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Now they just have to understand what sustainable means beyond it being a buzzword.
Fuck AI and these energy guzzling data centers. For decades we were told to conserve power and such and now all of those savings are being sucked up, and more, by these centers.
Remember, everytime us plebs are told to sacrifice for the environment it’s so the corpos and parasites can off load moral responsibility onto us.
they funded alot of campaigns doing that.
its actually raising electricity prices in many areas.
And for some reason OUR utility bills are going up to pay for it.
Yep. People are charged the marginal cost of power generation. Everyone pays the price of the most expensive source of electricity. The market is rigged.
And I thought AI killing us would use cool robots and Shit. Well.
It’s the paperclip maximizer in action.
TBF it requires minimum effort from the ai. Efficient.
We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky
This one sums up humanity quite well these days: “Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you!” - Londo Mollari
So close, AI will kill us with coal robots and Shit-Wells
Our most advanced tech is dependent on some of our most old tech.
Disgusting
Another reason to avoid the US.
We were too addicted to AI slop to save ourselves.
Actually no, no one was addicted to AI slop, it was just shoved into every product so that huge companies could make a profit and everyone hates it.
But wait! The huge companies are losing tons money on this.
Why did we destroy the planet again???
Wish my coworkers would get the memo. Constantly trying to shove AI videos in my face like “haha look at MLK Jr and Tupac as pro wrestling announcers haha”
As an artist I am deeply repulsed by AI. But other people around me? They love it for some reason.
its the techbros that are obsessed with AI slop.
The capitalist class loves the idea and rewards companies with investment money. They think it could be the ultimate tool to snuff out any power the working class still has; making many employees optional, total surveillance of the population, etc. I think it will be a long time until it can do many jobs, but the surveillance tech seems to be coming along pretty well (with “AI” cameras recording license plates and biometric identifiers being put up everywhere).
Datacenter != AI
If you are using the internet for anything with cloud storage, you are contributing to datacenter growth. And that includes nearly everyone using social media.
Sure but energy use per datacenters was on a downward trend before ai, then it went the other way hard
Datacenter != AI
Except the demand for new data centers is driven entirely by the capacity constraints of the current AI models.
If you are using the internet for anything with cloud storage, you are contributing to datacenter growth.
“Why are you mad at my five ton diseal SUV when you just adopted a pet chihuahua? They both emit carbon!”
I’m not sure that’s true. Every company uses storage, and every growing company needs more. But very few companies are training generative AIs.
Every company uses storage, and every growing company needs more.
You’re comparing mountains to molehills. That’s before you consider improvements in storage and compression relative to demands for space, or the degree to which our storage capacity “needs” are predicated on the voracious appetite of AI models and their unwanted output. Or, for that matter, the inefficient distribution of data and proliferation of spam data that predates it.
very few companies are training generative AIs
Most US Growth Now Rides on AI—And Economists Suspect a Bubble
The expansion in demand is entirely being driven by the expansion in AI capacity.
That article doesn’t say what you imply it does. Companies may be using ChatGPT to grow, but that doesn’t mean they are training AIs.
And the distinction is critical to energy usage. Training a new AI uses a lot of energy. Querying an existing AI uses far less.
Companies may be using ChatGPT to grow, but that doesn’t mean they are training AIs.
It’s the MAG7 that’s driving growth. And they’re all fixated on training AI in some capacity
Training a new AI uses a lot of energy. Querying an existing AI uses far less.
It costs $5 for each 10s video generation, based on Azure’s published rates for the first Sora model.
That’s presumably a lot of energy.
The MAG7 operate large and growing cloud services, so their datacenter costs would grow even without any AI training.
And charging $5 for a video query does not mean the query uses $5 of energy. The query is priced to recoup training costs that were already incurred.
This would be 99% of businesses at this point. Stop using AI to make memes and clickbait videos.
Yes but data center growth prior to AI was manageable. There isn’t a grid on the planet (except maybe china?) which can support the growth of AI data centers.
These people have to plan energy needs on a 10-20 year life cycle, not 2. It’s the 2 that’s the problem.
The bitcoin miners have hopefully dropped off because they were chewing up gobs of energy too.
I thought they were totally just using flare gas and renewables ;) 🙄
But my understanding for real is that ai data centers are just the same hardware as buttcoin but more of it and organized. The venture capitalists finally got what they wanted, blowing their wad on Nvidia.
china is also building lots of coal plants to sustain the datacenters.
China already has 200% the capacity relative to their demand. They’ve been growing solar fast enough to beat very high 8%+ electricity consumption growth last year, and can probably keep the pace.
I’m perfectly fine with Lemmy being limited to 100% renewable power. Don’t burn coal or LNG for me.
Looking forward the 2026 ESG reports of large companies that are so happy to embrace AI :)
I think you would have an easier time searching for those who didn’t.
I’m not into gold panning… though it’s not like all companies are using AI so much that it will transpire in their ESG. Now I now a couple that were so far very happily ignoring this source of carbon and, as far as I remember, it was not reported by the cloud providers either.
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It doesn’t make any difference whether they use coal, nuclear, or renewables.
If they were using renewables the rest of us would need the coal generated power to keep the lights on.
Exactly, people don’t seem to realise that higher demand for energy means higher demand for all sources of energy including fussil fuels.
If doesn’t matter if this datacenter runs 100% on renewables if that means that the overall demand on the powergrid increases and now other clients that used to get (a higher percentage of) their power from renewable are getting it from coal, it’s just a green washing shift blame technique.
There’s one exception - when they are self-sufficient, or even net positive, with renewables.
One example is the Google datacenter in Hamina, Finland. They build it in an old unused paper mill, built their own renewables (3/4ths of their required at this point), and they use the cooling loop for district heating for the city. That extra heat provides around 75% of the required heating, meaning the city could stop relying on their old natural gas heaters so now the district heating runs on renewables as well.It’s easy to be an energy neutral datacenter, simply pour enough money to building new renewables that wouldn’t have been built without your contributions, and you don’t tax the power grid.
I’ll begrudgingly concede that this is a good point.
Part of me wants to say “just force these assholes to build renewables without the datacentres” but I know that’s nonsensical.
I guess this is how carbon credit schemes are intended to work, but I’m aware that aside from a few specific cases carbon trading has just been a way to obfuscate carbon emissions.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell
And capitalism!
Earth was past 7 of 9 planetary boundaries to support human life… before AI happened. That is again, boundaries to support HUMAN LIFE.
Article from when it was 6/9:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-have-crossed-6-of-9-planetary-boundaries/
Meanwhile China is going all in on renewables.
Here is a fact: an authoritarian non-democracy is doing a lot for securing the future of humanity, while the “leader of the free world” are vandalizing the climate and accelerating apocalyptic climate catastrophe.
In 2025, China is a net positive for the future of humanity, while the USA is a net negative.
If that makes you uncomfortable about what our political and economic systems in the West that brought us here, well, you know the meme: “facts don’t care about your feelings”.
If you, like me, care about the future of democracy, we have to do a LOT of digging.
And a lot of burying.
We are a nation of man/woman children. Petulant little kids who don’t want to grow up and be responsible for anything.
Our current system is going about how Marx predicted it would. The course correction that occurred after the Great Depression has been now completely reversed and we’re back staring at its approaching collapse. I don’t think we can escape that long term, and we’ll lose democracy in the process, unless we start moving away from capitalism. We gotta attack private firm ownership. Otherwise we’ll keep getting people accumulate enough capital to buy the rest of the system and steamroll the rest of us for profit.
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Oh for sure. There’s however a higher degree of democracy than feudalism, mostly stemming one way or another from the newly developed labour power under capitalism. Power that labour has slowly ceded over the last 50-70 years or so, but it can still regain when pressed. The system still contains this vulnerability (from the point of view of the capitalist) and it seems impossible to eradicate.
Meanwhile China is going all in on renewables.
BUT
AT
WHAT
COST
If that makes you uncomfortable about what our political and economic systems in the West that brought us here, well, you know the meme: “facts don’t care about your feelings”.
It might be cold comfort, but none of these business models have the liquidity behind them to build out coal power at the levels they claim they’ll need.
Nevermind that solar/wind would be cheaper. Or that the raw manpower to yield coal in quantity no longer exists. So much of these proposals are - at their heart - the same vaporware that promised waves of new nuclear construction and hydro-power and geothermal.
Bottom line is that GenAI’s primary revenue comes from dumb VC and bad debt. They can’t build, much less operate, any of this shit.
Hooray for cancer, asthma and bronchitis! Make America Healthy Again. Lung health is like Karate – black is the best!
they built it in red states, because theres less resistance to regulate polluting data center, and in rural areas.
What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger! Or chronically ill, but in a cool way, really.
