Why is that a problem?

Did you not read the next sentence in my comment?

Irrational protests are not helpful. Doing something just because it’s popular is called a fad.

Anti-corporate sentiment and protests are hilarious, there’s already an easy mechanism to punish companies. Don’t buy their shit, or support other companies that buy their shit. However, that rarely works because “the public” doesn’t actually care and just wants cheap shit.

We could put oil companies out of business in a couple of years by simply changing our collective individual purchasing habits. That would require a sacrifice in lifestyle quality that most people aren’t willing to provide though.

I wonder how many people go to these ai-datacenter protests, then go home and ask chatgpt to help them write a birthday card joke for their friend/family member. I would bet large amounts of money that it’s a sizeable percentage of vocal critics.

See this is part of the problem, people aren’t paying attention to the words and spin that is being used to deceive you.

It’s not 5% of enegy use, the statistics you see for that number are for “electricity use” which is not the same.

Electricity production/consumption only accounts for around 35% of global energy use (and not all of it comes from fossil fuels). Most global energy use is fossil fuels being burned directly in vehicles (trucks, mining, etc.) or industrial processes (fertilizer production, gas refineries, etc.)

The US also hosts a very large percentage of the world’s datacenters. That 5% number also includes All types of datacenters, not just AI which still make up a large portion of that number.

So when you actually complete the math, the current AI enegy use is around 0.5% of global energy use.

For comparison, meat production takes around 15% of global energy use.

Feel free to double check the facts and math on this, it’s all available publicly.

That is the most defeatist argument I think I’ve heard. You’re essentially suggesting that it’s too late to fix the biggest issues, so you’re going to protest things that won’t actually have an impact just because it’s easier.

You’re right that people could be doing multiple, I’m just pointing out they aren’t doing that.

At this point it’s clearly either just performative activism, or people are using the environment as an excuse to hide their worries about the economic impacts that may affect them (completely valid)

The third option is that people are so poorly educated that they actually can’t think rationally about this issue. I’m not ruling that out at this point.

Where’s the protests over golf courses though? Why are you showing up to an Anti-AI protest, but not organizing one for golf courses?

This is the biggest thing that’s pissing me off about these anti-AI for environmental reasons folks. People are literally getting into giant SUVs to drive to anti-AI datacenter protests, then stopping off to get a steak to cook for dinner on the way home.

The amount of fuel they just burned, and the amount of energy and pollution beef production generates for that steak are quite literally orders of magnitude worse for the environment than AI datacenters.

Yet nobody is protesting combustion vehicles, or even oil and gas companies at this point, and very few people choose to not eat meat (and even a lot of those don’t do it for environmental reasons).

Rational people worried about the environment, pollution, or water usage would target the worst offenders. Yet here they are protesting in massive numbers for something that’s less than well under 1% of global energy use.

Except for Alberta, which totally tracks because it’s the Texas of Canada.

It’s not a disagreement when someone says something that is objectively and proveably false.

This is something that people need to figure out.

They said I was misleading, then they either just strait up either lied, or didn’t bother to confirm their assumption when trying to prove that. They were wrong.

You call me out for not being nice. What they did is not nice. Call them out for that.

Are you saying that states can’t regulate this? They absolutely can.

You say we like it’s everyone. It isn’t.

My province in Canada had the electricity provider cap how much gets allocated to new data centers per year at a sustainable number.

Regulation instead of outright bans are the correct path forward.

You’re wrong. The average yearly co2 output for a car is somewhere between 4-5 tons. Which lines up with the numbers in the article. So no, it’s not actively running vehicles.

I am a fan of AI, that’s correct. That doesn’t change the fact that every single one of you chucklefucks don’t seem to understand numbers, or the scale of things in the real world.

You go on and on about how bad they are for the environment, while continuing to eat meat and drive your cars around. Both of which consume resources in a scale that makes AI look like a rounding error. Until I start hearing people protesting and actually doing something about those, I’m going to assume that your anti-AI stances are bullshit and a cover for hiding your fear that they will take over your job.

If that’s the real reason, just say it, then I will agree with you. Then we can discuss how we need to change society to deal with that problem, rather than banning AI.

There are approximately 1.7 billion cars in the world right now.

That’s 1700 million for people who can’t do math.

The prices of new electronics have skyrocketed, the used market always follows so you’re right to be worried.

That makes sense, you’re clearly not smart enough to know a second language so you can test it out.

Other than not blocking your entire phone line while you were on it, paying for hours per month of connectivity, having content take minutes to load, lacking in useful content, a thousand and one different logins with no safety systems attached, constant viruses, and no safe way to pay for things?

Nah, it was great.

Maybe you wouldn’t, but I would. You clearly don’t remember how bad the internet was when it first became available to the public.

Your emotions don’t override reality.

LLMs are excellent at translation as one significant beneficial use case.

The underlying technology isn’t unprofitable, inference alone isn’t unprofitable. It’s the research and development of better models that’s unprofitable and unsustainable.

Investment IS gambling, some people will win, some will lose.

That’s pretty much how almost every new development happens. EVs were the same, primarily funded by subsidies and now they’re cost competitive or better in many situations even without them. Cellphone networks… also heavily funded by investors and some took hits from how it all played out. The dotcom bubble. Even as far back as the Railroad boom in the UK. This is a tale as old as time.

Are you kidding me? This was a University Prof, doing a proper study, published in the Cambridge University Press, and involving 1700 participants.

Did you not even bother to look up the source before jumping down my throat?

This is even further evidence of why we’re fucking doomed. Your feelings about this headline override any reasonability you have to the point where you won’t even look at the source.

People down voting a study. Hilarious.

Feels over reals. We’re fucking doomed.