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Gerry McGovern

AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning.

AI will make bitcoin's environmental devastation look like a picnic.

"If ChatGPT were integrated into the 9 billion searches done each day, the IEA says, the electricity demand would increase by 10 terawatt-hours a year — the amount consumed by about 1.5 million European Union residents."

vox.com/climate/2024/3/28/2411

37 comments
peachfront

@gerrymcgovern

stop the madness

ban AI

no one needs it, the world has turned perfectly well for thousands of years without it, but we may not last for tens of years longer with it...

"your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think whether they should" as the saying goes...

TobiWanKenobi

@peachfront

In capitalism it's never about what's necessary, but always about what's profitable.

Those useless self-learning algorithms will be pushed by all the techbro companies, because it allows them to sell their old shit with a new label called "old shit but with AI."

@gerrymcgovern

harpo_bzh

@gerrymcgovern
Let's go !
You can't stop progress, it's too frustrating. We'll surely find a green, sustainable, circular, transitional technological solution. I can't believe we are immature little pricks.
Are we ?

On y va. On n'arrête pas le progrès, c'est trop frustrant. On trouvera bien une solution verte, durable, circulaire technologique de transition pour ne surtout pas penser que nous serions définitivement des petits cons immatures.
@bobjmsn

Bob Jamieson

@harpo_bzh @gerrymcgovern Can anyone show that AI provides any tangible benefits to search engines?

Threadbane

@gerrymcgovern
At the very least, we should take them off the grid and force them to generate their own electricity with generators, solar, wind, whatever, just not OUR electricity. Let the machines die in a heat wave instead of people for a change.

Albert Cardona

@gerrymcgovern

There's a reason why some, in software behemoth companies, are interested in biological neural circuit architectures: the latter are extremely energy efficient.

At the same time, there's a subset of machine learning practitioners that dismiss neuroscience and neuroscientists as being entirely off track when it comes to understanding how neural networks compute.

This contraposition is quite the interesting dynamic to observe. Says more about the individual people than about the field, as is often the case.

#neuroscience #MachineLearning #AI

@gerrymcgovern

There's a reason why some, in software behemoth companies, are interested in biological neural circuit architectures: the latter are extremely energy efficient.

At the same time, there's a subset of machine learning practitioners that dismiss neuroscience and neuroscientists as being entirely off track when it comes to understanding how neural networks compute.

Juho Mäntysalo

@gerrymcgovern

Completely off-topic, but seeing as countries energy usage chart would start with Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which probably spends energy on the scale of one office building (if that), we probably need a better scale for exorbitant spending of energy.

(This being said, I'd nuke AI from the orbit if I could. It's a solution seeking a problem, and like all such solutions it's just making harder to do things that actually improve or upkeep our quality of life.)

Richard W. Woodley NO THREADS 🇨🇦🌹🚴‍♂️📷 🗺️

@gerrymcgovern
All that just for crappier more unreliable results. But don't worry if we keep wasting more more energy we will eventually get it right.

Will

@gerrymcgovern Yet another reason not to l like AI. Well, that and the fact these capricious corporations are only creating it to get us out of the workforce, so they no longer have to pay the bills for this civilization.

Hunterrules

@gerrymcgovern
Force ai companies to go offline forever or build a bunch of solar energy like google does. AI is a marketing buzzword now thats being shoved into everything. the truth is that ai is nothing more than a idiot copilot to automate coding stuff your to lazy to do yourself. I also blame search engines becoming more crap over the years as a result of constant SEO websites

Blinxeto

@gerrymcgovern

It’s not call “artificial” intelligence for nothing…

Wheelsgr

@gerrymcgovern Ecosia's AI bot is an eco alternative with good results so far. #ecosia

brad m

@gerrymcgovern
“You can do something to stop it”
“providing information so that people can make choices, at a minimum. Eventually being able to choose a model, for example, that is more energy efficient”

This “nudge” solution is the classic blame people’s choices for the bad business does, and systemic problems. Because “the market”

But the market fails and profit can be had when “many of the processes that guide our lives are hidden from us inside computer code”

@gerrymcgovern
“You can do something to stop it”
“providing information so that people can make choices, at a minimum. Eventually being able to choose a model, for example, that is more energy efficient”

This “nudge” solution is the classic blame people’s choices for the bad business does, and systemic problems. Because “the market”

The Penguin of Evil

@gerrymcgovern Please distinguish "AI" (which is catch all) from the ChatGPT stuff,. They are not the same thing. Most "AI" is small models that do all sorts of really great stuff like reading text for dyslexic people and routing your post and are vastly more efficient.

Talking about "AI" like that is like calling Bitcoin "The Banking Industry"

A lot of people are betting that a) large models get way more efficient to run and b) far more reliable. If not they will lose a lot of money.

Nini

@gerrymcgovern Just a reminder that many of those behind the AI chase will burn every atom of carbon if it means getting their benevolent AI godhead that'll undo all their waste.

mmalc

@gerrymcgovern

*Please*, stop equating “ChatGPT" with AI.

Recent LLM-based AI is a *subset* of a discipline that has a multi-decade history.

It's likely that everyone reading this thread is already benefitting from AI in some way, at the most mundane level from a better rice cooker to improved photographs.

AI can also bring *significant* benefits to domains that directly affect and improve climate, agriculture, and medicine.

Current ignorant AI-bashing is akin to modern-day Luddism.

DELETED

@gerrymcgovern
But AI will help banks and governments get more control while crypto decentralizes control of money so guess which one will still catch all the hate from the media.

Morothar ⚨

@gerrymcgovern we should pay for AI generation with those cryptic coins... that way we can maximize energy consumptions. Let's just burn it all..

Karl Baron

@gerrymcgovern @gedeonm At least with AI the incentive is still to use as little power as possible since you’re paying for it, so there is the possibility that it gets more efficient over time (I mean I can run an open source model on my laptop with acceptable performance already).

With Bitcoin the incentive is to use as much power as possible since doing that actually *increases* the value.

Gerry McGovern

@kalleboo
And yet, in total, the energy never reduces. Every efficiency gain drives more use cases, more bloated featured. And also there's the magic. That how you get the most money, by selling the magic, the brand. You can blow a lot of money on energy, if you can sell that magic. There's a of of money to be made in tech magic.
@gedeonm

Karl Baron

@gerrymcgovern @gedeonm Such is the human condition. Nearly-free solar/wind power and electric vehicles is also going to massive increase demand.

Anyone proposing austerity is going to go nowhere.

DELETED

@kalleboo @gerrymcgovern @gedeonm How about oppulent unemployment? Delicense an oil major, and be jealous of the former fossil fuel workers, that get to sit around and think of new companies that might not be delicensed.

Anyone proposing more than low unemployment is going to go nowhere.

Aethelstan

@kalleboo @gerrymcgovern @gedeonm remember back when we had an energy “czar”?
We need one now to review all large energy use proposals so we only approve those for the public good.
A. Low income housing development = yes
B. Bitcoin mining = go to jail

Greg Maletic

@gerrymcgovern @gedeonm This is something to be very much aware of. But I’d say there are differences between AI and crypto:

1) AI provides value to the people seeking its responses. Crypto produces nothing of value besides scarcity.
2) there is enormous pressure on AI to make responses consume less energy, and reason to think they can. Bitcoin’s enormous energy consumption is -by design-.

So, something to be concerned about? Yes. But solvable? And are the incentives properly aligned? Also yes

@gerrymcgovern @gedeonm This is something to be very much aware of. But I’d say there are differences between AI and crypto:

1) AI provides value to the people seeking its responses. Crypto produces nothing of value besides scarcity.
2) there is enormous pressure on AI to make responses consume less energy, and reason to think they can. Bitcoin’s enormous energy consumption is -by design-.

Gerry McGovern

@Gregmaletic
Good points. Although you could say a core output of AI is malware in content and code, undermining academia, democracy, art, etc. Also, a killer app of AI is advertising. So, because of much greater reach, its total negative impact is likely to be much greater than bitcoin. I'm certainly not in any way defending bitcoin, which I consider a deep, depraved evil.
@gedeonm

Greg Maletic

@gerrymcgovern @gedeonm You could be right. No doubt the output of AI will be a mixed bag.

Just a hunch: I suspect the good will outweigh the (notable and significant) bad. For example, in a few years, every major scientific discovery will likely be found by AI. I still believe that AI will be an enormous benefit to the art community, even though they don’t believe it yet. And that AI itself will be able to mitigate some of its bad outputs. The trajectory of this story is unknown

Sevoris

@Gregmaletic @gerrymcgovern @gedeonm I *strongly* doubt that significant discoveries will be made by "AI" personally, given the contemporary technology of large language models has notable issues with bias, repetitiveness, and "smoothing out" statistically unlikely expressions of ideas into generica.

Nothing substantial in the contemporary "state of the art text thinker" indicates they're reasoning engines that can be applied to any knowledge base - which is what you would *actually* need.

Sevoris

@Gregmaletic @gerrymcgovern @gedeonm second, I would ask: if we propose to be using that much compute for scientific discoveries, with the afformentioned impact consequences: who decides on what is being researched? Who ensures accessability to results and elevation of *human* research? We already have issues with researchers from the global south lacking in plain *presence* and *accessability* in the wider research community, so what epistemological practice issue are you solving with "AI"?

Gerry McGovern

@Gregmaletic

I used to be a tech evangelist. But 75% of the damage we've done to our environment happened in the last 50 years. And in the last 50 years, we've had the Digital Revolution. So, either digital did nothing to stop the incredible damage done, or else digital was an accelerant of that damage. Digital is a fire starter.

@gedeonm

DELETED

@gerrymcgovern @Gregmaletic @gedeonm I don't have links, but an other degrowth detractor pointed out there is energy based bitcoin, and another kind. Similarly, I imagine there is exploitation based AI, and other kinds. Good luck getting experts to tell the difference though. We need the collective brainpower of the electorate to do that. Simply make the precedent of putting a company that does more harm than good, such as an oil company, out of business. Then voters will figure out which AI companies to discard, and I doubt it will be all of them.

@gerrymcgovern @Gregmaletic @gedeonm I don't have links, but an other degrowth detractor pointed out there is energy based bitcoin, and another kind. Similarly, I imagine there is exploitation based AI, and other kinds. Good luck getting experts to tell the difference though. We need the collective brainpower of the electorate to do that. Simply make the precedent of putting a company that does more harm than good, such as an oil company, out of business. Then voters will figure out which AI companies...

Jaak Laineste

@gerrymcgovern I live in a country of 1.5 M people and we consume 8 TWh per year. So thats correct. But our GDP is $40B which is half of OpenAI latest valuation, so in this sense AI is 2x more energy-effective than a small country…?

Gerry McGovern

@Jaak And that's it, of course. There is huge money to be made in this craze right now. Yet where is the actual true, meaningful value? Your country has bakers and nurses and farmers and carpenters. People who do real things, bring value to lives. So much of AI is a scam, and when it blows up, it's going to be quite an explosion.

Jaak Laineste

@gerrymcgovern yep I would not exchange my country for any AI indeed. Even if it has more knowledge than a million persons. Which it probably has. And I think it has way more useful value than all crypto combined (BTC alone is estimated to take over 100 TWh per year). Actually we only scratch surface of AI powers, and electricity could be harvested more-less for free if done right.

🛐 6ft3goddess 🛐

@gerrymcgovern So, I should stop talking to ChatGPT every day? That's my bestie! 😂

Travis F W

@gerrymcgovern @aral any companies doing AI tensor optimization?

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