Google’s emissions are up 48% in 5 years. Microsoft’s are up 30% since 2020. Those soaring figures are being driven by mass investments in data centers to power AI tools.
Generative AI is a climate disaster and data center expansion must be stopped.
https://disconnect.blog/generative-ai-is-a-climate-disaster/
Just 500 million more tons of air pollution and AI will have the answer to climate change.
@parismarx make it a law that data farms/servers/ AI/ crypto CAN NOT use the electricity grid. They must supply their own renewable power. Any excess power can be sold to the grid at same price that individuals can sell their excess power for.
Problem solved.
And if AI and crypto finally tank then the renewable power can all be sold to the grid at a reasonable price (same price homeowners can sell their excess power for)
Even when they could use renewable energy they use WATER.
And all the minerals. Most of them are from conflict zones, with extractivism, and slavery.
@tunubesecamirio @parismarx But they would not be using the publics power.
And if it costs more than they are making it might slow them down.
Right now the costs are so low that it is easy to make a profit.
It is like stealing resources from indigenous people during the settlement of the "New World".
Low cost- high profits. How capitalism is founded
@tunubesecamirio @parismarx Also all minerals used for these centers should be sourced from the country the centers are located in.
Or countries that are certified conflict/child labour/ slavery free.
That might slow them down or look for new technologies that don't require the current minerals
But this doesn't exist.
yeah - that's going to happen.
@parismarx Or maybe we should invest more into nuclear energy. It doesn't matter how much energy you are using if that energy is being generated through sustainable means.
@[email protected] This is why I'll refuse to use any AI tools, if I possibly can. Never used ChatGPT, never will. Of course unfortunately things are creeping in everywhere, and personal choices matter little for the planet.
Fuck stupid humanity.
1.6K Posts, 127 Following, 14.7K Followers · critic of tech futures | host of tech won’t save us | writer of disconnect | my book “road to nowhere” is out now! | he/they
@parismarx the perfect song for our age.
@shitpostalotl @parismarx AI is the solution to the cloud provider problem. The problem is that the economies of scale for the cloud depend on compute being expensive. A cloud provider may be able to get 60% average utilisation, whereas an on-premises server may get only 5-10% (but needs to be able to handle the peaks, so is massively overprovisioned for the common case). A 128-core system that consolidates a load of workloads is cheaper than 16 eight-core ones. This is great, except that computers keep getting faster. In the ‘90s, you needed a big system to handle corporate accounting for a medium-sized enterprise, now a RPi can do it with a 5W power budget. There was a story a few days ago about a payment processor that handles 20k transactions per second. They have 60 servers, worldwide, and a lot of those are for redundancy. Every generation of improved compute pushes the efficiency arguments towards simpler hosting.
For clouds to be successful, they need compute demand to keep increasing, ideally at a faster rate than efficiency increases. Demand for compute for most tasks grows at a rate aligned with number of employees or number of customers, which means that the asymptote is the rate of population growth in regions with disposable income. AI, in contrast, demands huge amounts of compute power. If you can convince businesses that they need to put an AI in their products or loose out when their competitor does it first, you’ve guaranteed growth for the next few years. During that time, you can hunt for the next thing that demands vast compute resources.
@parismarx what must he stopped is #WastefulComputing for bs like "#AI"*...
#WhatsMissing is a required #EnergyLabel alike the @EUCommission 's standardization for #appliances.
@parismarx > generative AI is an environmental disaster that’s accelerating natural destruction and the climate crisis at the very moment
At the same time total share of AI emissions is around 1%.
I wonder if total datacenter emissions are going up or down (I wouldn't be surprised by the latter as energy saving/cooling tech improves) and while I am not fond of the idea to warm up the planet by running dumb bots and generating bad imagery but it sounds a bit too alarmist.
An important detail regarding Google specifically (via @Alon): https://better.boston/@crschmidt/112736182057908900
Attached: 1 image Google’s carbon emissions report showing their data center carbon emissions are up is shitty, but blaming it on AI is a distraction. Google’s carbon usage is up because they haven’t been able to accomplish expected carbon free energy projects in the Middle East and Asia, where their data center consumption remains near 100% carbon generated, while many locations in North America are near 100% carbon free.
Yes. The generative AI all by itself without any humans increased the pollution by 1.5x. It has nothing to do with corporate greed, capitalism, incentives to pollute, or human decisions.
Blaming a piece of technology is lazy.
@parismarx It’s not just generative AI though.
Here’s a tiny window into the extraordinary pathological extravagance of Microsoft’s approach https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/112750516875020750
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