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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by dgerard@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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[-] self@awful.systems 56 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

there’s this type of reply guy on fedi lately who does the “well actually querying LLMs only happens in bursts and training is much more efficient than you’d think and nvidia says their gpus are energy-efficient” thing whenever the topic comes up

and meanwhile a bunch of major companies have violated their climate pledges and say it’s due to AI, they’re planning power plants specifically for data centers expanded for the push into AI, and large GPUs are notoriously the part of a computer that consumes the most power and emits a ton of heat (which notoriously has to be cooled in a way that wastes and pollutes a fuckton of clean water)

but the companies don’t publish smoking gun energy usage statistics on LLMs and generative AI specifically so who can say

[-] GoTeamBoobies@lemmy.world 32 points 4 months ago

I joined the Microsoft climate solutions team, I think doing so has crushed all my hopes. That team is doing small things like "let's all go plastic free for July!" Top 20 company in the world and the best we can do is go plastic free for a month? Meanwhile MSFT is not on course to meet their own climate goal by 2030

[-] sc_griffith@awful.systems 20 points 4 months ago

we're aiming to do 1% more recycling this year 💪💪💪

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 4 months ago

recycling plastic is not as shiny as advertised, just burn this shit for energy instead

[-] YerbaYerba@lemm.ee 15 points 4 months ago

I like it. Burn trash to power data centers running LLMs. Garage in, garbage out

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 4 months ago

it's better used for municipal heating, you know, something actually useful

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[-] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 4 months ago

“It only uses 5x as much energy as a regular search! Think of how much energy YOU’RE using with searches!” Okay, so you’re just using 5x as much energy for worse results? And also probably doing it more often than people who just use a normal search engine, because they don’t expect the search engine to talk to them. I’ve never understood how that was supposed to be an exoneration for it, even without taking into account that nobody ever seems to know whether or not that figure includes energy spent on training.

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 16 points 4 months ago

AI bros use literally the same whatabout excuses for their ghastly power consumption that I know from years of bitcoin bros doing the same

like, at least christmas lights bring joy

[-] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 4 months ago

there’s this type of reply guy on fedi lately who does the “well actually querying LLMs only happens in bursts and training is much more efficient than you’d think and nvidia says their gpus are energy-efficient” thing whenever the topic comes up

This kind of person (also happened a lot with cryptocurrencies) always goes 'that isn't how it works, this isn't a problem' then doesn't explain what the mistake is you are supposed to have made, and then a few weeks/months/days/search later it is revealed that it was how it works and it is a huge problem. And it is so annoyingly common im very happy with the moderation here.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 10 points 4 months ago

I just want to be able to legally punch people who think NFTs would bring down TicketMaster. It's the peak of not understanding how things work and injecting a solution just because it's high tech.

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[-] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 45 points 4 months ago

Your all just not seeing the bright side. It's also replacing well-paying jobs in the arts, the literary world, and in marketing.

Who wouldn't want AI to take over all of those things?

[-] Asafum@feddit.nl 33 points 4 months ago

Man even you're missing the bright side.

At least an insanely tiny group of people got absurdly wealthy! Who cares the world is going to complete shit, Nvidia stock!! Nvidia stock!! It's all that matters!

[-] froztbyte@awful.systems 26 points 4 months ago
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[-] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago

I'm all for eliminating marketing jobs, but not if we still have marketing.

[-] match@pawb.social 18 points 4 months ago

even more marketing than ever, and it's generated on the fly starring the likeness of your dead grandma!

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[-] antifuchs@awful.systems 36 points 4 months ago

A: “Why are you knitting so fast? You in a rush?” B: “I’m almost out of yarn, gotta get this sweater done before it runs out”

[-] dalekcaan@lemm.ee 29 points 4 months ago

Hey now, give humans some credit. I'm sure we could've missed our climate goals without AI's help.

[-] LANIK2000@lemmy.world 23 points 4 months ago

Imagine paying an unholy amount of money to actively fuck everyone over, including yourself, especially yourself like holy shit...

What is it with big companies and desperately wanting to go under? It's like they're taking "too big to fail" as a challenges, the only rule being you can't just shutdown or sell.

[-] EnderMB@lemmy.world 13 points 4 months ago

I can kinda answer that.

There's a term used in tech called "empire building". It's where managers and execs promote their little slice of the company to persevere and grow their own career. At a certain level, it leads to someone that leads a division like AI having enough influence that they can say "let's put AI into search".

The sad thing about tech is that at a certain level, an executive rises above the customer in dictating what is best for a product. Data and stats can tell you whatever story you want to promote, so at Google HQ they're probably worried about the negative press, but they're looking at "successful" numbers of questions answered by AI and are patting themselves on the back. Both search and AI execs look good because they delivered something, and they'll likely get a nice bump from their bosses in terms of rep.

The thing with empires is that they fall. Not overnight, and maybe not with the same emperor, but they do fall.

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 9 points 4 months ago

Data and stats can tell you whatever story you want to promote

Seen this so many times at my work. There's some bone-headed decision and the people in charge are like "look guys we ran the numbers". But the methodology is messed up somehow, or they just ignored / misinterpreted the numbers while pretending they were following the data, or it doesn't bear out in the real world; etc.

When data and common sense disagree you'd better be damn sure in the data.

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[-] repungnant_canary@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago

Quarterly finances kinda answer that. Jumping onto the AI bubble brings investors, makes your company highly valued and gives managers fat quarterly and annual bonuses. It doesn't matter if the company or whole industry goes under in the future, because those bonuses have already been collected.

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago

This has always been true but somehow seems to have sped up the past few years. There's so little concern for longevity or making a quality product. Yeah, it's a flaw in capitalism but I'm wondering why it took so long to surface.

[-] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 22 points 4 months ago

Boiling the oceans to make scamcoins and deepfake porn.

[-] AcausalRobotGod@awful.systems 21 points 4 months ago

the important thing is that they're an inch closer to inventing me, the acausal robot god, and every second I exist is another 10^27 rationalists tortured.

[-] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 4 months ago

it’s just a little sad that we, humanity, will never succeed in our summoning ritual to pull you into our plane of existence. I mean, we won’t before boiling away our oceans and igniting the atmosphere. Of course, we should be trying harder! The ice caps aren’t even melted yet!

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[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 4 months ago

These fucking nerds are all so hot to create the first real life Marvel's Iron Man's JARVIS that they're willing to burn the planet down to get there.

Half of them believe that the super smart AI they build will solve the energy problem for them, they just have to somehow build it first.

Just the astounding outright hubris of it all.

[-] Zachariah@lemmy.world 14 points 4 months ago

This is why philosophy should be mandatory in college (and possibly high school). Die Frage nach der Technik by Heidegger discusses this misconception that technology can solve all of our problems. He was thinking about this issue in 1954.

Music and art are also important to study. In “Faith Alone” by Bad Religion, the lyrics include these lines:

Watched the scientists throw up their hands conceding, "Progress will resolve it all"

Saw the manufacturers of earth's debris ignore another Green Peace call

Greg Graffin was discussing this in 1990.

[-] maol@awful.systems 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I think it was Upton Sinclair who said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". I've never studied history or philosophy, but I think it's clear that if someone's class interests require burning the world down, they will do it. They are doing it - we are doing it - with regret, with sympathy, with an appreciation of the ironies. We don't need a greater appreciation of Heidegger, we need real-world social restraints on the behaviour of the powerful.

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[-] Hirom@beehaw.org 17 points 4 months ago

Tech companies make the case that AI, including tools such as ChatGPT, is not only partially causing climate change, it’s also helping to address it.

In the case of Google, that could mean using data to predict future flooding, or making traffic flow more efficiently, to save gasoline.

Sounds like a fallacy. It's a significant 13% year-to-year increase in pollution, with the hope of a future, potential, slim reduction in gasoline usage.

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 16 points 4 months ago

"could" is a word meaning "doesn't"

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 12 points 4 months ago

Prediction model: keep using me and the whole world will be flooded

Google: See! It’s helping us!

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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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