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Ugh, this is horrible writing. For instance, "Data centres cause pollution through high eletricity use" - high relative to what, residential housing? Aluminum

Ugh, this is horrible writing. For instance, "Data centres cause pollution through high eletricity use" - high relative to what, residential housing? Aluminum smelting? It's fine to be skeptical of the AI bubble, but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development. We also don't need any fizzy-drinks - shall we calculate the deaths due to pollution caused by that, let alone the primary effect on health of drink-victims? If you don't like what electricity is being used for, argue for specific regulation to make it more expensive.

tbrownaw 2y ago
> but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development. Hard to tell if they're singling out AI because it's the current hot thing that everyone's talking about (and afraid of being replaced by), or if they're singling out "big tech" because they're rich and cool to hate on.
- scarab92 2y ago
  The media A/B tests headlines to see what generates the most clicks. The journalists then learn what their audience responds to and creates narratives around that. The result is the reality and the narrative often differ dramatically. "News" is just "Reality TV" but in text format.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    As an aside I've noticed this in real time on Youtube - titles of videos just released changing before my eyes.
- gruez 2y ago
  Probably the latter. A few years ago the same argument was being trotted out for crypto mining.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    And with good reason - some particularly enterprising miners revived a coal power plant of all things. Other meme coins wasted insane amounts of HDDs and SSDs. I'm glad it's mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum that are left over these days. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
    - bombcar 2y ago
      The underlying assumption in both is that "what the electricity is doing is basically worthless" - for society or by some other measurement. Nobody is writing "providing heat to elderly people in northern cities costs US public health $5.4bn" because most people feel that "keeping people from freezing to death" is worthwhile for society.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >The underlying assumption in both is that "what the electricity is doing is basically worthless" - for society or by some other measurement. The problem is that's basically entirely based on vibes. For crypto opponents it's justified by crypto not doing anything that the traditional finance system can't do, and for AI opponents it's justified by AI only being able to rehash soulless copypasta while stealing jobs. As a result the whole argument just becomes a roundabout way of arguing "[technology] sucks".
SilasX 2y ago
Agreed. It reminds me of the article about how self-driving cars, by being safer, would worsen the organ waitlist.[1] Like, in what other context would you raise this concern about saving lives? It's the same kind of dishonesty, picking out one hot-button source of pollution, apportioning out its health impact, and complaining about it alone. [1] https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/self-driving-cars-will-exacerbate-organ-shortages.html https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/self-driving-cars-will-...
- pkaye 2y ago
  As someone who got from an organ transplant, I'd still push for self-driving car and safer cars. My hope is pig organ transplants make it through trials soon. That could push a 7 year wait for kidney transplant down to a year which is a big deal because the long time on dialysis can have a lasting impact.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    Couldn't we just make donation opt out and solve the problem?
    - pkaye 2y ago
      US has the second highest deceased organ donor rate after Spain despite US being opt-in. https://www.irodat.org/?p=database#data https://www.irodat.org/?p=database#data I worry about a public opinion chaining on switching to opt-out in the US so it has to evaluated carefully. I'm guessing the US wait time is long because there are a lot of people with failing kidneys due to poorly managed diabetes and high blood pressure. But there are a whole host of auto immune and genetic diseases also. Now we have better drugs for treating diabetes like Ozempic and SGLT so hopefully that improves the situation for kidney failures caused by diabetes. I myself had an auto immune disease IgA nephropathy 10 years back but at that time there were hardly any drugs targeting it. I've since was on dialysis and recently got a kidney transplant. But the positive at the same time a half dozen drugs have been approved or under trial to slow down the progression of IgA nephropathy.
- 2y ago
TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
> reads veiled de-development. > If you don't like what electricity is being used for, argue for specific regulation to make it more expensive. That reads like veiled de-development. How do you reconcile saying both those things?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  De-development is saying we have to e.g. stop driving cars. Regulations that make dirty power more expensive are the likes of a carbon tax, which you can avoid while still having a car by getting an electric car and charging it from solar panels.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    The cars is a perfect example. Many people who want there to be much fewer car miles in toto will argue they're polluting, but will also not want anything that makes them not polluting - because they're not actually arguing for pollution reduction, they're arguing against the car. Same with this, I feel. It's not anti-pollution, it's anti-AI.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      You cant make a car not pollute. Even EV pollutes the local neighborhood. Ever notice how tires and the stains on the curbs and the black soot you wipe off the window sills are all the same color? How tires get bald? You are probably breathing tire right now. It is probably getting on your plate of food and you are eating tire.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        I feel like this is just making the point. Originally cars ran on leaded gasoline, which was very bad. But we didn't ban cars, we got unleaded gasoline. Then they were emitting too much in terms of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, so we got low-sulfur fuels and catalytic converters. Then it was brake dust from friction brakes, but now hybrids have regenerative braking. Then it was CO2, so we got electric cars that can be charged purely from the sun -- they can emit less CO2 than most mass transit systems despite the lower passenger density because transit systems regularly use diesel buses or locomotives or run after dusk on electricity generated from coal and natural gas because they don't have internal batteries that can charge exclusively from the sun. Somebody is going to invent some tires that last for 800,000 miles because they're made of something with such high internal cohesion they never get bald, or erode into something already commonly found in nature, and then people would find something else to complain about. And then someone would solve that too.
otikik 2y ago
It’s deflection from the real polluters
- nayuki 2y ago
  Cars and suburban sprawl
  - kittikitti 2y ago
    Actually, the real danger in society is AI and Big Tech is the only one you can trust. Everyone else should stop research in AI because of carbon emissions!

tbrownaw 2y ago

> but this article (ironic for FT) reads like veiled de-development. Hard to tell if they're singling out AI because it's the current hot thing that everyone's talking about (and afraid of being replaced by), or if they're singling out "big tech" because they're rich and cool to hate on.

scarab92 2y ago
The media A/B tests headlines to see what generates the most clicks. The journalists then learn what their audience responds to and creates narratives around that. The result is the reality and the narrative often differ dramatically. "News" is just "Reality TV" but in text format.
- bombcar 2y ago
  As an aside I've noticed this in real time on Youtube - titles of videos just released changing before my eyes.
gruez 2y ago
Probably the latter. A few years ago the same argument was being trotted out for crypto mining.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  And with good reason - some particularly enterprising miners revived a coal power plant of all things. Other meme coins wasted insane amounts of HDDs and SSDs. I'm glad it's mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum that are left over these days. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-m...
  - bombcar 2y ago
    The underlying assumption in both is that "what the electricity is doing is basically worthless" - for society or by some other measurement. Nobody is writing "providing heat to elderly people in northern cities costs US public health $5.4bn" because most people feel that "keeping people from freezing to death" is worthwhile for society.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >The underlying assumption in both is that "what the electricity is doing is basically worthless" - for society or by some other measurement. The problem is that's basically entirely based on vibes. For crypto opponents it's justified by crypto not doing anything that the traditional finance system can't do, and for AI opponents it's justified by AI only being able to rehash soulless copypasta while stealing jobs. As a result the whole argument just becomes a roundabout way of arguing "[technology] sucks".

SilasX 2y ago

Agreed. It reminds me of the article about how self-driving cars, by being safer, would worsen the organ waitlist.[1] Like, in what other context would you raise this concern about saving lives? It's the same kind of dishonesty, picking out one hot-button source of pollution, apportioning out its health impact, and complaining about it alone. [1] https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/self-driving-cars-will-exacerbate-organ-shortages.html https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/self-driving-cars-will-...

pkaye 2y ago
As someone who got from an organ transplant, I'd still push for self-driving car and safer cars. My hope is pig organ transplants make it through trials soon. That could push a 7 year wait for kidney transplant down to a year which is a big deal because the long time on dialysis can have a lasting impact.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Couldn't we just make donation opt out and solve the problem?
  - pkaye 2y ago
    US has the second highest deceased organ donor rate after Spain despite US being opt-in. https://www.irodat.org/?p=database#data https://www.irodat.org/?p=database#data I worry about a public opinion chaining on switching to opt-out in the US so it has to evaluated carefully. I'm guessing the US wait time is long because there are a lot of people with failing kidneys due to poorly managed diabetes and high blood pressure. But there are a whole host of auto immune and genetic diseases also. Now we have better drugs for treating diabetes like Ozempic and SGLT so hopefully that improves the situation for kidney failures caused by diabetes. I myself had an auto immune disease IgA nephropathy 10 years back but at that time there were hardly any drugs targeting it. I've since was on dialysis and recently got a kidney transplant. But the positive at the same time a half dozen drugs have been approved or under trial to slow down the progression of IgA nephropathy.
2y ago

TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago

> reads veiled de-development. > If you don't like what electricity is being used for, argue for specific regulation to make it more expensive. That reads like veiled de-development. How do you reconcile saying both those things?

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
De-development is saying we have to e.g. stop driving cars. Regulations that make dirty power more expensive are the likes of a carbon tax, which you can avoid while still having a car by getting an electric car and charging it from solar panels.
- bombcar 2y ago
  The cars is a perfect example. Many people who want there to be much fewer car miles in toto will argue they're polluting, but will also not want anything that makes them not polluting - because they're not actually arguing for pollution reduction, they're arguing against the car. Same with this, I feel. It's not anti-pollution, it's anti-AI.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    You cant make a car not pollute. Even EV pollutes the local neighborhood. Ever notice how tires and the stains on the curbs and the black soot you wipe off the window sills are all the same color? How tires get bald? You are probably breathing tire right now. It is probably getting on your plate of food and you are eating tire.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      I feel like this is just making the point. Originally cars ran on leaded gasoline, which was very bad. But we didn't ban cars, we got unleaded gasoline. Then they were emitting too much in terms of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, so we got low-sulfur fuels and catalytic converters. Then it was brake dust from friction brakes, but now hybrids have regenerative braking. Then it was CO2, so we got electric cars that can be charged purely from the sun -- they can emit less CO2 than most mass transit systems despite the lower passenger density because transit systems regularly use diesel buses or locomotives or run after dusk on electricity generated from coal and natural gas because they don't have internal batteries that can charge exclusively from the sun. Somebody is going to invent some tires that last for 800,000 miles because they're made of something with such high internal cohesion they never get bald, or erode into something already commonly found in nature, and then people would find something else to complain about. And then someone would solve that too.

otikik 2y ago

It’s deflection from the real polluters

nayuki 2y ago
Cars and suburban sprawl
- kittikitti 2y ago
  Actually, the real danger in society is AI and Big Tech is the only one you can trust. Everyone else should stop research in AI because of carbon emissions!