Google's emissions are up over 50%, Amazon builds huge data centers powered by 75% natural gas.
Remember all those posts telling us that "AIs climate impact isn't that bad" supported by some really funky math/perspective and/or numbers Sam Altman invented?
Here's the actual impact.
"AI" is a fossil fuel technology.
@tante
…and they are trying to bring back #nuclear with #AI …
While #nuclearenergy is not #fossil it not #green at all - but #colonial , #deadly & totally unfair because, like in AI, the #profits are being privatised, the costs are hitting the whole #society & the #planet
But from the point of view of someone believing in #cybernetics or one of its #TESCREAL grandchildren it is great - because in cybernetics EVERY problem will be solved in "the future" by "technology"
@Kuttenfunker @Katika not "everyone" uses AI. Adaption is way lower than LinkedIn makes you think (because of lack of quality, political reasons, security issues etc.).
"AI" is neither everywhere nor inevitable
@tante the whole AI bubble imploding would be the most beneficial outcome for humanity. I just fear, it won't happen anytime soon 😩
@eliasp @tante @Kuttenfunker @Katika i thought "everyone" was in reference to the companys.
because to me it's very clear that many users don't use AI (especially not intentionally using it).
Every week I write 0,0 prompts.
I think in my circle of friends the number is a bit higher but still much below 0,5.
from my POV the AI is something companys push but it's mostly a shareholder stig and the normal humans get near nil benefit from it
I believe that it's not an either/or - as in not being able to use AI environmentally friendly and ethically.
AIs specialised on limited tasks can be trained with smaller datasets, we could slow the expansion of data centers and wait till the technology doesn't consume as much power anymore (remember the cooling a computer with less power than your phone needed 10-20 years ago?)
The science is advancing, algorithms are being developed that reduce the needed model size, etc.
But what we see is a "cool" technology under capitalism. Big corporations want to exploit it *fast* and *first*. "The winner takes it all". It's a brutalist approach - just throw size, growth and resources at it.
@Kuttenfunker @tante @Katika And currently it's mostly junk we don't need. I'm sick of getting chat bots thrown at me at every corner.
Engineers who have no idea what they are doing just throw the largest LLMs at things instead of designing task specific software.
Generative AI with its hallucinations is ruining quality everywhere...
But the problem won't go away without some kind of regulation.
@scatty_hannah @Kuttenfunker @tante @Katika
The purpose the Niagara of money being thrown at AI is from the delusion that they will create AGI because the platform billionaires have convinced themselves they’re in a winner take call race, where “win” is totalitarian control of everyone everything in the world.
Each of them say that they are the only one that will use it for good. If you don’t know who or what NRx is it’s time to read a little about it. They are bonkers.
Well, not everyone. Some by choice, some by not having access
And nuclear is only low in CO2 if you find a ready build nuclear power plant and a store of ready-to-use nuclear fuel
And do not take any of the storage/treatment of waste into your calculation
And… much more
Nuclear is deadly. And shifts responsibility to later generation that were not asked nor do they profit
We do not even have a form of communication that can exist as long as nuclear is deadly
“U.S. commercial reactors have generated about 90,000 metric tons of spent fuel since the 1950s. If all of it were able to be stacked together, it could fit on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.”
The nuclear waste is an exaggerated problem. Very little is generated. Future generations profit by also getting a stable source of clean energy.
Who wrote this comment? Exxon?
> Nuclear is deadly.
https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/deaths-fossil-fuel-emissions-higher-previously-thought
Eight million dead every year already from fossil fuels. But once the climate catastrophe really gets going, most of humanity will be gone.
And one of the reasons we will kill the planet is this insane idea that nuclear is more dangerous than fossil fuels.
Watching the environmental movement ignore fossil fuels while destroying nuclear power has been just horrifying.
@tante @Kuttenfunker @art_histories @TomSwirly @Katika no, they're in highly controlled environments, why?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-neutron_reactor
Did you think that just because you don't know about something it doesn't exist? That's not how it works...
@tante @Kuttenfunker @art_histories @Katika
This is a deadly serious issue. You being insulting makes it very very hard to take your contribution seriously.
@markhburton @Kuttenfunker @art_histories @Katika @tante Vitrified and put back into the original mines, for example.
IF the world didn't have a terminal issue with over two *trillion* tonnes of waste CO2 in the atmosphere, I wouldn't be suggesting this.
@Kuttenfunker @markhburton @art_histories @Katika @tante
This is the biggest problem ever to face the human race, and yet you seem to think it's a great big joke.
Every day my opinion of humanity falls another notch.
@markhburton @Kuttenfunker @art_histories @Katika @tante
We can certainly agree that a managed energy descent would be the best way. And honestly, we know that isn't going to happen.
So nuclear will delay the inevitable, but make the final result somewhat worse.
Given the horribleness of humans, perhaps it's not worth trying to eke out survival a bit longer that way.
@art_histories @TomSwirly @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante which is more dangerous?
The waste from nuclear reactors?
Or the waste from fossil fuel plants?
BECAUSE WE ALSO DON'T DEAL WITH THE WASTE FROM FOSSIL FUEL PLANTS. THERE IS NO SAFE WAY TO STORE IT AND IT IS KILLING THE PLANET.
@art_histories @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante
No one's proposing ocean dumping. Why did you post that?
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
We needed to already, in the past, to have reduced those three huge bands marked Oil/Gas/Coal by 90% from where they actual are to avoid disaster in the future.
We didn't. Now we are racing against catastrophe to reduce those huge bulges by over 90% almost immediately. We need all the non-emitting sources we can get and we aren't building enough new renewables...
1/
@art_histories @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante ...even to cover the growth in fossil fuels year over year, let alone to reduce it.
You know, I've been listening to this line of reasoning for fifty years now, and yet there are always never any actual numbers, just "nuclear bad" and now, here we are, with the end in sight.
The consequences of the climate catastrophe are already here. Fossil fuels are already killing 8 million people a year: https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/deaths-fossil-fuel-emissions-higher-previously-thought
Think I'm wrong?
2/
@art_histories @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante
Then show us the numbers! How many people will die for each gigajoule of energy? What would be the consequences of different energy mixes?
Any rational calculation shows that the risk to humans of destabilizing our climate, emptying the tropics of life, and drowning our coasts is *orders of magnitude* greater than that of nukes.
So let's see those numbers, some actual science. Your uninformed opinion is has little value.
@mnalis @art_histories @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante
Oh, yes, if there's one thing we can agree on is that AI (and cryptocurrencies for that matter) have negative value to humanity and should be stamped out with extreme prejudice!
@mnalis @art_histories @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante We need both, of course!
I'm absolutely all for renewables, but we are losing this war at a faster rate every day.
---
Someone made the argument that more nuclear would just delay the inevitable; that humans won't get off fossil fuels till they're gone and we'll end up with a degraded environment AND a lot of nuclear waste.
Sadly, I have no refutation for that.
@mnalis @art_histories @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante
In that same year 2023, fossil fuel consumption increased by 2%.
But we needed to decrease fossil fuel use by over 90% by 2023 to avoid climate disaster.
Now climate disaster is baked in: we are now sprinting toward catastrophe.
We are losing the war. We need every single weapon in our armament.
You know, I've been having this argument since the 1970s.
1/
@mnalis @art_histories @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante
Always the counterparty argues that renewables will soon be so cheap that fossil fuels will wither away and we won't need nuclear.
Here we are, 50 years later. We have emitted 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2 since then, 3/4 of all that humans have ever emitted. Fossil fuel use continues to grow exponentially. CO2 emissions continue to grow exponentially. Public sentiment makes nuclear impossible.
2/
@mnalis @art_histories @Katika @Kuttenfunker @tante And in the United States, the subsidies that made renewables increase so fast are being removed, and pollution controls on fossil fuels are also being removed, making them cheaper to use.
And here you are, fifty years later, with that same argument that the problem is already solved and we don't need nuclear.
It's incomprehensible.
I thought we might not win this war. What I didn't anticipate is that we wouldn't even try.
@Kuttenfunker @Katika @tante Who is this "everyone" you are talking about?
I'm a senior engineer and I never use AI, never ever ever, because it gives bad results, because I like doing my work myself, but mainly because the whole plan of stealing all human knowledge and selling it back to us while destroying almost all jobs is incredibly evil.
@Kuttenfunker @TomSwirly @Katika @tante
"Dr. Eric Topol and Dr. Pranav Rajpurkar recently published an editorial reviewing several studies in which the AI alone performed better than either humans alone or humans-plus-AI ... they noted: “When A.I. worked independently to diagnose patients, it achieved 92 percent accuracy, while physicians using A.I. assistance were only 76 percent accurate—barely better than the 74 percent they achieved without A.I.”"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2025/02/28/when-medical-ai-starts-getting-better-than-human-doctors/
@hadon @Kuttenfunker @Katika @tante
We're talking apples and oranges here.
No one doubts the value of purpose-built statistical models in a specific area to do better at interpreting large collections of digital data like a medical image. Better diagnosis helps the public good.
It's the general purpose LLMs we are against, partly because they do a poor job, but mainly because they are, as I explained, a massive heist for the benefit of a tiny number of rich, evil people.
@TomSwirly @Kuttenfunker @Katika @tante
It's true that not everyone uses it, and I believe we are going through a bubble that will someday burst. Today it's being used in places were it's not needed and I hope it'll end so that we can save resources. But it's also true that there are places where AI is doing a great job and it would be an error to stop it, in the medical field, for example.
@Kuttenfunker pft. I don't want to use AI and I resent the corporations trying to force me to use AI. I'd rather use nuclear power for something useful like powering homes.
What "everyone". I've yet to see it make any money or do anything useful or beneficial. Not only don't use it, wouldn't invest in it either. Bargepole job bumping along on government subsidies.
@Kuttenfunker @Katika @tante I don't think that everyone (as in people not companies) uses AI. That's a tech bro lie
The install base might be high because companies are forcing it into everything and it's often difficult or impossible to remove or switch off but personally, I know nobody who likes or uses AI and I'm not exactly in a tech privacy bubble
Most people find it annoying and disruptive and many of those have tried it but were not happy with the output
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