1y ago

Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

www.nature.com Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

First-of-its-kind US bill would address the environmental costs of the technology, but there’s a long way to go.

one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes. It’s estimated that a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search. Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.

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silence7 @slrpnk.net

12mo ago

Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

www.nature.com /articles/d41586-024-00478-x

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Generative AI @mander.xyz

Salamander @mander.xyz

1y ago

Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

www.nature.com /articles/d41586-024-00478-x

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And nobody seems to give a shit. Even people who would normally give a shit about this sort of thing. Even people who do things like denounce Bitcoin mining's waste of energy (and I agree) are not talking about the energy- and water- waste from AI systems.
That article says that OpenAI uses 6% of Des Moines' water.
Meanwhile-
According to Colorado State University research, nearly half of the 204 freshwater basins they studied in the United States may not be able to meet the monthly water demand by 2071.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/parts-america-water-crisis/story?id=98484121
And nobody seems to give a shit.
- Lots of people give a shit, they're just not in any sort of position to do anything about it.
  We won't treat climate change seriously until we get a significant climate related mass casualty event in North America.
  
  As soon as the gulf streams collapse I think a few more of us may start giving a shit.
  
  Giving a shit about the horse barn after someone's already let out all the horses doesn't really make a difference.
  
  Have you met humanity??
  
  Yep. We suck. I'm reminded of it every day.
  
  I think that’s their point
  
  gulf streams collapse
  Nah, there were some people worried about it, but it won't happen.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream
  The possibility of a Gulf Stream collapse has been covered by some news publications.[vague] The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report addressed this issue specifically, and found that based on model projections and theoretical understanding, the Gulf Stream will not shut down in a warming climate. While the Gulf Stream is expected to slow down as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) weakens, it will not collapse, even if the AMOC were to collapse. Nevertheless, this slowing down will have significant effects, including a rise in sea level along the North American coast, reduced precipitation in the midlatitudes, changing patterns of strong precipitation around Europe and the tropics, and stronger storms in the North Atlantic.
  
  So what you're saying is that it's fine?
  
  At the point it's too late.
  
  I think that was the point they were making.
  
  *The AMOC. The Gulf Stream can't really collapse.
  
  Hey now. Rule one of this community is "Be civil - Attack the argument, not the person." What does any of this genocide stuff have to do with the argument being discussed here?
  
  The discussion here? Nothing. The person trying to have a discussion with me? Everything. Because yesterday, he said that I support genocide both due to the fact that I will do anything to keep Trump out of office to save my queer daughter's life and due the the fact that I exist. And now he wants to chat with me as if he never said that.
  No one did anything about it in this community when he said those things. And, believe it or not, the topic of discussion was not genocide.
  Why should I let someone who was that hateful towards me act like nothing was ever said a day later?
  
  I'm with you on this 100% and not just because my own queer daughter's life is on the line.
  If we are gonna play the 'be civil' card, play it on everyone. Certainly don't overlook people accusing others of genocide. You'd think that didn't need to be said but shrug
  
  Thank you. I appreciate it.
  
  Because it's against the sub's rules to attack him personally.
  Why not block him? You'll never see him again.
  
  He attacked me personally repeatedly and nothing was done. Why is he being held to a different standard?
  
  Again- you said I supported genocide no matter who I voted for or whether I voted or not.
  I specifically asked you who I should vote for or if I should even vote at all to not support genocide. You specifically told me that it didn't matter who I voted for or if I didn't vote.
  You also don't give a shit about queer people since you don't think anything should be done to stop the coming queer genocide that will end up making my own daughter marched into a camp. Queer people can be killed off and you won't give a shit.
  
  I'm not holding him to a different standard. I wasn't in whatever fight you and he might have had, I don't know what community it happened in.
  
  You seem to be holding both him and yourself to a different standard since you just made a personal attack.
  And it happened in this community. You could have asked which community.
  
  If you think the decision on who to vote for in the 2024 US Presidential election is morally black and white, and that the genocide of Palestinians is by far the most important issue, then we lack a common basis for any worthwhile discussion.
  Everything I have heard from you and others who bring up the same talking points suggests that is precisely the case.
  
  Man, fuck this fence-sitting purity culture. Get that fence post out of your ass.
  
  Which fence am I sitting on?
  
  Both sides bad.
  
  Well good thing for me I live in Canada and don't have to sit on the fence. I can say for sure that both sides are bad. How many billions of dollars has Biden sent to bomb more brown kids in Gaza?
- I guess it depends on how you use chatbots. If you’re just too lazy to click on the first google result you get, it’s wasteful to bother ChatGPT with your question. On the other hand, for complex topics, a single answer may save you quite a lot of googling and following links.
  
  Oh, well as long as it save you from Googling it's okay that it's a massive ecological disaster. My mistake.
  
  That's the opposite of what he said. That sort of usage isn't what ChatGPT is good for, it's best to use it for other kinds of things.
  
  It's best to not use it. At all.
  
  Feel free not to, I guess. But again, that wasn't the point of my comment. You mistook bleistift2's statement in the opposite way it was intended. ChatGPT's not intended as a replacement for a search engine so evaluating it on that basis is misleading.
  
  That's just like... your opinion, man.
  AI is going to be an important tool in the future. Decrying it as bad is similar to folks saying investing in green energy was stupid because without economies of scale they were expensive and inefficient.
  Computers are using more energy. Instead of turning them off, let's find ways to produce energy less destructively, such as nuclear which would benefit EVs and all energy usage.
  
  AI is going to be an important tool in the future.
  The future for the people who aren't dying of thirst due to the lack of water?
  
  Did you even read the rest of my post?
  
  The part where you suggested using nuclear energy? Which also uses a huge amount of fresh water?
  Yes, I read it. I chose not to mention it since I didn't want to show that you were making my point stronger for me, but you forced my hand.
  https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/08/ew3-freshwater-use-by-us-power-plants-exec-sum.pdf
  
  Then solar. Wind. Geothermal. Whatever. Energy usage is never, ever going down unless population does and probably not even then. If that silicon isn't used for AI it'll be something else. Then what?
  
  Ah, you're one of the 'we shouldn't do anything about ecological disasters because something else will come along and make things just as bad anyway' crowd. I hear that's the latest right-wing school of thought now that it's almost impossible to deny climate change is happening.
  
  I mean an argument could be made here, right? Just thinking theoretically.
  Maxim: we want to be as eco-friendly as possible.
  Per a given task, understand the least environmentally-taxing way to accomplish the goal.
  Task requires one, two, or three/four DuckDuckGo searches? DDG away.
  Task requires five DDG searches, OR one LLM query? Language model it is.
  (LLM may well rarely be the answer there, of course, just laying out the theory!)
- Bitcoin was wasteful with little benefit, but AI has the potential to benefit humanity at large. Maybe ChatGPT itself isn't a great example of that, but their research has gone on to spur lots of advancements in AI, advancement that have allowed AI to make all sorts of breakthroughs in areas like medicine
  
  Yeah, but LLMs like ChatGPT and the like aren't where that advancement is being made. LLMs are driving investment in the technology, but it's just a mostly useless investor target that just happens to run on the same hardware that can be used for useful AI-powered research. Sure, it's pushing the hardware advancement forward maybe 10-15 years faster than it might have otherwise happened, but it's coming with a lot of wasteful baggage as well because LLMs are the golden boy investors want to to throw money at.
  
  True the benefit actually exists here (how much is open for debate)
  On the other hand, we should be doing full alarm bells and running around in a panic ramping down every use of energy possible before we leave our 100 surviving progeny a lifeless rock to live on. But humans don't work that way. By the time we are all on board it will be 100 years too late, unfortunately.
  
  Been hearing this claim for well over 30 years.
- Why the heck does it use so much water? It sounds like a very inefficient and stupid design to not have a closed loop.
- Honest question, why is AI bad but TVs aren't? What's the environmental cost of millions of people watching Netflix? Using Instagram? Playing video games? Using search engines?
  If you wanna get mad at people using computers for their environmental costs why are you starting with AI?
  Bitcoin had legitimate reason to be environmentally concerned about, the algorithm was literally based on proof of wasting energy, and that would scale up overtime, AI is not like that.
  
  Can you name the TV company that uses 6% of a sizable city's municipal water supply?
  
  TCL, Sony, Vizio, LG, Samsung, literally all of them easily do in the course of manufacturing them, not to mention the ongoing water usage of all the servers streaming you TV shows.
  Again, how is AI different then literally any other popular computer activity? The more popular it is, the greater it's environmental cost.
  
  Really? Which specific city?
  Or do you not understand that taking 6% of one specific city's water is very different from taking that same amount of water distributed around the world?
  Also, should AI not be criticized for wasting water? Just TVs? Are there other industries where wasting large amounts of water should be ignored?
  Maybe any company using up 6% or more of a city's municipal water system shouldn't be allowed to do so regardless of what industry they're in. What do you think?
  
  Ah, got it, companies can do as much ecological damage at they want to and it's the regulators fault if nothing is done about it. Also, people shouldn't get mad at corporations for wanting to do that ecological damage just because they're allowed to.
  
  Why arent you mad at video games? Are you protesting Nintendo and Sony? Their consoles consume far more power than ChatGPT.
  
  Which comment do you want me to reply to?
  
  Since apparently it wasn't clear, I was referring to the comment two above this one in the chain.
  
  Whereas, I was referring to this comment, which you had nothing substantive to say about:
  Presumably because you think it's justifiable for companies to do whatever they feel like as long as its legal and receive no criticisms for it.
  
  Which specific city is ChatGPT getting its water from?
  Here's a hint: there isn't one, that's referring to it's overall usage, all around the world. It runs in Azure data centers where it is a tiny fraction of their overall compute load and water usage.
  
  Which comment do you want me to reply to?
  
  Given that I already answered this question that should be fairly clear.
  
  The only thing that is clear is that you seem to think you're entitled to multiple responses when you reply to a single post of mine multiple times.
  That... and the fact that you aren't denying that you believe corporations should be expected to do whatever they want as long as no one makes it illegal.

112 comments