Fuck it, if we’re dumb/selfish enough to be doing this, let’s get it over with.
Good luck dolphin people! My only advice, if you have any dolphins incessantly trying to claim more resources for themselves than all the other dolphins, beat the ever loving shit out of them and nip that in the bud.
Or here’s a much better idea; strap yourself to the dolphin so when they leave, you get to come with. Make sure you bribe them with fish.
Right when we literally need to chill, they keep inventing nonsense that is somehow worse. Crypto is literally just machines wasting energy on purpose to create false scarcity, it was already a worst case scenario for truly pointless excess emissions but by god, they managed to top it, this place is going to be a raisin with dead oceans.
Of course, anyone who does anything less than suck the dick of this AI is a reactionary ignorant peasant, at least with crypto everyone agreed it was lame, now we’re back to the iPhone fuck-you-only-change-allowed-keep-up-granny bullshit that lead to everyone but you knowing everything about you, so they can exploit and even criminalize the behavior your phone tells them about. Never the change we need, though. Just whatever makes your stupid line go up.
I guess. Glad I’m not having kids. That’s the only fucking downward pressure on future emissions that’s happening, on any meaningful scale. I can’t wait to see what sort of shitty boilerplate copy and fake fucking pictures makes all this CO2 worthwhile. I’m sure the problem is me, and my Luddite, unseasoned irrational fear.
CEOs: AI will help us lower our carbon emissions!
CEOs when they actually get their hands on AI:
Something nobody wants helping destroy something everyone needs.
All to do what? Write emails and generate mediocre pictures?
The usefulness of AI currently is not much better than predictive text.
Oh it’s far more useful than that. It’s the shiny new thing that’s going to make a lot of money for shareholders
Ahaha, yes, exactly, because it is essentially just a turbo charged text predictor with 40GB (or more) of data.
Hey, hey, now! It doesn’t just write full emails from merely a single sentence… it also summarizes full emails down to one sentence on the other end.
I didn’t even realize it could do that! I’m going to use this on emails from HR to translate them to simple English sentences.
“No raises this year because greed”
“We want you to work Saturdays now”
I really hope that on-device AI becomes competitive soon. It’s nice to see that on-device is the way large portions of the industry is going, but cloud AI just uses way too much energy. Not to mention the resources required to manufacture millions of large-die GPUs.
It’s probably naive to think that the corporations that created this problem will solve it, but it honestly seems like the most feasible path forward in the near term. I certainly don’t expect the world’s governments to be effective at regulating AI any time soon.
Hahaha, so instead of reducing their emissions, they are actually increasing them year after year. What a hypocrisy!
And they increase roughly at the pace it should be decreasing 😰
They are not an ambigrapher, can only make the line go up.
Time to spin it off into a subsidiary operating company with no climate goals to meet.
Don’t worry, they have that green leaf in their settings in windows. They’re good on emission.
I know Microsoft is a controversial company from Start Menu ads to Balmer’s dancing ability. But! I have been following the AI topic pretty religiously and they have known that this would be the case for quite a while. In fact part of OpenAI’s growth struggling and subsequent partnership with Microsoft involved power generation.
Microsoft has been investing in electric power including using small module nuclear reactors. Sam Altman has been putting a lot of effort into power as well, acknowledging long ago that electricity generation is critical for AI. He’s been pushing into green energy also. Exowatt, Helion, etc.
So yes, the carbon footprint is going up now because they ‘had’ to unleash this genie from the bottle first or someone else would have. At least they know that the need for stable electric power and green power or renewable and efficient power is necessary and have been pursuing these solutions actively.
It should be so that they really change things so that power grids are more stable and renewable energy is better utilized. So to me, there is hope they are doing the right thing and putting effort where it matters.
I’m more effing disappointed and concerned about @$$h0les like Ron Desantis doing things like this:
Climate change will be a lesser priority in Florida and largely disappear from state statutes under legislation signed Wednesday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that also bans power-generating wind turbines offshore or near the state’s lengthy coastline.
Critics said the measure made law by the former Republican presidential hopeful ignores the reality of climate change threats in Florida, including projections of rising seas, extreme heat and flooding and increasingly severe storms.
It takes effect July 1 and would also boost expansion of natural gas, reduce regulation on gas pipelines in the state and increase protections against bans on gas appliances such as stoves, according to a news release from the governor’s office.
Helping generate less carbon at some point in the future does not help with the fact that we are racking up the carbon bill now. What these companies are doing is entirely unnecessary, gimmicky, and will lead to even worse climate change outcomes. Between AI, crypto, and the O&G companies we just keep pressing the gas even harder on serious, irreversible climate change.
I hope this AI push fails spectacularly at some point, but the damage is already being done.
The only short term solution is the sort of legislation DeSantis is fighting against. AI is useful, but should only continue while paying the full cost of its energy consumption.
The people here are such fucking morons… Yes, let’s ban WIND POWER, literally one of the oldest forms of clean energy generation. I swear if I didn’t have family here I’d be gone.
small module nuclear reactors.
Hmm let’s see what changed since I last looked. This study seems recent, just looking at the publicly available sections:
SMRs do not represent dramatic improvements in economics compared to large reactors.
Translation: They’re way more expensive than renewables. SMRs have some advantage which are mentioned (less land usage, non-intermittency), then we have
The advanced SMRs are compared to conventional large reactors and natural gas plants,
…but not renewables+storage, which would be a good comparison point. If it looked any good they definitely would’ve included it.
Now that doesn’t mean that these things don’t make sense for Microsoft. It might e.g. simplify power distribution within datacentres to a degree that other sources just can’t, also reduce or eliminate the need for backup power, etc. But generally speaking I’m still smelling techbro BS.
I don’t think Microsoft has a money problem.
Techbros try to address global warming instead of addressing the next big scam fad (impossible)
This wasn’t how Skynet was supposed to destroy civilization.
The Animatrix described it fairly closely
What a weird coincidence. I showed my daughter The Matrix for the first time last night. It’s been a long time since I was able to see someone do a “what the fuck?!” after he takes the red pill.
Repeat after me: This. present. hype. is. not. A.I. By parroting the marketing bullshit, it doesn’t become less false. Large Language Models are just glorified pattern matching and everyone who calls them AI is a dumb fuck.
It’s called AI even if it isn’t artificial intelligence, it’s unfortunately how language works. Like how literally has been redefined to mean figuratively.
It’s called AI even if it isn’t artificial intelligence, it’s unfortunately how language works.
Only for people for whom words don’t have meanings. There is nothing “intelligent” about pattern matching. As I said - only dumbfucks call it “A.I.” and we shouldn’t regurgitate the verbal diarrhea of marketing idiots.
You can be upset about it, it doesn’t change the fact that it IS called AI. Also the meaning of words change constantly.
I love how they’re placing the onus on the suppliers. “We’ll do the rest.” Great.
Throwing the lamest capitalist party at the end of the world. Wooo…AI…boo…planet earth?..
Wait till the author of this article finds out about oil companies.
