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And nobody seems to give a shit. Even people who would normally give a shit about this sort of thing. Even people who do things like denounce Bitcoin mining's waste of energy (and I agree) are not talking about the energy- and water- waste from AI systems.
That article says that OpenAI uses 6% of Des Moines' water.
Meanwhile-
https://abcnews.go.com/US/parts-america-water-crisis/story?id=98484121
And nobody seems to give a shit.
Lots of people give a shit, they're just not in any sort of position to do anything about it.
We won't treat climate change seriously until we get a significant climate related mass casualty event in North America.
As soon as the gulf streams collapse I think a few more of us may start giving a shit.
Giving a shit about the horse barn after someone's already let out all the horses doesn't really make a difference.
Have you met humanity??
Yep. We suck. I'm reminded of it every day.
Nah, there were some people worried about it, but it won't happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream
So what you're saying is that it's fine?
At the point it's too late.
*The AMOC. The Gulf Stream can't really collapse.
I guess it depends on how you use chatbots. If you’re just too lazy to click on the first google result you get, it’s wasteful to bother ChatGPT with your question. On the other hand, for complex topics, a single answer may save you quite a lot of googling and following links.
Oh, well as long as it save you from Googling it's okay that it's a massive ecological disaster. My mistake.
I mean an argument could be made here, right? Just thinking theoretically.
Maxim: we want to be as eco-friendly as possible.
Per a given task, understand the least environmentally-taxing way to accomplish the goal.
Task requires one, two, or three/four DuckDuckGo searches? DDG away.
Task requires five DDG searches, OR one LLM query? Language model it is.
(LLM may well rarely be the answer there, of course, just laying out the theory!)
Why the heck does it use so much water? It sounds like a very inefficient and stupid design to not have a closed loop.
Bitcoin was wasteful with little benefit, but AI has the potential to benefit humanity at large. Maybe ChatGPT itself isn't a great example of that, but their research has gone on to spur lots of advancements in AI, advancement that have allowed AI to make all sorts of breakthroughs in areas like medicine
Yeah, but LLMs like ChatGPT and the like aren't where that advancement is being made. LLMs are driving investment in the technology, but it's just a mostly useless investor target that just happens to run on the same hardware that can be used for useful AI-powered research. Sure, it's pushing the hardware advancement forward maybe 10-15 years faster than it might have otherwise happened, but it's coming with a lot of wasteful baggage as well because LLMs are the golden boy investors want to to throw money at.
True the benefit actually exists here (how much is open for debate)
On the other hand, we should be doing full alarm bells and running around in a panic ramping down every use of energy possible before we leave our 100 surviving progeny a lifeless rock to live on. But humans don't work that way. By the time we are all on board it will be 100 years too late, unfortunately.
Honest question, why is AI bad but TVs aren't? What's the environmental cost of millions of people watching Netflix? Using Instagram? Playing video games? Using search engines?
If you wanna get mad at people using computers for their environmental costs why are you starting with AI?
Bitcoin had legitimate reason to be environmentally concerned about, the algorithm was literally based on proof of wasting energy, and that would scale up overtime, AI is not like that.
Can you name the TV company that uses 6% of a sizable city's municipal water supply?