It REALLY is fucking funny how there is genuinely a distinct third faction in AI discourse on this site that is not “Pro-AI” but “The anti-AI crowd is talking about divine sparks of creativity and shit and I’m not about that”
Okay so I’ve seen multiple people on this post talk about the environmental impact of AI and I was under the assumption that it was somewhat overblown? (to my knowledge) There’s a noticeable pull in terms of power during the initial training of the larger models but casual use has a much lower drain on the environment than like, bitcoin mining.
I always sideye claims about environmental concerns related to computer usage (the exception being crypto because the power usage is the ONLY tangible output of the process, there’s nothing else involved, it’s a “take the wheels off the car and gun the engine” sort of process) because they’re a) usually completely incorrect, either on purpose or because they’re calculated by people who don’t understand what they’re doing, and b) suspiciously only a consideration for something someone hates. I have never, ever heard anyone question what the total environmental impact of Tumblr is. Or gmail. Computer usage magically has no environmental impact unless it’s doing the one thing you don’t like.
Giant data centers are being built with the express purpose of training AI
“Cloud AI” on the scale they want would have a noticeable impact.
Of course, all “cloud” computing should be more sustainable than it is now, but AI is only going to make things worse, while just like bitcoin not providing nearly enough benefit to justify it.