I wonder how much energy google wastes on its AI service in the regular search just to give me a worse answer than the top results I was actually looking for.
Purchase more carbon credits
Indulgences never really went away did they
:o
Unlike purchasing things for imaginary gods, carbon credits could work in theory. At least well enough to be part of the solution. That is, if they were properly regulated around strategies that actually absorb carbon and everyone is forced to be honest and transparent.
Which none of them do, of course.
A simple trick would be to stop the wars
I mean the ibm 1401 used ~13,000 Watts so power hungry is just the way it starts.
The fundamental problem is that there’s money to be made by consuming more and more “sustainable” resources. The real solution is to reduce consumption on a global scale.
And how do you intend to “reduce consumption”, may I inquire?
Not OC, but some ways to “reduce consumption” are reducing our usage of inefficient technology by replacing it with more energy/resource efficient means.
Examples include replacing individual automobiles with mass transit, building more dense cities to reduce consumption of construction materials/ vehicle miles, and not training massively large language models in facilities that consume more energy than an entire small country.
… gotta admit this is quite a bit more sound than I anticipated
As for LLMs, people don’t really like when others say they can’t explore the applications of tech, even if it’s unsustainable, so there’f bacaklash ofc
In real world application, increased efficiency doesn’t decrease energy usage nor decrease labor required to live. Tech has gotten more efficient since the industrial revolution, but demand for technology has increased exponentially, energy use is astronomical, and workers still work more hours.
There are great ideas about taxing consumption, while getting rid of tax on labour.
AI uses water?
Well obviously the little people who live in the computer get thirsty because it’s so hot in there
Oompa-Loompas need their pools
Cooling uses freshwater and often drinking water
That’s crazy, they should use heat pumps and maybe underground refrigerant loops instead.
But that costs money
All data centers use lots of water for cooling.
The water is mostly returned to the watershed, from what I understand. Except the bits that evaporate
They primarily use evaporative cooling. Way less energy use, but no, it doesn’t get returned.
Transition to paperless office
The problem is there is people who say bullshit like this unironically.
must be adaptable to constant climate change
Ehhh. I get that exploitative techbros and cryptobros have confused the issue by latching onto the AI bubble.
But at the same time generalized artificial intelligence is very likely possible and will be an absolute game-changer if and when it happens. It’s easily of similar value to fusion technology.
And it is already bringing truly impressive results into reality - protein folding and diagnostic medicine come to mind.
But at the same time generalized artificial intelligence is very likely possible and will be an absolute game-changer if and when it happens. It’s easily of similar value to fusion technology.
The “AI” we have now is basically advanced Autocomplete.
In the same way that computers are basically advanced abaci.
Don’t confuse a simplification made to demonstrate the basic functioning to a layman with how things actually work.
LLM’s are neural networks, which are based on a model of brain function. There’s little reason to believe that we cannot eventually reach similar levels of effectiveness as human brains.
Hell - reaching the levels of pigeon brains would already be absurdly useful.
The problem is they’re already talking about needing trillions of dollars worth of hardware to make it happen. It’s absurd.
