is on track to emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.
The extra demand from GenAI will reportedly lead to a rise in emissions from 200 million tons this year to 600 million tons by 2030, thanks largely to the construction of more data centers to keep up with the demand for cloud services.
Look, i’m not saying that this isn’t a problem. My only question is, is this one of those “global warming is because people don’t recycle their soda bottles” things? In other words, How concerned should I be about this vs, taking attention away from the energy, beef, and transportation industry?
It’s a percent against the world’s emissions. Be concerned less with this. AI is the current hate train whipping boy, and takes the pressure of public focus off the biggest polluters.
Now that big companies and rich investors saw the potential for profit in AI the paradigm has shifted to “throw more compute at the wall until something sticks”, so it’s not surprising it’s affecting carbon emissions.
Besides that it’s also annoying that most of the time they keep their AIs behind closed doors, and even in the few cases where the weights are released publicly these models are so big that they aren’t usable for the vast majority of people, as sometimes even Kaggle can’t handle them.
“The only way to interpret statistics is with a healthy dose of skepticism and a thorough understanding of their context.”
While people in this thread jump at the opportunity for this slice of statistics to affirm their confirmation biases, intelligent people will ask what the total carbon dioxide output looks like by comparison.
Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two “technology branches” already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.
It’s why humans will always remain de facto slaves to a few masters. Anything that could potentially be advantageous to all life on Earth? Only if the ones at the top get to profit first. No profit? Enjoy scorching to death on hell-planet for the next forty years!
AI consumes power, yes, it’s projected to triple its environmental impact, yes, but its environmental impact is much less than most other things. If anything, the AI hate train draws angry peoples’ focus off the big polluters that matter.
“Arrghle AI is in everything and modern cars track you, I’ll just drive a 30+ year old pickup truck because they don’t has no AI tracking nonsense”
I dont think much will remain after this extinction event. Do you know how long it takes niches to refill in an ecosystem? We’re going to get to a point where industry collapses and we are reset if we survive at all.
We wouldn’t even be able to restart. All the easily available resources have been delved. Three thousand years ago people could scoop pure gold from rivers by the kilos. Today, all decent deposits lie kilometers below the surface.
But it’ll be for the best. We had our shot and blew it.
Maybe resources will be scarce enough that we are forced to try something other than capitalism, as we have to share to make it anywhere. Or maybe it will just make all resources needed for advanced technologies unavaible. Then we can fight over whose hut is closest to the last river.
Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two “technology branches” already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.
And your sources? I only did a cursory search, and according to the IEA data centers are responsible for somewhere in the range of 2-6% of electricity demand. Renewables are currently around 30% globally.
I feel like some people are just emotional reactionaries. They see a certain story, and in their own mind they make the story worse than it is, and treat their feelings as fact.
I have no sources on this, or proof that this guy in particular is doing that.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Which search engines give results without an AI generated response?
Call me surprised.
Look, i’m not saying that this isn’t a problem. My only question is, is this one of those “global warming is because people don’t recycle their soda bottles” things? In other words, How concerned should I be about this vs, taking attention away from the energy, beef, and transportation industry?
It’s a percent against the world’s emissions. Be concerned less with this. AI is the current hate train whipping boy, and takes the pressure of public focus off the biggest polluters.
I remember when scientists were more focused on making AI models smaller and more efficient, and research on generative models was focused on making GANs as robust as possible with very little compute and data.
Now that big companies and rich investors saw the potential for profit in AI the paradigm has shifted to “throw more compute at the wall until something sticks”, so it’s not surprising it’s affecting carbon emissions.
Besides that it’s also annoying that most of the time they keep their AIs behind closed doors, and even in the few cases where the weights are released publicly these models are so big that they aren’t usable for the vast majority of people, as sometimes even Kaggle can’t handle them.
Lesson: only ask AI if you’re still stuck after searching and have no colleague around.
This is exactly what using AI feels like:
https://youtu.be/lM0teS7PFMo?
Every IT company now: we should increase our server costs by 100x to offer unwanted gimmicks that users don’t want and aren’t willing to pay
Oh yea, this is happening too.
“The only way to interpret statistics is with a healthy dose of skepticism and a thorough understanding of their context.”
While people in this thread jump at the opportunity for this slice of statistics to affirm their confirmation biases, intelligent people will ask what the total carbon dioxide output looks like by comparison.
Can’t be logical here. This is a topic that’s like discussing immigration with Republicans.
Everyone thought AI was going to kill us via some Terminator-like Skynet.
Nope.
It’s just going to let us kill ourselves via greed and accelerate destroying the environment.
Its the ‘first to market wins’ paradigm
From construction of three data centers or everyday use. Weird wording this whole article.
Does that take into account that AI models will become more efficient with time?
We never actually used large numbers of monkeys paired with typewritters to produce new literature.
Why? Because it would have wasted all the bananas to produce a bunch of shit.
That is all this level of AI is really equivilant to.
Throwing pudding at a wall, deciding if that toss is closer to the goal than before, changing something, then repeating.
Maybe dont waste the resources until the process is more efficient.
There exists an alternative that uses a lot less power. And also that power is going to get spent no matter what anyway.
Between AI and shitcoin mining, these two “technology branches” already consume more power than all the green power added to the grid combined.
It’s why humans will always remain de facto slaves to a few masters. Anything that could potentially be advantageous to all life on Earth? Only if the ones at the top get to profit first. No profit? Enjoy scorching to death on hell-planet for the next forty years!
AI and crypto would be fine if we didn’t have to put up with capitalism.
AI consumes power, yes, it’s projected to triple its environmental impact, yes, but its environmental impact is much less than most other things. If anything, the AI hate train draws angry peoples’ focus off the big polluters that matter.
“Arrghle AI is in everything and modern cars track you, I’ll just drive a 30+ year old pickup truck because they don’t has no AI tracking nonsense”
Oil and gas companies: money
I dont think much will remain after this extinction event. Do you know how long it takes niches to refill in an ecosystem? We’re going to get to a point where industry collapses and we are reset if we survive at all.
We wouldn’t even be able to restart. All the easily available resources have been delved. Three thousand years ago people could scoop pure gold from rivers by the kilos. Today, all decent deposits lie kilometers below the surface.
But it’ll be for the best. We had our shot and blew it.
Maybe resources will be scarce enough that we are forced to try something other than capitalism, as we have to share to make it anywhere. Or maybe it will just make all resources needed for advanced technologies unavaible. Then we can fight over whose hut is closest to the last river.
And your sources? I only did a cursory search, and according to the IEA data centers are responsible for somewhere in the range of 2-6% of electricity demand. Renewables are currently around 30% globally.
Source: https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2024
I feel like some people are just emotional reactionaries. They see a certain story, and in their own mind they make the story worse than it is, and treat their feelings as fact.
I have no sources on this, or proof that this guy in particular is doing that.
…wait, am I doing it right now???
Hmmmmm…