Comment on Lemmy be like
AnonomousWolf@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoIf you ever take a flight for holiday, or even drive long distance and cry about AI being bad for the environment then you’re a hypocrite.
Same goes for if you eat beef, or having a really powerful gaming rig that you use a lot.
Texas has just asked residents to take less showers while datacenters made specifically for LLM training continue operating.
This is more like feeling bad for not using a paper straw while local factory dumps all their oil change into the community river.
your source about beef relies on poore-nemecek 2018, a paper with dubious methodology
You’re getting downvoted for speaking the truth to an echo chamber my guy.
But he isn’t speaking the truth. AI itself is a massive strain on the environment, without any true benefit. You are being fed hype and lies by con men. Data centers being built to supply AIs are using water and electricity at alarming rates, taking away the resources from actual people living nearby, and raising the cost of those utilities at the same time.
This is valid to all data centers serving all websites. Your take is a criticism of unregulated capitalism, not AI.
Beef farming is a far far far more impactful discussion, yet here we are.
Ai takes far more power to serve a single request than a website does though.
And remember, AI requires those websites too, for training data.
So it’s not just more power hungry, it also has thw initial power consumption added on top
And your car or flight is a massive strain on the environment. I think you’re missing the point. There’s a way to use tools responsibly. We’ve taken the chains off and that’s obviously a problem but the AI hate here is irrational
The problem is the companies building the data centers; they would be just as happy to waste the water and resources mining crypto or hosting cloud gaming, if not for AI it would be something else.
In China they’re able to run DeepSeek without any water waste, because they cool the data centers with the ocean. DeepSeek also uses a fraction of the energy per query and is investing in solar and other renewables for energy.
AI is certainly an environmental issue, but it’s only the most recent head of the big tech hydra.
Do you really think those data centers wouldn’t have been built if AI didn’t exist? Do you really think those municipalities would have turned down the same amount of money if it was for something else but equally destructive?
What I’m hearing is you’re sick of municipal governance being in bed with big business. That you’re sick of big business being allowed to skirt environmental regulations.
But sure. Keep screaming at AI. I’m sure the inanimate machine will feel really bad about it.
The same can be said for taking flights to go on holiday.
Flying emits way exponentially more CO2 and supports the oil industry
This is why I avoid both flights and AI in it’s current form.
AI uses 1/1000 the power of a microwave.
Are you really sure you aren’t the one being fed lies by con men?
Hi. I’m in charge of an IT company that is been contracted to carry out one of these data centers somewhat unwillingly in our city. We are currently in the groundbreaking phase but I am looking at papers and power requirements. You are absolutely wrong on the power requirements unless you mean per query on a light load on an easy plan, but these will be handling millions if not billions of queries per day. Keeping in mind that a single user query can also be dozens, hundreds, or thousands of separate queries… Generating a single image is dramatically more than you are stating.
What? Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Tennessee (when fully expanded & operational) will need 2 GW of energy.
AI itself is a massive strain on the environment, without any true benefit
Rockstar games developing GTA5: 6k employees 20 kwatt hours per square foot esource.bizenergyadvisor.com/…/large-offices 150 square feet per employee unspot.com/…/how-much-office-space-do-we-need-per…
18,000,000,000 watt hours
vs
10,000,000,000 watt hours for ChatGPT training
washington.edu/…/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use…
There are more 3d games developed each year than companies releasing new AI models.
You’re getting downvoted for providing a well founded argument that should facilitate a broader discussion. Jesus Christ what are we doing here, people?
This echo chamber isn’t ready for this logical discussion yet unfortunately lol
When someone disagrees with me - echo chamber.
When someone agrees with me - logical discussion.
Then why are you guys avoiding a logical discussion around environmental impact instead of spouting misinformation?
The fact of the matter is eating a single steak or lb of ground beef will eclipse all most peoples AI usage. Obviously most can’t escape driving, but for those of us in cities biking will far eclipse your environmental impact than not using AI.
Serving AI models aren’t even as bad as watching Netflix, this counterculture to AI is largely misdirected anger that thrown towards unregulated capitalism. Unregulated data centers. Unregulated growth.
Training is bad but training is a small piece of the puzzle that happens infrequently, and again circles back to the unregulated problem.
It is easier to oppose a new thing than change ingrained habits.
If your house is on fire, it is reasonable to be mad at someone who throws a little torch onto it.
Hypocrisy can be called the primitive nature of man who chooses what is easier because he is designed that way. Human is like a cancerous tumor for the planet.
BroBot9000@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ahh so are you going to acknowledge the privacy invasion and brain rotting cause by Ai or are you just going to focus on dismissing the environmental concerns? Cause I liked more than just the environmental impacts.
Draces@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Uh dismissing that concern seems like valid point? Do people have to comprehensively discredit the whole list to reply?