AI is about to make the global e-waste crisis worse

restofworld.org

15 points·_bypa··4 comments

Very strange article. H100s aren't going to be E-waste anytime soon. Unless they die from HBM vias cracking or something someone (e.g. me) will want them for local AI even after decommissioning them from a datacenter.

E-waste is almost entirely a right to repair problem, not an AI problem. We make too much electronic stuff where minor issues bricks the entire device.

Particularly Apple who are complete asshats about making repair very expensive if something like a screen breaks or a battery needs replacement. They really push you to just throw out the old one and buy new as the only option.

> Particularly Apple who are complete asshats about making repair very expensive if something like a screen breaks or a battery needs replacement

It is even worse, you can have completely working laptop, but because it is locked via login of previous user, well it is ewaste now. Especially the ones with Mx chips are not even being stolen anymore and buying them on eBay is playing a lottery with people who don't know how to log off from their Apple accounts. Or even better when Apple won't let you log off - happened to me on M2 MacBook Pro, I have tried to log off dozens of times and it kept me logged in the Apple account. One use laptop.

Even 2 generations older 30 series GPUs are holding their value. Definitely not being thrown out as ewaste.

Or AI makes consumer hardware much more expensive in the short term (3-5 years) so people aren't upgrading as much.

Long term when chips and memory demand eases, I could see it.

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