EeBe
LillyLyle/Count MelancholiaRT'ed by William Gibson on Twitter:
and it's so very on the nose of the issue:
and it's so very on the nose of the issue:
xs4me2This 👆
Wiredfire@xs4me2 @LillyHerself not “this” unless backed up with data about how these various data centres source their energy.
Many have been and are increasingly using sustainable power, mostly because it’s actually more cost effective most of the time and they can do a little greenwashing as a bonus.
There are a multitude of reasons to dunk on LLMs / AI but power usage isn’t the “gotcha” many think it is.
Edit: It’s been fun but muting now to silence trolls 😆 🔇
@wiredfire @xs4me2 You can believe that, if it makes you feel better. But as long as there is still nuclear, and fossil fuels are still being burnt, and we are asked to keep our power usage down for essential things, and as long as the earth's climate continues being disrupted, then I'm afraid there's no excuse for it.
@LillyHerself @xs4me2 aye, I’m not actually contesting that but it’s conjecture - attack AI with things that OpenAI and their fetid kin can’t hand-wave away. How they power their infra isn’t the route.
✨buff dog himbo✨@wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 considering that before the AI boom, we were collectively only managing to power about 6% of the total energy use with renewables on a regular basis, there is ZERO REASON to think it's different with AI because "they pwomise." Everyone is absolutely right to dunk on the power consumption, just like with shitcoin, in fact they don't dunk nearly hard enough.
https://news.yahoo.com/news/power-hungry-ai-boom-making-164025548.html?guccounter=1
@wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 this isn't even to mention the water cost.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x
Fresh water is not becoming a more abundant resource, but new gigantic data centers are making the problem worse by consuming vast amounts of water. The AI boom is driving the creation of new & larger (more energy & water-intensive) data centers, including in areas already direly short on water.
Jennifer
LR@itsmeholland @wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 yes, once used, the water is gone afterwards. poof. each individual H2O molecule zapped from existence. it's a shame!
@lritter @wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 it doesn't matter how much fucking h2o you have if none of it is drinkable LMAO wtf? Have you been asleep for the past 50 years? We're not good at reclaiming water, desalination is not a sustainable solution & even rainwater is now considered to be unsafe to drink ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. If we squander the drinking & irrigation water at this point, we're fucked, bud.
@lritter @wiredfire @LillyHerself @xs4me2 like this is maybe the most hilariously wrong comment you could have made lmao.
You don't need to destroy the water molecules to have too much usless, polluted, or contaminated water and not enough drinkable water or water that's usable for agriculture, or even simply water that's safe to allow back into the environment bc surprise! Putting contaminated water back into the noncontaminated water creates BIG PROBLEMS
Rin3d@LillyHerself @wiredfire @xs4me2 Hold up. Why are you upset about nuclear? Its the single cleanest power source ever. The safest aswell even when you include both Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. Meanwhile Solar is prone to breaking and leaching heavy metals like mercury into the ground, hydro decimates environments and changes the entire local ecological structure of an area, wind takes a ton of aluminum and is very specific on where it can be used.
Nuclear is the best power source.
datenwolf@Rin3d @LillyHerself @wiredfire @xs4me2 please don't spread misinformation about solar. There's zero mercury in any PV tech in wide use. The only toxic PV tech in commercial use is CdTe and that has been displaced by entirely nontoxic silicon tech PV over the past 10 years (give or take); I wouldn't even know where to buy a CdTe module these days.
@Rin3d @LillyHerself @wiredfire
If you have no idea what you are talking about, you should maybe also try to refrain from spreading total nonsense...
but then again there is the Dunning-Kruger effect of course...
EricGeneric@Rin3d @LillyHerself @wiredfire @xs4me2 I guess you take the nuclear wast home in your garage for storage the next… um… 1million years?
@EricGeneric @LillyHerself @wiredfire @xs4me2 Do you know 90% of nuclear waste is just PPE gear that we could eliminate simply by making self contained self regulating thorium reactors? There's really no reason to worry about nuclear waste we have plenty of places to store it for thousands of years without issue.
Anton@Rin3d I call BS and "russian troll."
Read and follow up on science. We don't have plenty of places either.
https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-waste-in-disused-german-mine-leaves-a-bitter-legacy/a-47420382
But sure, you can share your backyard for that remaining 10%.
Read and follow up on science. We don't have plenty of places either.
https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-waste-in-disused-german-mine-leaves-a-bitter-legacy/a-47420382
But sure, you can share your backyard for that remaining 10%.
beaumains@wiredfire @xs4me2 @LillyHerself that sustainable, renewable power could be used to power peoples homes instead. Or replace some fossil fuels somewhere else.
Wilfried Klaebe@wiredfire As long as there is unsustainable energy "production", it is.
alberta is a hoax@wonka @wiredfire @beaumains @xs4me2 @LillyHerself ...and as long as privatized power providers are raising costs, that one girl with five bodacious tatas is a rounding error for the very rich...or the $7 your power bill went up for the rest of us.
@wiredfire @xs4me2 @LillyHerself while there's still fossil fuel generation it effectively is either/or.
Leendaal
Karl Auerbach@beaumains @wiredfire @xs4me2 @LillyHerself Or that power could be used to fill storage systems, such as large battery array near me at Elkhorn Slough, or to charge home battery systems.
RodneyPetersonTalentAgency@wiredfire @xs4me2 @LillyHerself
Oh shut the fuck up. I suppose you also think the same about crypto. Asshole.
@RodneyPetersonTalent @xs4me2 @LillyHerself actually no, there’s plenty of good evidence of awful dirty energy used for crypto. But if we’re cussing you can shut the fuck putting words in my mouth and either refute my point or back up the initial point made with reputable fact-based sources.
Or you can just.. do whatever this weirdness is you’re doing. Fking keyboard warriors.
@wiredfire @xs4me2 @LillyHerself
Yeah I’ll keep doing what I’m doing. Actual research as opposed to believing assholes pushing an agenda, thank you.
@RodneyPetersonTalent @xs4me2 @LillyHerself
And yet no such research offered 🤷
Fact is taking ChatGPt for example the sources of its energy aren’t actually public knowledge, so I’m not sure conjecture counts as “research”. Apple and Microsoft as other players in the space both invest heavily in sustainable data centres, with their infrastructure at carbon neutral or on the path to it. I have no agenda and you’re the one that got angry.
@wiredfire @xs4me2 @LillyHerself
Because actually trying to present evidence to people who are pushing an agenda is not worth my time. And clearly most people here are not supporting you in any way.
@RodneyPetersonTalent @xs4me2 @LillyHerself I have no agenda..? Other than agreeing that AI is a terrible idea and it should be stood up to, which I feel like isn't a million miles away from your position but here we are with you insisting that we be at loggerheads 🤷♂️
Though I would genuinely like and would read the evidence you have. I'm always up for learning more and being better informed.
(Lastly popular consensus isn't the same as fact)
Megahertz
Mark M. Evans@wiredfire you muted this, but for people that may be confused by your conflation - The issue during a heatwave is not if the energy is green. The issue is the grid not being able to supply the demand and causing a brown out and then people dying.
The data centers are not on separate grids, the whole “using green energy” thing is just accounting, not separate infrastructure.
@wiredfire @xs4me2 @LillyHerself I don't know what country you're in, but in the US this is happening (gift article):
Internet data centers are fueling drive to old power source: Coal
... antiquated coal-powered electricity plants that had been scheduled to go offline will need to keep running to fuel the increasing need for more power, undermining clean energy goals.
https://wapo.st/3S2MqNp
Didn’t remember asking for your biased opinion, but good luck with that 😬
Royfireball@wiredfire @xs4me2 @LillyHerself
Here is a link to a Q&A with an assistant proffessor from the University of Washington who studies ai https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/07/27/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use/
Regardless of where that power comes from, the LLM'S have failed to justify the energy cost of their use in every way.
Janie Karma S 🏳️🌈🖖🏿
Mighty Orbot@LillyHerself this genuinely makes sense, though. Cities where everyone is using the A/C experience a strain on the cities’ power grid, which in a worst-case scenario leads to rolling blackouts. AI datacenters (and their wasted efforts) are powered by different grids far from cities, sometimes in the middle of nowhere.
The damage to the global environment is the same, of course, but the local effects can be quite different.
Longwing@mighty_orbot @LillyHerself The tweet is funnier, but your take is sadly more accurate. Reigning in datacenter electrical consumption wouldn't solve overburdened power grids in urban centers.
TTimo@Longwing @mighty_orbot @LillyHerself the guest on a recent Volts podcast had this interesting stat that global energy consumption for AI currently sits at about 10% of the power consumption of American TVs.
Lilly Hunter@mighty_orbot @LillyHerself I don't know where you live, but where I live (UK) it's all one big grid. There are no "urban" grids contra "rural" grids.
Darwin Woodkayeah no, grid's the grid
Mélani (Melanie) Bjornsdottir (she, ŝi)@mighty_orbot @LillyHerself Unlike the AI, AC is necessary for life support.
Dante@LillyHerself
Cyberpunk in 2024: Rule#34 pics or Life. Choose wisely*
*plz don't ask ChatGPT 🔥🔥
viq@LillyHerself there's also the "please conserve water, don't take long baths etc", meanwhile golf courses and cooling for aforementioned AI.
Zoyd@viq @LillyHerself Similar to California when I lived there and they wanted us to conserve water when big agriculture sucked up the vast majority of the water.
@zoyd @LillyHerself I can at least somewhat understand "it's important if we want people to have food". "AI" is a solution looking for a problem at best, and golf courses are a toy.
@viq True. It is, though, just another example of where the system ignores the true solution in favor of corporate interests.
BagginsGolf courses, absolutely, but Datacenters don't actually consume water. Most datacenters don't even have a water-cooling component. Those that do use closed-loop systems or natural water sources. The cost to a datacenter to _consume_ fresh water for cooling would be prohibitive.
Hate on 'em for what they're doing, sure, but the main thing datacenters consume is electricity.
@Longwing @LillyHerself I admit I don't have direct knowledge, or didn't even follow through on the articles I read, but a bunch mention "a query uses so much water", and that data centers being built/expanded mean less water available for people there, and a story where a city refused to tell how much power and water a Google data center was using/buying (at preferential prices of course).
@Longwing
Really, though, the problem is simply the water being taken away from humans, often in places where there’s very little water to spare to begin with.
@Longwing “Companies can either use traditional air conditioning to cool the servers, which is expensive, or use water for evaporative cooling. The latter is cheaper, but it also sucks up millions of gallons of water. A large data center, researchers say, can gobble up anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day — as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/04/25/data-centers-drought-water-use/
@mighty_orbot
I stand corrected. I'm accustomed to datacenters that use CRACs (industrial scale AC). Probably because my region is too humid for evaporative cooling to ever be effective.
I stand corrected. I'm accustomed to datacenters that use CRACs (industrial scale AC). Probably because my region is too humid for evaporative cooling to ever be effective.
Gorgeous na Shock!@mighty_orbot @Longwing This is worse than I thought. I thought the issue was returned water being too warm and causing algae blooms and whatnot. But it's actually ”this region is so dry that evaporative cooling works. So we'll just use the precious water (because it's so dry) to do that!”
So the water isn't even being returned!
So the water isn't even being returned!
Cifer@mighty_orbot @Longwing I suspect "it's expensive" means "it takes a lot of electricity", so it's basically lose-lose. Joy!
yes they bloody well do
Magnus Ahltorp@darwinwoodka @Longwing @viq @LillyHerself This depends on where the data centre is, and how it’s built. For emergency purposes it was quite common in the ‘90s in Sweden, I imagine it’s not very common here now. In other parts of the world, it’s common.