The difference is that the microwave is not as nearly as cancerous.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Fuck AI
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I don't think energy consumption matters to most people. I still can't believe the whole planet is "on board" with using a metal box that weighs around a ton, or much more, fill it with fossil fuel, and burn it to move that heavy box and generally a single person everywhere they go. Then they complain about the price of the fuel that is slowly choking the environment they need to drink, eat and live. But we can't say anything bad against cars. Just buy an electric car because it fixes all the problems if you ignore wasted energy, microplastic pollution, noise pollution, the impact of parking, the millions of dead humans every year, and the billion animals considered roadkill every year. There is no more gas problem!
So, I wish this would make some people realize how power hungry and destructive AI can be, but I'm pretty sure most don't give a fuck because "it can be useful", just like cars. So far I've read people defending it saying power usage and efficiency will improve with time. Or that AI will find a tech solution to the AI problem.
It will do the same as the car industry. People will begin to use it, find it some use despite its flaws, and defend it tooth and nails while it's bringing us closer to environmental doom. You will consoom.
It's kind of hard for me to criticize cars when without one I wouldn't have a job, food, clothes, or really anything of the sort. Absolutely zero thought put into public transportation where I live, and the only bike lanes are about an hour bike ride away, with my job being the same distance. I'm just so tired boss.
People will start caring when the energy costs start to spike up. And with our little energy crisis looming; it is a good time to tell them how much of their electricity bill is subsidizing idiots like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei.
Techbro bots: "this is the same energy wasted in: [shit that's actually fun or useful] As if AI infrastructure isn't built ON TOP of existing infrastructure and actively leeching off it or lobbying to de-regulate energy to make it even mor wasteful.
As an American I appreciate how they included both metric (Joules) and imperial (hours running a microwave) measurements
Anyhow it would be running a microwave at 944 watt for an hour 😁
I only know how long bald eagles burn for.
How do I convert microwave hours to bald eagle burn time (in number of football games including all dead ball times and the halftime shows)?
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I have a new Retirement plan.
- Buy a gun
- Shoot it at datacenters.
- Eat some chips or something
A truck and container with microwave beam like this.
https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-missile-defense/phaser-high-power-microwave
hell yeah, road trip to all the data centers! now thats a retirement!
Truly every time period of human civilization had something in it that would make future generations shake their heads in disbelief.
"How could they use gigawatthours for crypto farms and useless AI applications while fully aware of a climate crisis caused by fossil fuels?", a student might ask his history teacher some day. "Because they were dumb as fuck.", the teacher might answer.
I can’t wait until the terror 2.0 when we destroy it
3.4 giga joules! Great Scott!
Mega, not Giga. It's more of medium sized Scott.
metric scott or imperial scott
Who the hell measures energy in joules?
That's a little under 1kWh. Or playing your gaming PC for 3 hours.
It's the international system unit of energy. So a lot of people.
Who the hell measures energy in joules?
i do
3 hours running completely flat out that is, which does happen with some games.
Even in those cases the gaming PC is producing roughly 2160x the amount of 'content' per unit of power. Though I guess some (not me) might argue that 5 seconds worth of AI generated cats fighting politicians have more 'worth' than some 5 second spans of gameplay.
Who the hell measures energy in Wh ? I always convert back to Joules, Watt Hours don't make any sense.
kWh is for practical use, Joules is for physics and because it's universal among all the energy units
I know right, it's electron volts or nothing, got to get back to basics
coulomb volts is better for practical uses though
I'd much prefer to pay an artist to be using their PC for three hours than a corporation
Also those 3 hours count as "practicing."
Imagine if we counted "training" in this energy cost.
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Or ~100 hours of my laptop doing simple tasks.
They definitely need to make measures like this widely available.
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