this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)
Came here to say that a 95% reduction in energy consumption will only greenwash a corresponding or larger increase in usage — but yours is of course the correct response! 👏👏👏
But... Isn't that kind of the point? Slashing computational cost so that we can deploy that stuff wherever it's needed without a tenfold increase in the world's energy bill?
Whether we should do that at all is a very different question.
"Wherever it's needed" is the operative term here, isn't it? Looking at how it's already being implemented, nobody seems to bother asking whether "AI" is really needed.
Personally, I find myself in a bizarre situation.
I have some open source ""Ai"" solutions that I find really really nice and helpful e.g. the image search in Immich, or LanguageTool which bills itself as an AI spellchecker.
At the same time I am horrified at the stupidity underlying 99% of big tech AI stuff that gets wall street hot.
That's the difference, isn't it? People can use "AI" to make simple little things easier. Corporations want it to replace and automate the jobs of swathes of the workforce. It's the latter that is the "growth market", and the one that eats the most power.
That wouldn't be so bad per se... Many improvements in human conditions have been achieved by automating stuff and kicking people out. Think of the green revolution.
The problem is that the use case here is to massify the production of literal shit, like clickbaity articles on social media content, or ever larger volumes of advertisement. Those jobs don't need to be replaced, they just need to go away for good.
Are we really going to use an AI to write motivation letters from a list of bullet points, to send it to an HR that will condense it into a list of bullet points using AI? Seriously?
Improving the technology behind AI will only increase the return on investment per watt, so you'll want to spend even more on it than before. This would more than likely increase the energy demands (assuming it doesn't turn into vaporware).