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> As a user it's a great free ride though. Maybe there IS such a thing as a free lunch after all! if you consider the massive environmental harm AI has and con
by autoexec 1y ago
> As a user it's a great free ride though. Maybe there IS such a thing as a free lunch after all!
if you consider the massive environmental harm AI has and continues to cause, the people whose work has been stolen to create it, the impacts on workers and salaries, and the abuses AI enables that free lunch starts looking more expensive.
- baggy_trough 1y agoWhat is this massive environmental harm? That sounds like hyperbole.
- ksenzee 1y agoThey’re restarting coal-fired power plants to run AI datacenters. I don’t know what your personal threshold is for “massive” environmental harm, but that meets mine.
- baggy_trough 1y agoWhat's a specific example of that?
- svnt 1y agoIt has been widely reported. Here is an example not of a coal-fired but diesel and gas mobile power sources. If you spend time looking you will have no trouble finding sources. > Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule clarification allowing the use of some mobile gas and diesel power sources for data centers. In a statement accompanying the rule, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claimed that the Biden administration's focus on addressing climate change had hampered AI development. > "The Trump administration is taking action to rectify the previous administration's actions to weaken the reliability of the electricity grid and our ability to maintain our leadership on artificial intelligence," Zeldin said. "This is the first, and certainly not the last step, and I look forward to continue working with artificial intelligence and data center companies and utilities to resolve any outstanding challenges and make the U.S. the AI capital of the world." https://www.newsweek.com/ai-race-fossil-powered-generators-are-data-centers-dirty-secret-2068791 https://www.newsweek.com/ai-race-fossil-powered-generators-a...
- baggy_trough 1y agoI spent some time and could not find a specific example. You haven't shown one here, either.
- svnt 1y agoHere is one: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-coal-fired-power-plant-consumers-energy-miso-emergency/748972/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-coal-fired-power-plant-... Here is another: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-coal-executive-order-doe-power-plants/744846/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-coal-executive-order-...
- baggy_trough 1y agoSorry, but they simply are not.
- jimstr 1y agoWhat about https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/24/elon-musk-xai-memphis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/24/elon-musk...
- svnt 1y agoFTA: > In another move, DOE on Tuesday said it was offering loan guarantees for coal-fired power plant projects, such as upgrading energy infrastructure to restart operations or operate more efficiently or at a higher output. Please elaborate.
- coryrc 1y agotrump stooge activities cannot be blamed on data centers. The relevant technical authorities did not want this.
- svnt 1y agoWhat are you talking about? This is literally the only mechanism to allow coal-fired plants to avoid sunsetting on schedule. Who are the “relevant technical authorities”?
- autoexec 1y agohttps://www.iwf.org/2025/02/13/as-power-demand-rises-existing-units-stay-online-in-georgia/ https://www.iwf.org/2025/02/13/as-power-demand-rises-existin... https://www.alleghenyfront.org/homer-city-pennsylvania-gas-plant-data-center-ai/ https://www.alleghenyfront.org/homer-city-pennsylvania-gas-p... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-should-restart-shuttered-coal-units-interior-secretary-tells-bloomberg-2025-03-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-should-restart-sh...
- gknoy 1y agoTraining AI models uses a large amount of energy (according to what I've read / headlines I've seen /etc), and increases water usage. [0] I don't have a lot to offer as proof, merely that this is an idea that I have encountered enough that I was suprised you hadn't heard of it. I did a very cursory bit of googling, so the quality + dodginess distribution is a bit wild, but there appear to be indiustry reports [2, page 20] that support this: """ [G]lobal data centre electricity use reached 415 TWh in 2024, or 1.5 per cent of global electricity consumption.... While these figures include all types of data centres, the growing subset of data centres focused on AI are particularly energy intensive. AI-focused data centres can consume as much electricity as aluminium smelters but are more geographically concentrated. The rapid expansion of AI is driving a significant surge in global electricity demand, posing new challenges for sustainability. Data centre electricity consumption has been growing at 12 per cent per year since 2017, outpacing total electricity consumption by a factor of four. """ The numbers are about data center power use in total, but AI seems to be one of the bigger driving forces behind that growth, so it seems plausible that there is some harm. 0: https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117 https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmen... 1: https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-06-05-greening-digital-companies-report.aspx https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-06-05-green... 2: (cf. page 20) https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Environment/Pages/Publications/GDC-25.aspx https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Environment/Pages/Publications/...
- baggy_trough 1y agoI agree that there is some incremental electricity usage. I do not think it can be characterized fairly as "massive environmental harm".
- autoexec 1y agoAs an example, Ren and his colleagues calculated the emissions from training a large language model, or LLM, at the scale of Meta’s Llama-3.1, an advanced open-weight LLM released by the owner of Facebook in July to compete with leading proprietary models like OpenAI's GPT-4. The study found that producing the electricity to train this model produced an air pollution equivalent of more than 10,000 round trips by car between Los Angeles and New York City. (https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/12/09/ais-deadly-air-pollution-toll https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/12/09/ais-deadly-air-poll...) see also: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-ai-data-centers-drought/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-ai-data-centers-dr... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-computer-scientist-breaks-down-generative-ais-hefty-carbon-footprint/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-computer-scient...
- umvi 1y ago> the people whose work has been stolen to create it "Stolen" is kind of a loaded word. It implies the content was for sale and was taken without payment. I don't think anyone would accuse a person of stealing if they purchased GRRM's books, studied the prose and then used the knowledge they gained from studying to write a fanfic in the style of GRRM (or better yet, the final 2 books). What was stolen? "the prose style"? Seems too abstract. (yes, I know the counter argument is "but LLMs can do more quickly and at a much greater scale", and so forth) I generally want less copyright, not more. I'm imagining a dystopian future where every article on the internet has an implicit huge legal contract you enter into like "you are allowed to read this article with your eyeballs only, possibly you are also allowed to copy/paste snippets with attribution, and I suppose you are allowed to parody it, but you aren't allowed to parody it with certain kinds of computer assistance such as feeding text into an LLM and asking it to mimic my style, and..."
- autoexec 1y agoAI has been trained on pirated material and that would be very different from someone buying books and reading them and learning from them. Right now it's still up to the courts what counts as infringing but at this point even Disney is accusing AI of violating their copyrights https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/business/media/disney-universal-midjourney-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/business/media/disney-uni... AI outputs copyrighted material: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/25/business/ai-image-generators-openai-microsoft-midjourney-copyright.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/25/business/ai-i... and they can even be ranked by the extent to which they do it: https://aibusiness.com/responsible-ai/openai-s-gpt-4-is-the-most-infringing-ai-model-new-research-shows https://aibusiness.com/responsible-ai/openai-s-gpt-4-is-the-... AI is getting better at data laundering and hiding evidence of infringement, but ultimately it's collecting and regurgitating copyrighted content.
- astrange 1y ago> at this point even Disney is accusing AI of violating their copyrights "even" is odd there, of course Disney is accusing them of violating copyright, that's what Disney does. > AI is getting better at data laundering and hiding evidence of infringement, but ultimately it's collecting and regurgitating copyrighted content. That's not the standard for copyright infringement; AI is a transformative use. Similarly, if you read a book and learn English or facts about the world by doing that, the author of the book doesn't own what you just learned.
- kulahan 1y agoThe silver lining on this very dark cloud is that it seems to have renewed interest in nuclear power, though that was inevitable with the coming climate crisis I suppose.
- yencabulator 1y agoAt a time when solar & batteries were just getting great, nah.
- kulahan 1y agoNeither is really true, and regardless, that’s 5% of a solution. For big boy energy tasks, we need real solutions.
- jay_kyburz 1y agoHaha, I would have thought the reckless cuts of DOGE or willingness of the current US administration to rely on AI for decision making would have driven home exactly why governments can't be trusted to manage nuclear. It's just too dangerous to leave it in the hands of people who don't believe in science, and value money, power, and ideology more than anything else. Its happening now, and there is nothing to stop it happening again in future.
- kulahan 1y agoNuclear power plants do not achieve the fission rates required for an explosion, and the system failsafes are designed entirely with an absent crew in mind. Not sure why you think it’s somehow smarter or safer to let them control a hundred gigawatts of solar power but not nuclear power.
- jay_kyburz 1y agoHey look. I found this for you. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/trump-fires-commissioner-of-preeminent-nuclear-safety-institution/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/trump-fires-comm... "Further, the NRC rejected past attempts to switch to a model based on the "hormesis theory" that Trump seemingly supports—which posits that some radiation exposure can be beneficial. The NRC found there was "insufficient evidence to justify any changes" that could endanger public health, Science reported. One health researcher at the University of California, Irvine, Stephen Bondy, told Science that his 2023 review on the science of hormesis showed it is "still unsettled." His characterization of the executive order suggests that the NRC embracing that model "clearly places health hazards as of secondary importance relative to economic and business interests.""
- JimDabell 1y ago> Using ChatGPT is not bad for the environment — https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-bad-for https://andymasley.substack.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-b... > What’s the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT? — https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-footprint-chatgpt https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-footprint-c...
- nagonago 1y agoThe problem is not so much the carbon footprint of just using LLMs, but the impact from building and running massive data centers needed to train the models. Check out this report from the ITU: https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-06-05-greening-digital-companies-report.aspx https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2025-06-05-green... > According to the latest edition of the report, electricity consumption by data centers — which power AI development and deployment, among other uses — increased by 12 per cent each year from 2017 to 2023, four times faster than global electricity growth. > Four leading AI-focused companies alone saw their operational emissions increase in the reporting period by 150 per cent on average since 2020. This rise in energy that is either produced or purchased – known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions – underscores the urgent need to manage AI's environmental impact. > In total, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions reported by the 166 digital companies covered by the report contributed 0.8 per cent of all global energy-related emissions in 2023. It's worth noting that it's not all gloom and doom. As the report optimistically notes: > Renewable energy adoption: 23 companies operated on 100 per cent renewable energy in 2023, up from 16 in 2022. > Dedicated climate reporting: 49 companies released standalone climate reports, signaling greater transparency. > Scope 3 consideration: The number of companies publishing targets on indirect emissions from supply chains and product use rose from 73 to 110, showing increasing awareness of industry impacts. So the environmental impact is alarming, but at least companies seem to be growing more conscientious about it. We must continue to hold tech companies accountable for their environmental impact, and keep pushing for renewable energy.