'Professor Gina Neff of Queen Mary University London told the BBC ChatGPT is "burning through energy" and the data centres used to power it consume more electricity in a year than 117 countries.' Tech bros are sociopathic exintinction events aided by demented power-needy govs bbc.com/news/article... - ThreadSky

richardlittler.bsky.social • 49 days ago

'Professor Gina Neff of Queen Mary University London told the BBC ChatGPT is "burning through energy" and the data centres used to power it consume more electricity in a year than 117 countries.'
Tech bros are sociopathic exintinction events aided by demented power-needy govs
https://bbc.com/news/articles/c5yg690e9eno

Comments

catebridget.bsky.social•49 days ago

chase the ai dolls with hammers

kobayashimaruu.bsky.social•49 days ago

fuck gen AI, it is a plague on energy and on intelligence 😔 plus it is super SUPER creepy that these filter things make people look like pre-teens.

scientits.bsky.social•49 days ago

I’ve been so disappointed by the number of people gleefully doing this

davidseed.bsky.social•49 days ago

They don’t understand. Most people regard computers including AI as black box technology. All they care about is that it works.

davidseed.bsky.social•49 days ago

Just looked it up. Each gen AI image uses about as much power as it takes to charge a phone. Doesn’t sound a lot until you think there are billions of us frivolously burning carbon and wasting water for a cute image

chrisfromleeds.bsky.social•49 days ago

My employer recently acquired a data centre specialist consultancy, and they did a presentation on the cooling requirements. I knew it was high but frigging hell it's insane. The water use for evaporative cooling is wasteful but improves efficiency, wonder if it actually saves emissions on balance.

brownest-ant.bsky.social•49 days ago

The overlap with people who did this on facebook is a perfect circle:

fenmonkey.bsky.social•49 days ago

I'd never used AI until I was on a climate change course, and the tutor kept recommending its use. Which I thought was entirely at odds with the course itself.

this1wierdgirl.bsky.social•49 days ago

It doesn't even look anything like her. I've used cgpt exactly once about a year ago to get a summary of research for a topic (of course I then went to the cited papers directly). Wasn't really much better than I could do in 20 minutes.

midwesternmama.bsky.social•49 days ago

📌

akma.bsky.social•49 days ago

Hey, I don't know — what if there were some kind of financial incentive to *not use so much electricity*? Maybe higher cost/kwh for major users?

insomniac-geek.bsky.social•49 days ago

That is not how electrical consumption statistics should be used. The 2023 electricity consumption of the 117th country from the bottom means it would use 26 terawatt. Or 14, if the countries counts dependencies separately. That means it uses between 0 05-0.1% of the world's electricity consumption.

insomniac-geek.bsky.social•49 days ago

https://ember-energy.org/data/yearly-electricity-data/

vegetablegremlin.bsky.social•49 days ago

on the one hand ecological and economic disaster but on the other hand look how i made my byline look like a fuckin cursed child

drsurekhadavies.bsky.social•49 days ago

People need to care: about the environment, about the IP theft, and about how, "by deciding what robots [and tech generally] are for, we're deciding what humans are": 1/2 https://lithub.com/were-already-at-risk-of-ceding-our-humanity-to-ai/

drsurekhadavies.bsky.social•49 days ago

"Something without a brain scrabbled around & found stuff that looks like content but isn’t, because it wasn’t chosen, analyzed & written by a person. Frankenstein’s monster copy-paste jobs from a bunch of different places? That’s not a summary. That’s word salad."2/2 https://buttondown.com/surekhadavies/archive/basement-adventures-showed-me-why-chatgpt-can/

robishungry.bsky.social•49 days ago

And yet it could not work out a basic gearing ratio when I asked

leercom.bsky.social•49 days ago

And then they claim for more nuclear plants.

alanpbourke.bsky.social•49 days ago

1. Burning insane amounts of electricity producing techbro fucking nonsense?

drpaulitious.bsky.social•49 days ago

Interesting use of "everyone" in the headline.

li0ness.bsky.social•49 days ago

Based on my Facebook feed “everyone” is short for “absolutely everyone you’d expect to performatively post about AI being bad and taking jobs but then use chatGPT to write a work email for them 30 minutes later.”

mariusloots.bsky.social•49 days ago

While I share the concerns regarding electricity use & ethics, the 117 countries doesn't pass the smell test. Going the hyperbole route isn't helping.

catebridget.bsky.social•49 days ago

you’d be wrong there. the toll is catastrophic.

mariusloots.bsky.social•49 days ago

The world has roughly 200 countries. AI consumes more than half the world's energy output? That there is a problem, is not under dispute. If they do consume that much electricity, it is sourced from somewhere. The focus should be on who is enabling such high consumption.

germanbooktrans.bsky.social•46 days ago

Energy consumption across the world is highly unjust. You assume that each country uses just its fair share.
That's exactly the point of climate justice - some countries develop extremely high (aka unfair) energy demands, for example for AI.

mariusloots.bsky.social•46 days ago

Not arguing that all is well in the world of energy production & consumption. South Africa's rulers still push expansion of coal & make it more difficult/expensive to use solar. They have a vested interest in coal. I have a big issue with a broad statements without pinpointing the problem.

somaybelikeno.bsky.social•49 days ago

📌

cog1.bsky.social•49 days ago

Well that can fuck itself sky high. It’s bad enough having to look at every filtered pic my middle-aged female friends post, making themselves look like pre-pubescent girls.

thomasley.bsky.social•49 days ago

I really share her concerns. But ChatGPT alone more energy than half the world? Really..?

kidchemical.ca•49 days ago

Really.

thomasley.bsky.social•49 days ago

catebridget.bsky.social•49 days ago

try reading the article

thomasley.bsky.social•49 days ago

I did read it, thank you. And it‘s very cavalier with the actual facts. https://www.businessenergyuk.com/knowledge-hub/chatgpt-energy-consumption-visualized/

danielread.bsky.social•49 days ago

I think if we are using the glass house of BlueSky we should be cautious about throwing stones.

lupinheiro.bsky.social•49 days ago

Felt attacked because you're using an AI generated image in your profile pic?

danielread.bsky.social•49 days ago

I did not feel attacked. Are you attacking me?

lupinheiro.bsky.social•49 days ago

Nope, just curious why one would compare AIs environmental destruction with using Bluesky

citizenhelene.bsky.social•49 days ago

The "Anyway, I made one, tee hee!" framing of this article is so infuriating

perleimpinpin.bsky.social•49 days ago

Exactly what I thought. "This frivolous use of technology is enormously destructive to the environment, so I played with it for a while to see what all the fuss was about." 🙄

joeyheroin.bsky.social•49 days ago

but the avatars?!

molynj.bsky.social•49 days ago

They are going to need a way to monetize it; else the cost of all that power will bankrupt them.

It's no wonder AI is being pushed as the solution to everything.

A bit like block chain was being pushed as the solution to everything at one point.

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