Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

flango@lemmy.eco.br to News@lemmy.world – 241 points –
Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret
nature.com

one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes. It’s estimated that a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search. Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.

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TCL, Sony, Vizio, LG, Samsung, literally all of them easily do in the course of manufacturing them, not to mention the ongoing water usage of all the servers streaming you TV shows.

Again, how is AI different then literally any other popular computer activity? The more popular it is, the greater it's environmental cost.

Really? Which specific city?

Or do you not understand that taking 6% of one specific city's water is very different from taking that same amount of water distributed around the world?

Also, should AI not be criticized for wasting water? Just TVs? Are there other industries where wasting large amounts of water should be ignored?

Maybe any company using up 6% or more of a city's municipal water system shouldn't be allowed to do so regardless of what industry they're in. What do you think?

Which specific city is ChatGPT getting its water from?

Here's a hint: there isn't one, that's referring to it's overall usage, all around the world. It runs in Azure data centers where it is a tiny fraction of their overall compute load and water usage.

Which comment do you want me to reply to?

Given that I already answered this question that should be fairly clear.

The only thing that is clear is that you seem to think you're entitled to multiple responses when you reply to a single post of mine multiple times.

That... and the fact that you aren't denying that you believe corporations should be expected to do whatever they want as long as no one makes it illegal.

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