4 ms·
Thoroughly depressing that, faced with anthropogenic climate change, humanity proceeds to find ever more inventive ways of wasting precious energy. There is a
by somewhereoutth 2y ago
Thoroughly depressing that, faced with anthropogenic climate change, humanity proceeds to find ever more inventive ways of wasting precious energy.
There is a strong case for banning/taxing out of existence things like LLMs and proof of work blockchain validation.
- krunck 2y agoThere's also a strong case for banning/taxing out of existence things like coal, oil, and natural gas power sources.
- fancyfredbot 2y agoEven if you tax all datacentres you'll leave 96% of emissions untaxed. All emissions need to be taxed if you want to have a real chance against climate change.
- saulpw 2y ago4% is a good start. I wouldn't hold my breath for 100% of anything to happen all in one go.
- hodgesrm 2y agoAI energy consumption may be solved by the market. The sources I've been able to find indicate that AI along with crypto are driving much of the growth in data center power consumption. [0] AI expansion in turn is funded by huge investments whose ultimate value is very unclear. Investments like the US broadband buildout in the late 1990s/early 2000s also came to an end in due time. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/24/24049047/data-center-ai-crypto-bitcoin-mining-electricity-report-iea https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/24/24049047/data-center-ai-c...
- saulpw 2y agoWhen compute was precious we had Big O Notation. Now I think the time has come for Big CO2 Notation.
- smartplaya2001 2y agoLOL haha can I steal that?
- saulpw 2y agofor sure :)
- semi 2y agowho gets to decide what use of energy is providing sufficient value? Just sticking to GPUs.. you see PoW block chains and LLMs as a waste, but is it any less wasteful to use the same GPUs at the same power draw to run a game at uncapped fps? or at whatever absurd resolution it takes to max it out? Id rather we just charge for the energy usage, probably with some kind of tiering, and let people decide if their output is worth it.
- semi 2y agowho gets to decide what use of energy is providing sufficient value? Just sticking to GPUs.. you see PoW block chains and LLMs as a waste, but is it any less wasteful to use the same GPUs at the same power draw to run a game at uncapped fps? or at whatever absurd resolution it takes to max it out? Id rather we just charge for the energy usage, probably with some kind of tiering, and let people decide if their output is worth it.