 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." 37 comments
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 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. @harpo_bzh @gerrymcgovern Can anyone show that AI provides any tangible benefits to search engines? @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.)  @gerrymcgovern  @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.  @gerrymcgovern  @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.  @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. *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.  @gerrymcgovern @gerrymcgovern we should pay for AI generation with those cryptic coins... that way we can maximize energy consumptions. Let's just burn it all..  @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. @kalleboo @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. @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. @kalleboo @gerrymcgovern @gedeonm remember back when we had an energy “czar”? @Gregmaletic @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  @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. @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"? 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. @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…? @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. @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.  |
Gregory's Server
@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...