> water is not unlimited
> you don't want to release a bunch of acid into a river
> I know next to nothing about this
> I know basically nothing
> corn is one of the thirstiest major crops grown in the US
What is this rant supposed to inform? Whats wrong with OP being concerned about the costs of operating a DC?
When someone in a discussion about the benefits of AI goes "did you think about the environment?!", it's always performative.
The real motivation is disliking AI itself or doubt about the government's ability to offset the labor market impact. Discussions that start with feigned concerns being raised are nearly always going to be unproductive.
I don’t dislike AI but really of mine are negatively affected by climate change and AI isn’t helping what is easily observed when Google and MS scrapped their CO2 reduction targets.
So every time I use AI I think about the necessity and usefulness of what I‘m doing with AI and if the use outweighs the costs.
Since the rise of AI the environmental impact doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
I guess because it’s the shiny new toy of the hackernews audience.
Privacy also lost importance given the fact that the same people who refused to give information like their phone number to companies like Google and Meta now upload their whole life to their AIs to asks what should the eat, hyperbolically speaking
The reason it doesn't matter is because the environmental impact is moderate, and the benefit obviously tremendous.
That is moderate. Energy-intensive industry is around 130 EJ, and global final energy consumption > 450 EJ.
Existing documented applications of today's AI have the potential to decrease energy consumption by >13 EJ/year by 2035.
Now that was about operational energy consumption. Someone might bring up manufacturing and construction.
From what I could find the climate impact of those are estimated somewhere between 10-35% of the total climate impact of data centers, so relatively small compared to the operational energy consumption.
It is very hard to justify more than moderate environmental impact here, in my opinion.
For the benefits of AI, my personal results have been great, so I am quite optimistic. And objectively, I find it hard to ignore recent results in mathematics and security research.
https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from...
That is today where we already consume too much. If by 2030 AI's consumption doubles it gets worse. While training large models draws major initial power, everyday AI usage (inference) now drives roughly 80% to 90% of cumulative AI energy
"Existing documented applications of today's AI have the potential to decrease energy consumption by >13 EJ/year by 2035."
Seems like AI helps slowing down the rise of energy consumption.
We are at a point where we want less CO2 not moderataly more. In the end more is more.
If your doctor tells you to lose weight or you get sick it's not a success to gain weigth slower
And if the potential of >13 EJ/year is actually realized, it would seem like the net impact of the data centers is not just "moderately more CO2" but possibly "moderately less".
Please avoid low quality analogies on HN.
Anything but a reduction is bad and AI is a setback for that.
Potential benefits are as long useless as they aren’t realized.
BTW the energy consumption reduction is achieved by what kind of AI? LLMs?