A report from Morgan Stanley suggests the datacenter industry is on track to emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.
The extra demand from GenAI will reportedly lead to a rise in emissions from 200 million tons this year to 600 million tons by 2030, thanks largely to the construction of more data centers to keep up with the demand for cloud services.
When I think “AI will end humanity” I was thinking a sort of Skynet type deal, not… this. Sigh.
I mean, global warming us slowly into extinction is a pretty AI way to go about it
Oh, this isn’t it. Capitalists have been doing this long before AI. Which is why I don’t understand why people are attacking AI so hard, tbh.
It’s just a proxy hate.
Just like crypto before that.
Or any other crazy bullshit the elite drops bags of money on instead of anything reasonable.
…and all so they can steal our collective content, creativity, and every piece of individual thought or content we’ve ever communicated online.
…with the aim of exploiting it to make billionaires richer.
This is only relevant to closed source AI. Not all AI is closed
Still, open source AI will still help the same companies getting richer because the needed computing power can be found in these data centers. The companies don’t even care if it’s AI, crypto or whatever the next thing is, as long as it needs lots of power and bandwidth.
I don’t care if our open source tools are used by rich people. That’s kinda the point. Everyone can use them.
the most fucked up part about this is that it’s not like regular people account for more than a fraction of the AI usage, most of it is just other companies using it to replace workers or just… paying for AI usage instead of fucking paying a stock photo company instead…
i hate corporations i hate corporations i hate corporations
Every negative article I read about AI is simply an attribution to capitalism. It’s incredibly funny.
it’s literally just mechanical looms all over again, this shit happens over and over and over and at no point do people learn that this will continue as long as we allow capitalism to persist.
Don’t forget the garbage listicle websites which pollute every search for “the best x” where x is something like a vacuum cleaner. Judging by the utter uselessness of search engines these days, there must be A LOT of those sites…
https://iorate.github.io/ublacklist
this addon has made my search experience so much betterYou should make a general post about this to promote it. I just installed it, along with the blocklist Nikelui posted below and I’ve seen a huge difference in my search results. Thank you!
Ooo, I’ll have to check this out. Thank you
Here is a blocklist for SEO spam stuff
I actually got into a fight over suggesting someone to use stock photos instead of grungy-smeary AI generated images for their (sh)articles, so at least I won’t believe it was too AI generated. Then they insisted on it being their own creation, and how they became an artist through words.
Our planet is literally dying, and humankind is going to be decimated (at least) directly due to the actions of corporations.
Exactly! I was just saying the same thing in another post!
Looks like AI will eliminate any gains we have in climate change. Too bad for us.
Gotta remember that AI is going to solve the climate crisis! \s
Over time, it is. It’s eliminating the source. In Terminator, Matrix, and others they say that the AI took a split second to act, but our AI doesn’t have those connections. It’s working with what it’s got.
It’s scary how our corporate overlords watch all the distopian films and are like: Let’s turn that into a reality!
Too bad for us, yeah.
The people benefiting from this have more than enough money to stay comfortable and live a long life if the environment becomes hazardous, deadly and inimical to human life.
It’s the masses who will suffer, who will be forced to live in tiny bunkers just to survive and work for the capitalists, never going outside until an extreme weather event wipes them away despite their budget bunker
And the capitalist ruling class will say “oh look more space to expand my summer bunker”
That already happened with Crypto.
AI will use less power over time, as hardware gets faster and we approach a ‘good enough’ level of computation power, similar to Desktops/Laptops - outside gaming, electrical power for the average desktop has only decreased since Sandy Bridge, a 2600K is still good enough for the average desktop, it can still even pull punches gaming.
Crypto, by design, will never decrease in power use and only and forever increase.
Love to burn down an acre of rain forest to generate a picture of an ape.
you wouldn’t understand “progress”
Anything but paying for the labor of a person to draw such a picture.
Or (heaven forbid) learning to draw!
Or take a selfie, that’ll generate a picture of an ape!
Now you’re just insulting actual apes
slaver mentality 101
Consider this: climate change is being accelerated at a time when we are overdue to reduce it and what we are getting out of it is plagiarism and wrong answers.
Fuck this “AI” shit
God damnit not this swill again. It’s not even close to triple, it’s like 15%. Read. The. Reports.
For real. Why does this misinformation keep spreading? I have the actual real numbers right in front of me now.
And it’s the same as what MIT Technology Review reported and what Google reported publicly.
The EU’s CSRD requires most of these companies to disclose their carbon emissions. So just go look it up, ya taints.
You are not thinking cumulatively.
It’s not even close to triple, it’s like 15%.
1.15^7=2.66
From the article
“emit 2.5 billion tons by 2030, which is three times higher than the predictions if generative AI had not come into play.”
Yep absolutely, and even those numbers likely represent raw emissions figures vastly lower than the true impact these data centres are having on global emissions.
For example, that Google report talks about EACs - here’s a great podcast episode that explains why these kinds of accounting methods are a complete disaster:
Reveal: It’s Not Easy Going Green
https://revealnews.org/podcast/its-not-easy-going-green-update-2023/
I build the infrastructure that these data centers need to connect to the internet. Our projected power consumption is at least tripling from last year which was itself double the year before, and that’s only the power draw for the fiber optic infrastructure connecting these data centers together. They’re also building a ridiculous amount of computing power in those data centers which is another massive increase in power consumption.
There are some kind-of green efforts in progress to mitigate a bit of the environmental impacts of that increase in demand but most of what I have seen personally is just more draw from the local utility company. I have serious doubts about any data that indicates that tripling power consumption is not a major environmental problem.
If you’re the one working on this infrastructure, then why are the reports saying that it’s only 13%? Are you guys lying on the forms?
I have no idea where that data comes from and that’s exactly the point I’m making. It doesn’t match my personal experience at all.
Could you cite the reports for us?
Something something AI BAD, didn’t read.
Few months ago it was bitcoin mining. They both need curtailment for other reasons as well.
Maybe the Butlerian Jihad had a point.
I am curious who buys generative AI services? The consumers seem to be people making memes or questionable porn with free services. It can’t prepare food, unblock drains or tile a bathroom. You can’t use it for anything like medicine, law or engineering where you would be professionally liable if it fucks up. How is it sustainable?
Spammers
My company buys it. No idea what they use it for since I work in IT and I don’t use it for anything.
A lot of companies buy it so their employees have acres to it. Like Microsoft 365 copilot for example
It’s good for making up stories and making suggestions. I worked with chatGPT on how to power up a mothballed Galaxy Class starship. We created the procedure to bring the ship from inert and vacuumed to ready for warp flight.
I see a fair amount of online adverts that use them. Usually the kind you might get orbiting an article of some kind, just using AI images as their hook.
Me. Moderate ai enthusiast and software engineer.
And then people were complaining about cryptocurrencies… Look at this AI joke… Come on…
ow nevermind, bitcoin mining alone is consuming 112.31 TWh annually (it’s a guess). While AI is using 29.2 TWh annually (also a guess).
I can guess too! With my guess, AI is already using 420 TWh annually!
What if we wouldn’t guess anything like this? This is not just not meaningful, but straight out misleading.
Well… the numbers were from Wired: https://wired.me/science/energy/ai-vs-bitcoin-mining-energy/
Only they called it “estimates”
And AI will eventually go down (it will go up a lot before that though) as hardware becomes fast enough.
Crypto by design will never decrease.
I’m afraid the power needs for AI will also not decrease. Even if individual models become more efficient and the hardware become more AI optimized. The next logical step is to run even more if those AIs as agents and creating huge chain of thoughts… So no, ai power usage will increase.
I doubt the data centers are generating much of any co2. Fossil fuel power plants are.
then why are data centers using these fossil fuel power plants?
why are they getting lower rates to use them than an individual taxpayer?
What else would they use? Thats what’s available
Because they can build more capacity based on a long term contract with the utilities.
That’s just how things are… Fuck your peasants
Because the city built fossil fuel plants instead of renewable?
Cities don’t build power plants generally esp not large scale fossil fuel type
Neither do data centers
That’s right and that’s why they should be charged premium for their vanity exercises instead of being subsidized by the taxpayers
U.S. vehicles currently emit 2 billion tons. So that’s very bad news.
However – I think 2030 is waaay too far in the future to predict anything about AI.
Uhh, soo many datacenters run off wind. So this is pretty disingenuous
Tell me about it. In the Netherlands wind farms are built, and, on paper, these datacenter companies buy up all of the energy from them. Meanwhile, the reason why these wind farms were built is to burn less fossil fuels, but that won’t work now because of all the extra energy consumption.
You mean wind turbines.
This is a good thing. So wind turbine companies take that money and use it to build more wind turbines
What you call a good thing, I call green washing.
If everything is running on renewables, cool. Until then, there’s still the opportunity cost.
Power is only part of it. Concrete production is a huge greenhouse gas source.
