The leap in emissions is largely due to energy-guzzling data centers and supply chain emissions necessary to power artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The report estimated that in 2023, Google’s data centers alone account for up to 10% of global data center electricity consumption. Their data center electricity and water consumption both increased 17% between 2022 and 2023.
Google released 14.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide just last year, 13% higher than the year before.
Climate scientists have shown concerns as Big Tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft continue to invest billons of dollars into AI.
So, lets get this straight. Humans are going to die. Animals are going to die. Plants are going to die.
…so that corporations can make a few easier dollars before this whole planet burns in flames?
Yes, corporationS. Plural. What? You think google is the only one using AI?
I mean, yeah.
One of the hallmarks of our species is its insatiable, irrational greed.
That’s a hall mark of our civilisation/society, not our species. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and the vast majority of cultures in that time have been relatively stable, with checks on excessive greed.
(see Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn Of Everything for some good examples.)
I agree with everything except that A.I. doesn’t make money and may never solve a problem important enough to justify the cost.
so that corporations can make a few easier dollars before this whole planet burns in flames?
Sure. But they do that by providing services. Services like Gmail and (probably for a large part) cloud hosting for other companies, companies whose services you’re probably using as well.
And honestly, it usually is more economical (Both financially as well as in eco footprint) for those companies to use cloud services that scale based on demand, rather than having a fixed set of servers running for the potential max capacity.
Don’t get me wrong, increased carbon emissions is bad, but the picture is a bit more nuanced than “Google flip switch, kill animals, get money”.
The AI hype (talk to your toaster!) will blow over, useful AI will remain and improve, this is just a hurdle along the way.
The AI hype (talk to your toaster!) will blow over, useful AI will remain and improve, this is just a hurdle along the way.
I hope so. AI spam causing too much internet noise to the point where we can’t tell which one’s true or not would be one big hurdle.
These companies 100% said they’d be carbon neutral by 2030 in order to take the wind out of the sails of people pushing for carbon taxes, rather than because they actually intended on doing it.
Could be the other way as well. Prepare to become carbon neutral in order to have less tax burden. But once that fell though, they didn’t care again. The only way they will be carbon neutral is if governments make it more expensive for them to not be.
But by all means, everyone don’t use plastic straws! You’re killing the environment!
Yeah dawg we can’t possibly do two things that are good for the environment, we have to pick one. Everyone knows that.
Plastic straws are harmful to sea turtles. That is why their use has been reduced.
Do you like turtles?
I know this is true, but I find it bizarre that there’s this fixation on straws and not the hundred other things we are likely doing that also kills turtles.
It’s like someone saw that viral video of the turtle with a straw up it’s nose and decided that’s the only thing to focus on.
I bought this like, prepared meal thing. It was like curry or something. Packaged, shelf stable. It harked on eco-friendly packaging. I figured, I’ve gotten curry before that was in a foil bag which I assume is easily recyclable. Probably something like that, right?
Every component was individually plastic wrapped. Even the bowl. Except for the bamboo “spoon”. That was wrapped in paper. I put “spoon” in quotes because it was vaguely spoon shaped and functioned more like an oat from a rowboat.
Like, was this just a piss poor attempt at green washing?
Detractors have that fixation on straws, for the EU legislature it was just another regulation among many.
Also the plastic straw fixation is now kinda fading in favour of attached bottle caps. People will literally lose 50 IQ points and stub their nose to spite Berlaymont instead of rotating the bottle 90 degrees.
It would seem that we shall be requiring you peasants to give up another 10% of your daily carbon footprint to meet the demands of our new machine overlord.
Time to use less paper straws, folks #weareinthistogether🌎
I turn off my lights when I’m not in a room and don’t own a server farm. #doingmypart🌳
