• simple@lemm.ee
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    15 days ago

    I swear 50% of Mastodon’s feed is just people having mass hysteria about AI and not understanding how any of it works

    Also constantly getting baited about how AI is definitely the reason global warming is happening despite, you know, waves to virtually everything running on fossil fuels

    • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Ummm, obviously exaggerated but still true, and yeah the fossil fuels are the cause of climate change but AI is driving up the usage.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        15 days ago

        Honestly it is makes the problem a little worse. It is far from the cause. You can run AI on clean power.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          14 days ago

          But they aren’t running it on clean power? And so it is a massive contributor?

          That’s like saying it’s fine to waste food because it can theoretically be grown sustainably, even when the food you’re wasting wasn’t.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            14 days ago

            is it a massive contributor? I would venture to argue that air conditioning globally, is probably equally as large, if not larger.

            I would argue that most industries, consume more energy. Though it’s also worth noting microsoft spun up the good TMI core to generate power for AI (iirc at the very least a datacenter), so in some cases it is actually consuming cleanly generated power.

            That’s like saying it’s fine to waste food because it can theoretically be grown sustainably, even when the food you’re wasting wasn’t.

            also to be clear, it’s a little more complicated than this, it doesn’t make sense to ship food products, and then re-ship those food products, only to be shipped again economically, or environmentally, compared to having better local sources of food (and likewise, income, the major problem with global food insecurity is actually monetary, rather than production/consumption based)

            Although there are definitely optimizations to be made in terms of how food is consumed. It’s not a black and white, unless you want to live in a strictly controlled environment where you get fed synthetic nutrient paste every few hours. In which case, by all means.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              13 days ago

              is it a massive contributor? I would venture to argue that air conditioning globally, is probably equally as large, if not larger.

              I would argue that most industries, consume more energy. Though it’s also worth noting microsoft spun up the good TMI core to generate power for AI (iirc at the very least a datacenter), so in some cases it is actually consuming cleanly generated power

              It’s a new contributor, which means it is contributing on top of already existing contributors like air conditioning and other industries. But even if you include them It’s also particularly bad i.e. data centers powering artificial intelligence could use more electricity than entire cities

              Although there are definitely optimizations to be made in terms of how food is consumed. It’s not a black and white, unless you want to live in a strictly controlled environment where you get fed synthetic nutrient paste every few hours. In which case, by all means.

              I just want us to live within our energy budget so we don’t cook ourselves.

              • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                13 days ago

                It’s a new contributor, which means it is contributing on top of already existing contributors like air conditioning and other industries.

                yeah but the part that i don’t understand is why this is relevant, sure it’s new, sure it’s not particularly effective but like. Do you really need to be using both the internet and the power grid to shitpost on lemmy right now? You can’t hold arbitrary standards for AI like “it doesnt do anything useful” and then post on one of the least useful websites on the internet with some of the least useful information either.

                If we don’t have AI, why don’t we just ban gaming hardware, it just takes up unnecessary production time and consumption costs, as well as electricity. If we’re banning those, why don’t we also just ban most home appliances, those consume a pretty good amount of resources also. And if we’re banning those, why don’t we go a step further and delete housing all together as well, it’s a wasteful industry after all.

                Like there’s a point where you start, and a point where you stop, people were doing the same shit over crypto mining, and then the same shit over NFTs, and now nobody gives a fuck about either, tbf sort of dead now, but still. It really just seems like outrage bait to me at best. It starts at “AI bad” because “ai bad” and then stops and “AI bad” because “AI BAD” it’s just illogical reasoning to me.

                data centers powering artificial intelligence could use more electricity than entire cities

                i really hate this stat, idk why people keep making this statement, you know what uses more electricity than some cities? Some other cities! wow incredible observation, some things use lots of power, and some other things, sometimes also use lots of power.

                You mean to tell me a technologically fresh and relevant field has popped onto the market and it’s leading to a massive increase in consumption of electricity, because it consumes electricity? Yeah, that sounds like industry to me.

                It’s literally just the mantra of do things and stuff happens. But people are mad about it.

                I just want us to live within our energy budget so we don’t cook ourselves.

                i’m assuming you’re referring to global warming here, and yeah me too, i would prefer we didn’t end our civilization over some stupid shit like global warming, but i’m more concerned about stuff like dirty energy production, the shipping industry, environmental regulations, things that actually tend to have an effect, rather than like, company consumes lots of energy for a little bit.

                BTW, recommend looking into the electrical infrastructure for china, they consume WAY more electricity than the US, and have vastly dirtier production. So if we’re going to complain about AI, go complain about chinese AI training instead.

    • gens@programming.dev
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      15 days ago

      To be fair the cost benefit ratio of llms is way out of whack. It’s even behind outdoor heating in bars.

      • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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        15 days ago

        It’s the same as my enjoyment of video games, 3D modeling, or video editing - my gpu spins up for a few minutes.

        • And009@reddthat.com
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          15 days ago

          Lmao. But ya true, it’s not fair to consider all LLM use equally.

          Although I’ve made gpt write nonsense poem for me, most of my prompts are work related that saves me countless hours.