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Comment by TheNastyPatty | Hacker News Reader

What is “disconnected from reality” about environmental considerations regarding AI? Growing AI usage = growing data center power draw = higher emissions from any non-renewable sources contributing to that power, as well as increased freshwater consumption which is itself a considerably difficult resource to renew. That’s about as direct of a causal link between point A (power hungry AI being used for Debian development) and point B (the environment) as you can get. On the other hand, please explain what the hell veganism has to do with Debian development? Like what are you talking about.

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AI data centers need electricity, which can be from renewable sources and non-renewable sources, and the exact mix can change from day to day as well as long after these data centers are constructed. The electricity grid is decarbonizing at the fastest pace yet. It's simply a tenuous link. On the other hand there are clear non-renewable fossil fuel being used in our daily lives that desperately need to be electrified, think non-electric vehicles and commercial flights. Even without considering more renewable sources of electricity in the future, ask yourself, on a same carbon emission basis, how much can an AI data center accomplish versus a flight from JFK to SFO? How would the utility function even look like?

The way I see it, modern environmentalists like to pick on data centers just because it’s an easy target without entrenched lobbying. The fossil fuel industry is way worse but they have tremendous lobbying.

Have you considered how many data centers used the Linux kernel before anybody knew what a Chat GPT is? Does the project get a free pass on such activities?

The water usage from AI is so comparatively low that it doesn’t matter.

This is where the vegan point comes in. Do you eat meat? Congratulations, you consume 1000x more water than a dozen vegan vibecoders pumping out slop 24/7.

It’s good to be environmentally conscious, but big picture here. There are reasonable ways to reduce your water and electricity consumption. Not using AI is just not one of them. There are dozens of low hanging fruit before that. The most obvious is reducing your meat consumption. You can switch to LED bulbs if you haven’t already. Shower with warm, instead of hot, water. Buy second hand clothing or furniture. Etc.

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