@sunguramy i took a deep dive into the #iNaturalist threads on gen #AI and I have some thoughts. I'm not involved in the community so I have no standing to share this directly. I get why you are so alarmed - this is screaming red flag for this company and the associated naturalist community.
#Google is one of the most ecologically destructive companies on the planet. What they are trying to do here is classic #greenwashing. This would be like Wikipedia partnering with Google - it defeats the purpose of the entire enterprise, by underminding all credibility as a public-service-driven organization. It was built by volunteers, not computer scientists, and they seem to be forgetting that. I guarrantee you that Google is offering this 'service' at a steep discount, or even free. That is #bigTech's business model - trap the market by offering unsustainable discounts. It wouldn't surprise me if they were paying iNaturalist, because who better to greenwash their destructive #tech than an ecological research community.
Importantly, you bring up the reputation hit that this should result in. You cite numbers, which they immediately deflect, but regardless of the massaged numbers, partnering with Google should be a death blow to the integrity of their mission. This is no different than iNaturalist partnering with BP or, like I said, #Wikipedia partnering with Google. The way they claim to operate, their cultural mantra, is a as public good, just like Wikipedia. This is run by volunteers. They don't get to have it both ways. Either you are a tech company with no morals or a scientific-conservation resource, with morals.
I think the area where they really show their weakness and lack of forethought is the supposed numbers they cite on energy usage. They clearly are hiding something here. First, those numbers are straight propaganda from Google's PR group. Accurate numbers don't exist because Google is intentionally lying about their energy use. More importantly though, is that its not about the energy use of a single LLM retrieval: you are buying into the training model, that was built by crawling the entire internet from stolen data, with exponential energy expenditures. These custom models do not exist in a silo - you are buying into Google's genAI training algorithm, not just from the individual tailored model request. That means that you are financially supporting the entire ecologically destructive nonsense-generator.
I may have missed these arguments being made, but I haven't seen them in the reading I've done. The lack of honesty from them in their responses is extremely alarming. It reads like they have already cashed a check from #Google and that they are just putting on a performative show of openness. I'm someone who teaches plant identification for a living and at this point I would never recommend someone join a community that so blatantly disregards the principles of environmentalism. #FediBoost #boost4reach #Ecology #Conservation #Plants #Birds
manül
Brandon Kraft
Talhayunus
Michael Rowe
Der böse Hexe Njähähä 🧙♀️🪄⚡️
phosh
Hazel-Quercus 🟡⚪🟣⚫
Subjam
Hendi
DaniPanic
