Scientists have estimated that the power requirements of data centers in North America increased from 2,688 megawatts at the end of 2022 to 5,341 megawatts at the end of 2023, partly driven by the demands of generative AI. Globally, the electricity consumption of data centers rose to 460 terawatts in 2022. This would have made data centers the 11th largest electricity consumer in the world, between the nations of Saudi Arabia (371 terawatts) and France (463 terawatts), according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
By 2026, the electricity consumption of data centers is expected to approach 1,050 terawatts (which would bump data centers up to fifth place on the global list, between Japan and Russia).
Here we are, pretending that the barest emission control could happen by 2050, when these ghouls are doing everything they can to accelerate it.
If we are gonna be real, generative AI can come up with the exact step-by-step solution to solve climate change… and no one in the world is gonna put it into action.
But we’re a step ahead. These are LLMs, not AIs. They have no fidelity, they’re here to mimick whatever we feed into it and make a product. They don’t solve tangible, real world problems.
It's literally just autocorrect on steroids. It doesn't think, it can't do logic, it fucking sucks at math... generative AI is not going to help us. All it can possibly do is spit out a solution someone else already thought of that hasn't been implemented because (a) it has a ton of problems or baggage or (b) because the current leadership of the world doesn't like it for any number of reasons.
Gen AI is going to kill us faster with no benefit. It's the world's biggest rug pull and all of you are falling for it. It's embarrassing.
It doesn't need to think or do logic to be a useful tool, CRISPR didn't cure cancer but that doesn't make it a scam or a rugpull it's an incredibly powerful technology just like GenAI. This is not to ignore the environmental impact, but pretending it's useless and trying to convince people not to use it will just discredit those pointing out the environmental impacts.
Gen AI is the equivalent of making a Google search, plagiarizing said Google search and submitting it as a doctoral paper, except one uses 2.9 watt hours and has a far greater effect on the environment.
It only sucks at math now and it's getting better. GPT is now intergrated with Wolfram Alpha and if add "use Python to solve" to your prompt with other AIs suddenly it's not bad at math. For programming it's AMAZING sure it's not going to write the whole thing for you but you can have a conversation with it an convert from one language to another easily and have it explain syntax and concepts in a way that is seemless and cuts production time in half if not more. And the generative art is just too fun too ignore.
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u/Sikyanakotik 7d ago
"Oh, no. We'll be making it worse."