“AI is a tool stop being a luddite” mfs when being exposed to this reality
i wish we could focus on making small LLMs better.
some companies are doing this. some definitely aren’tto be fair, the scale of pretty much any global industry is incomprehensible to most people
If only we had invested in renewables we could power all the AI we could ever want…
No but we gotta use fossil fuels still you guys! - the top suits
“But but but! If we’re going to solve pollution, we’ll need more of those AI data centres!”
It’s going to be so funny when they build their god AI and ask it to save us and it spits out “should’ve build solar panels 30 years ago”
The real Roko’s Basilisk is that it’s disappointed in you and thinks you wasted your life playing with computers.
well, they train their AI with pro fossil propaganda as you see in forums like this. in fact, AI searches forums like this and makes summaries to answer questions you might ask it.
AI will solve this! We just need more data centers!
/s
Cornell researchers found that at the current rate of AI growth, the burgeoning industry could represent 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030
The United States emitted 4.9 billion tonnes of CO₂ in 2024.
So by 2030 the AI industry CO2 release might be 0.9% of total US emissions.
That ‘almost’ in “Almost Incomprehensible” is doing a lot of work there.
To me it seems the root of the problem is that humanity depends on fossil fuels for energy.
AI data centers are just one of many things contributing to CO2 emisions.
Lond tsory short, humanity needs to start getting it’s energy from non CO2 emmiting sources (solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear).
Consider how rapidly they have been built, and the capitalists’ plans to make many many more. Now also consider the state of the planet’s ecology and the already terrible effects of climate change.
To me, it’s incomprehensible that regular people haven’t already revolted against the death spiral the capitalist class has put us on.
Can you name a moment in time when regular people did stand in solidarity and revolt against something that wasn’t already at the point of causing them grave, direct, unavoidable, and consistent harm?
Abolitionists are an easy example.
Now if you mean a majority of people, yeah not really. But people in general, it happens.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
I love Lemmy math nerds and honestly appreciate how there’s always at least one to put things in perspective for those of us who worked really fucking hard to get a C in college algebra. Cheers.
.9% from a single source is RIDICULOUS though
Ok how much is beef farming accountable for
A huge amount too, 37.9%
But more than one thing can be bad a time, a novel idea, I know
And how many beef farms are there compared to data centers? A lot of a lot more.
If a tiny amount of physical space can do such a large amount of pollution, that’s a worry, when the plan is to increase the amount of them.
Well, sure, but when everyone loses their fucking minds about the tiniest thing, that even requires us to buy all the lies from billionaires about how much the build out will be, while having never done anything about the biggest thing they could personally change, it starts sounding mightily hypocritical.
It seems like the personal responsibility to boycott polluting and unnecessary industries is limited to whatever doesn’t require any personal effort from the person speaking.
Napkin math:
- 40% of americans are very or extremely concerned about AIs environmental impact
- To save 34 million tonnes of CO2e, you need about 5.2 million vegans from now until 2030
- So only 5% of ONLY the complainers would need to go vegan to make up for this “tremendous” impact
- That’s 2% of all americans
That’s the thing we’re even attacking random strangers online for. The thing that we pretend is going to bring about the end times. But sure, veganism is the extreme position…
By the way, what other resources are we saving?
- Water — about 8.8 trillion gallons (~33 billion m³)
- Land — around 1–1.5 million acres of forest/land
- Animals — roughly 8 billion animals including fish and shellfish
More than one thing can be bad.
Why don’t we do both? Less AI, Less Meat
Also, I’m not American, don’t insult me by assuming I’m one
Or, just eat less meat and you can still have AI
Sounds like a bad solution to me
Much more realistic: 6% of amicans that eat mostly vegan
12% of Americans that often choose a vegan meal multiple times per week, seems realistic too.
by the current weight of growth my niece will weigh 260.000 kg by 2030
Headline is very sensational. The article says the estimates greenhouse emissions are ~24-44 million metric tons, which is about .69% of the estimated emissions of the entire country, according to the EPA estimate of 6343 million metric tons.
Less than 1% of all emissions is hardly incomprehensible.
The source the article draws from also says they could reduce the emissions by 73% and water usage by 86% range with proper infrastructure, so that’s cool.
I personally believe the political and socioeconomic impact I’d far worse. We’re being shown very clearly how easily bought out local governments and regulatory agencies are. Explaining why the proper infractructure to resolve these data center issues is so difficult to enforce.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that the people behind the biggest investment and financial scam of the century would, to make more money, fuck up people other than just investors!
But it’s WORTH IT when ChatGPT will be able to DIAGNOSE your CANCER because you ate WOODCHIPS after using a Recipe ChatGPT gave you when you asked for Advice on SWIMMING!
Chatgpt, why is it incomprehensible?
grock, summarize this answer.
But the Average joe using plastic straws is the real reason for climate change. /s
If there was money to be made from solving climate change, it would’ve been solved yesterday.
I think there’s a lot of money to be made in confronting climate change… but it will be made more than two fiscal quarters in the future, so capitalists are not just willing, but actually proud to ignore it.
You’d be correct. Recent estimates are that climate change caused issues will reduce global income by about 15% and cost $40 trillion annually by 2050.
They’d make more money by tackling climate change. It’s in the math. But that math has to be done over multiple years not just next quarter as you said.
Every company has to scramble for their share of the pie which shrinks by virtue of the collective scrambling in and of itself. I love feedback loops!
No one is arguing that
I remember back in the 90’s and early 2000’s they argued that the average person’s consumption was solely to blame for climate change. (While ignoring the pollution caused by multimillion dollar companies).
Yep. Also look at animal agriculture which we also do not need and is a huuuuuge amount crueller and orders of magnitude more polluting. Get rid of both and we’d be like a quarter of the way to fixing our emissions
AI datacenters are 3-4 orders of magnitude more polluting than agriculture comparatively. There’s just currently more agriculture than datacenters, which is something these AI companies would like to change
Get rid of both like I said, it’s not like we’re fighting for one to have the right to ruin our world over the other.
I’d love to see any kind of sources on this. From what I can tell animal agriculture emits roughly 20–30× more CO2e than all data centers combined.
Animal agriculture: The FAO’s most recent estimate puts livestock supply chains at roughly 6.2 Gt CO2e per year, about 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions Data centers (including AI): The IEA puts all data centers at about 0.5% of global CO2 emissions today (~180 Mt CO2), projected to reach 1–1.4% by 2030
Animal agriculture only causes more pollution than AI data centers today because Agriculture is a mature industry with thousands of years of supply and demand built up over time, whereas the AI datacenter boom has barely begun.
One Acre of land used for livestock farming emits on average 0.5-1 metric ton of CO2 equivalent annually.
One Acre of land used for a datacenter is anywhere from 150-300 metric tons of CO2 annually.
I love you Lemmy math nerds. (Not sarcasm.)
Thank you.
Also look at animal agriculture which we also do not need
I can eat steak. I cannot eat AI.
And the meat industry is based on subsidies and infrastructure that goes back what, decades?
If there’s anything that produces carbon that’s “inevitable” and “never going away”, the meat industry is a far better candidate than AI, but I only ever hear arguments about the latter from the AI boosters.
(Hopefully it goes without saying but this is not a defense of keeping meat around, which is not something that can be said when you hear an AI inevitabilist say their cliche)
This is a popular notion, but I don’t think it’s correct, based on the precipitous drops in pollution that the world experienced after the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 COVID closures.
The collapse of the travel industry and the significant decrease in daily commuting after both of these events created unprecedented improvements in air quality and carbon output, and the animal herds weren’t any smaller.
Billionaires trying to kill the rest of us faster.
Sometimes I wonder where we could be if all the AI money was spent on e.g. fusion energy research instead.
Who cares about fusion? There was a study in the late 90’s stating that if only 10% of the capital put towards oil research, exploration, extraction, etc, annually, was put towards renewable energies it would catapult the research output by a factor of 30, by year.
We could have, by now, moved completely towards renewables for everyday life needs and start towards producing more energy we could ever need and put that excess towards greater achievements.
I guess we would be 30 years from stable scalable fusion reactions?
I’ve been cynical about them for years but there’s been enough interesting milestones crossed lately that I wonder if an injection of AI money wouldn’t just do the trick.
We really have literacy crisis on our hands. Their estimates put the industry (if we pretend it’ll not crash and keep growing) at 34 million tonnes of CO2. What percentage of USAs yearly emissions is that? 0,6% of net emissions.
It’s not the animal AG that’s doing it, not the oil industry, and not the car industry. It’s the 0,6% that MAYBE might happen.
I say this not to ignore those things, but to sensitize your valid impulse to fix global climate change issues to the real culprits. Most importantly, I’d like people to adjust their levels of effort and outrage to the actual impacts instead.
If you cared as much as you pretend you do, you’d already be vegan.
They don’t realise that it’s gonna be their own funeral, too. Sure, Elmo and Bebos will most likely die of old age (or drug abuse) in a few decades but many of those cunts are under 30, and they absolutely will have to deal with the apocalyptic consequences of their actions.
And it’s not just them at this point; thousands of politicians and property developers are in it as well. I don’t think most of them are trying to do harm, they’re just blinded by greed.
maybe they are bitter because they cant live forever and want to take us out. Make as much money out of us as they can, live lavish life and leave everything in ruins after they are done. If we let them, we deserve it. But i dont think we should let them.
Anyone that can should do at least some act of resistance, even if it feels meaningless. Throwing a fucking rock at datacenter physically affects nothing, but symbolically it has value. Imagine 100 people throwin a rock at datacenter, while still likely doenst do anything it would be big message to everyone else. Though it would likely also result in getting into trouble, so everyone should also do some risk evaluation what they can get away with. But simple graffitti could also be effective or even just plain speaking your mind loudly about things.
And most importantly, what the enemy fears most is our unity. So everyone should definitely do everything they can to improve that. Together we stand, separated we die.
But i dont think we should let them.
Honestly, I don’t think we can really stop them. The only people they have to answer to are politicians/government officials and those can be bribed. Sure, we can protest data centres and stuff but even if we’re victorious in stopping one from getting built in place a, there’s always a place b.
I hope humanity hasnt become too docile, walking peacefully into the slaughterhouse.
Peaceful resistance is good if you have infinite amount of time, so we should be prepared to be non-peaceful and actually resist these fuckers. Maybe even forcing their hand and making them tighten the screws on populace to keep control would help with people wanting actual change because they wouldnt be so comfortable with the oppression anymore, i dont know.
but at this point i’m at peace with either option, resist or die. i just would prefer if humanity didnt go out / lose all potential because of few vile beings.
i just would prefer if humanity didnt go out / lose all potential because of few vile beings.
I’d prefer that as well but I feel so defenceless in the matter
Too used to money insulating from reality.
They know that things are going to be shit. They just wasn’t the nicest yacht to live on when it does.
I think if they could fully comprehend what was happening right now, they wouldn’t do it.
I don’t think that’s true.
I think they know the future is bleak, and they just want to have the best bio dome or whatever the case may be.
As in, they know they’re making things worse, but if they don’t do it someone else will. So in a bleak and shit future, do you want to live like a king, or choke to death like the rest of us.
Yes, when people get to a certain level of rich, they generally lack vision and imagination; they don’t need it anymore.
It’s a hydra though. If a capitalist leader/billionaire/oil super power abdicates, all available capitalists swarm to fill the vacancy and rake in the power and profits that were given up.
They don’t care the world is ending due to their greed and corruption, they just want to be rich and powerful.
See they think they’re doing Human Instrumentality from NGE
That they will discover true AGI in their lifetime, and then use it to become a living god.
They don’t want us dead, they want us making money for them
Not really. They are actively trying to circumvent consumers as a step to making money. That is what the entire AI-circlejerk bubble is about.
They’d really love it if we could be dead and making money for them. They live in hope!
Yes, but they also don’t care if the grand majority of us are dead.
They have what they need.
That’s why most have bunkers.
Fuckerbergs is in Hawaii.
They just want us to make money. They don’t give a fuck if you die.
That’s funny because I would prefer them dead and I bet there are more who think like me than there are who think like them. Maybe they should start getting frightened. I’m not saying we should kill them, but I wouldn’t bat an eye if they just dropped dead. And I bet not much would be lost for humanity after we sat down and made a plan how to redistribute their wealth and equity.
Remember when Elon was all about “transitioning the world to sustainable transportation”? LOL
He was never about that.
He said he was, but actions speak louder and if he ever was he’d be promoting Hydrogen-electric with a Hydrogen ICE transition* instead of battery electric which isn’t sustainable and is environmentally disastrous in its own way.
*Diesel ICE can be converted to Hydrogen ICE (note: they still need ~5-10% diesel, so it’s not a forever technology) - https://www.unsw.edu.au/engineering/research-technology/is/converting-diesel-engines-to-run-on-hydrogen
My diesel car has run on B100 (100% biodiesel) just fine for years. That’s already good enough and requires no new technology or infrastructure. Hydrogen is stupid as hell.
Hydrogen can make some degree of sense if we take as an energy reserve, stockpileable, for an event where it is necessary to suplement energy needs.
So many countries with solar farms being turned off to prevent grid collapse could consider building hydrogen plants or, those with sea acess, dessalination stations, to stockpile fresh water underground and extract minerals directly from the water.
Give it up. Hydrogen is not happening. Batteries have won. Now we need to move to more sustainable chemistries.
Oh, and yeah, Elon was always just posing.
While I believe that the various pushes for hydrogen in cars and light trucks is a shameless attempt at replacing the revenue stream from petrol, hydrogen does make a lot of sense for heavy trucks, trains, ships - anywhere diesel or bunker fuel is used now.
Found the Toyota rep
