It’s fucking insane how much is invested (both money and natural resources) in the emperor’s new clothes. Let’s scorch the planet because every idiot out there buys into the marketing and hype. We are utterly and truly doomed because of ourselves.
Future generations will look back on the pre apocalypse population and call us sleep walkers. I know, as I’m one of them. Life is difficult enough already without jeopardising my freedom as the only way to change our course is violence at this point.
the only way to change our course is violence at this point.
Sadly, yes.
There’s still time for a general strike. The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor. That tactic was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed.
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), please consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to strengthen a general strike if we manage to enact one.
And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above.
All of these problems are caused by a remarkably small network of people. I’m not even necessarily talking about the CEOs. It’s the boards of directors. This is also the pool from which CEOs are drawn one and the pool to which CEOs return after their golden parachute. They function as a living repository of evil. A warehouse of criminals and nepo-babies. (Ex: Airbnb guy joined DOGE and is on teslas board. So first he destroys the housing market for a generation, and then destroys the government, and he is the person who directs Tesla.)
Like, the network is so small it could fit in one big room.
Future generations will look back on the pre apocalypse population
If it makes you feel any better, our '01, '08, '14, and '20 recessions all put hard downward pressure on carbon emissions.
If Trump manages to throw us into the first full blown Depression in a century, he may do more to curb US emissions than any president in history.
Reminds me of this song. Carbon based lifeforms. World of sleepers
AI and the investment around it are literally the only thing holding up America’s economy right now. If you take the artificial growth and the vast amounts of investment that are being pumped in AI development data centers, the US economy has barely grown half percentage point.
No surprise that they are going to power this beast at all costs until it falls apart along with the US economy.
No surprise that they are going to power this beast at all costs
I mean, they could use their fascist power grab to drive through the infrastructure work to expand power transmission lines needed to support a modern economy, renewables, and yes more datacenters
Additional coal is just the easiest way since we already have century old power lines bringing that power where it’s needed
Yes, in this case, coal might be easiest, cheapest, fastest because we can continue to neglect infrastructure. It’ll fall apart on someone else’s administration
Typical. So basically, they’re gonna turn America into Texas. Their power grid is famously shitty and has been neglected for decades due to Republican control of the government. They are constantly kicking the can down the road for some other administration to deal with it.
Everyone time there’s even a slight dusting of snow anywhere in Texas the power grid shuts off and people freeze to death. But Texas refuses to fix the power grid and nationalize because it would mean investing and bringing their shitty substandard power grid up to modern standards.
Well, I mean it’s not all marketing and hype. I was able to get it to write a piece of code to scrape a RSS feed and email me if it met certain perameters. I couldn’t have done that without a real grind / if at all. This is effectively the only time I’ve used it, and I think it’s atrocious the amount of petty shit people use it for… but there can be a functional benefit to generative AI. Makes me shed a tear thinking of the energy demand though.
People have been making web crawlers for the past 30 years. Why do you need to torch an acre of forest to do the same?
I’m sure people have been making crawlers for 30 years… But I haven’t been, so I’ve been able to access “knowledge” and shape it for my use case. I think equating ~5 queries to torching an acre of forest is a bit hyperbolic which doesn’t help anyone.
Wow, you managed to do something you could have done without AI, but used more resources to do it.
Ah but they aren’t his resources
I might not have been clear, no I don’t think I could have done it. Or if I could it would have taken months and months of learning . This was generated in about 5 queries and a total of 25 minutes testing.
i have been using “rss2email” for years. extremely simple, works great, deterministic. no need to reinvent the wheel for a simple use case, and thats half the point here - a lot of “solutions” being found were already solved.
Isnt this essentially the case by definition? If LLMs can solve a problem it’s only because a human already solved that problem (not that this is any different from what humans do)
maybe? was just trying to provide specific alternatives with a concrete example
In this scenario it needs to read a 5 day forecast capture key elements and only send the email/ alert the first time and not the following 4 days(if the alert remains the same) so in my previous attempts at RSS reader apps already in existence, they didn’t meet the need.
Lame story.
Jesus fucking Christ, man. RSS parsers and emailing are literally next up after “Hello, World” in programming. If that would have required “months and months of learning” as you stated elsewhere, then maybe programming just isn’t for you — AI or no AI. It’s OK not being able to do something! However, it’s some next level 1st world entitlement shit to think that you’re somehow entitled to be able to create programs without any effort on your part and with a complete disregard for the cost to the environment and the planet.
I have a low carbon footprint and my solar has exported 17,000 kWh more than my usage. Please tell me again how a 0.3 watt hour query is me completely disregarding the environment
Edit: I have ai generated search engine summaries turned off… I hope you do too
We were too addicted to AI slop to save ourselves.
Actually no, no one was addicted to AI slop, it was just shoved into every product so that huge companies could make a profit and everyone hates it.
But wait! The huge companies are losing tons money on this.
Why did we destroy the planet again???
The capitalist class loves the idea and rewards companies with investment money. They think it could be the ultimate tool to snuff out any power the working class still has; making many employees optional, total surveillance of the population, etc. I think it will be a long time until it can do many jobs, but the surveillance tech seems to be coming along pretty well (with “AI” cameras recording license plates and biometric identifiers being put up everywhere).
Wish my coworkers would get the memo. Constantly trying to shove AI videos in my face like “haha look at MLK Jr and Tupac as pro wrestling announcers haha”
As an artist I am deeply repulsed by AI. But other people around me? They love it for some reason.
its the techbros that are obsessed with AI slop.
Meanwhile China is going all in on renewables.
Here is a fact: an authoritarian non-democracy is doing a lot for securing the future of humanity, while the “leader of the free world” are vandalizing the climate and accelerating apocalyptic climate catastrophe.
In 2025, China is a net positive for the future of humanity, while the USA is a net negative.
If that makes you uncomfortable about what our political and economic systems in the West that brought us here, well, you know the meme: “facts don’t care about your feelings”.
If you, like me, care about the future of democracy, we have to do a LOT of digging.
Our current system is going about how Marx predicted it would. The course correction that occurred after the Great Depression has been now completely reversed and we’re back staring at its approaching collapse. I don’t think we can escape that long term, and we’ll lose democracy in the process, unless we start moving away from capitalism. We gotta attack private firm ownership. Otherwise we’ll keep getting people accumulate enough capital to buy the rest of the system and steamroll the rest of us for profit.
capitalism was kind of never democratic i think, considering so much is basically dictated by the people who “own” it, which feels more like a dictatorship/ feudalism
Oh for sure. There’s however a higher degree of democracy than feudalism, mostly stemming one way or another from the newly developed labour power under capitalism. Power that labour has slowly ceded over the last 50-70 years or so, but it can still regain when pressed. The system still contains this vulnerability (from the point of view of the capitalist) and it seems impossible to eradicate.
Meanwhile China is going all in on renewables.
BUT
AT
WHAT
COST
If that makes you uncomfortable about what our political and economic systems in the West that brought us here, well, you know the meme: “facts don’t care about your feelings”.
It might be cold comfort, but none of these business models have the liquidity behind them to build out coal power at the levels they claim they’ll need.
Nevermind that solar/wind would be cheaper. Or that the raw manpower to yield coal in quantity no longer exists. So much of these proposals are - at their heart - the same vaporware that promised waves of new nuclear construction and hydro-power and geothermal.
Bottom line is that GenAI’s primary revenue comes from dumb VC and bad debt. They can’t build, much less operate, any of this shit.
We are a nation of man/woman children. Petulant little kids who don’t want to grow up and be responsible for anything.
And a lot of burying.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell
And capitalism!
And I thought AI killing us would use cool robots and Shit. Well.
So close, AI will kill us with coal robots and Shit-Wells
It’s the paperclip maximizer in action.
Republicans are kinda like robots
TBF it requires minimum effort from the ai. Efficient.
We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky
This one sums up humanity quite well these days: “Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you!” - Londo Mollari
The coal and O&G industries have been pushing themselves as suppliers to power AI, so don’t blame AI without blaming the coal and O&G industries.
Why not blame both?
AI people choosing renewables have nothing to do with this.
But they aren’t choosing renewables, they’re choosing coal. People are responsible for the choices they make.
Some companies choose renewables, other don’t. They aren’t only one person.
How many of the AI companies that chose coal actually produce something worthwhile? Seems like the first the these nuScience fuckers should do with their digital overmind is create clean power.
Using renewables to power AI for optimizing uses of renewables somehow is a good idea and I’m sure someone is working on it, but not everyone.
We don’t need AI to know how to use renewables. We’re just unwilling to implement then on a sociality scale.
People get distracted over the fate of the pure speculative frenzy could be an AI bubble, and the harm to the hapless speculators and banksters could have a minor impact on the rest of the economy.
Reality is far worse than an AI bubble. It is a US mission for a fossil fueled powered Skynet for Israel that is too big to fail. Bubble in AI investments becomes unlikely, but total destruction of rest of US economy/prosperity becomes assured when the “plebs able to eat in America bubble” bursts is a sacrifice that a fossil fueled powered Skynet for Israel is willing to make.
If Americans are still able to afford to eat, then China or Iran wins.
Earth was past 7 of 9 planetary boundaries to support human life… before AI happened. That is again, boundaries to support HUMAN LIFE.
Article from when it was 6/9:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-have-crossed-6-of-9-planetary-boundaries/
Fuck AI and these energy guzzling data centers. For decades we were told to conserve power and such and now all of those savings are being sucked up, and more, by these centers.
Remember, everytime us plebs are told to sacrifice for the environment it’s so the corpos and parasites can off load moral responsibility onto us.
they funded alot of campaigns doing that.
its actually raising electricity prices in many areas.
And for some reason OUR utility bills are going up to pay for it.
Yep. People are charged the marginal cost of power generation. Everyone pays the price of the most expensive source of electricity. The market is rigged.
Datacenter != AI
If you are using the internet for anything with cloud storage, you are contributing to datacenter growth. And that includes nearly everyone using social media.
Datacenter != AI
Except the demand for new data centers is driven entirely by the capacity constraints of the current AI models.
If you are using the internet for anything with cloud storage, you are contributing to datacenter growth.
“Why are you mad at my five ton diseal SUV when you just adopted a pet chihuahua? They both emit carbon!”
I’m not sure that’s true. Every company uses storage, and every growing company needs more. But very few companies are training generative AIs.
Every company uses storage, and every growing company needs more.
You’re comparing mountains to molehills. That’s before you consider improvements in storage and compression relative to demands for space, or the degree to which our storage capacity “needs” are predicated on the voracious appetite of AI models and their unwanted output. Or, for that matter, the inefficient distribution of data and proliferation of spam data that predates it.
very few companies are training generative AIs
Most US Growth Now Rides on AI—And Economists Suspect a Bubble
The expansion in demand is entirely being driven by the expansion in AI capacity.
That article doesn’t say what you imply it does. Companies may be using ChatGPT to grow, but that doesn’t mean they are training AIs.
And the distinction is critical to energy usage. Training a new AI uses a lot of energy. Querying an existing AI uses far less.
Companies may be using ChatGPT to grow, but that doesn’t mean they are training AIs.
It’s the MAG7 that’s driving growth. And they’re all fixated on training AI in some capacity
Training a new AI uses a lot of energy. Querying an existing AI uses far less.
It costs $5 for each 10s video generation, based on Azure’s published rates for the first Sora model.
That’s presumably a lot of energy.
The MAG7 operate large and growing cloud services, so their datacenter costs would grow even without any AI training.
And charging $5 for a video query does not mean the query uses $5 of energy. The query is priced to recoup training costs that were already incurred.
Sure but energy use per datacenters was on a downward trend before ai, then it went the other way hard
Yes but data center growth prior to AI was manageable. There isn’t a grid on the planet (except maybe china?) which can support the growth of AI data centers.
These people have to plan energy needs on a 10-20 year life cycle, not 2. It’s the 2 that’s the problem.
The bitcoin miners have hopefully dropped off because they were chewing up gobs of energy too.
I thought they were totally just using flare gas and renewables ;) 🙄
But my understanding for real is that ai data centers are just the same hardware as buttcoin but more of it and organized. The venture capitalists finally got what they wanted, blowing their wad on Nvidia.
china is also building lots of coal plants to sustain the datacenters.
China already has 200% the capacity relative to their demand. They’ve been growing solar fast enough to beat very high 8%+ electricity consumption growth last year, and can probably keep the pace.
This would be 99% of businesses at this point. Stop using AI to make memes and clickbait videos.
I’m perfectly fine with Lemmy being limited to 100% renewable power. Don’t burn coal or LNG for me.
Disgusting
Looking forward the 2026 ESG reports of large companies that are so happy to embrace AI :)
I think you would have an easier time searching for those who didn’t.
I’m not into gold panning… though it’s not like all companies are using AI so much that it will transpire in their ESG. Now I now a couple that were so far very happily ignoring this source of carbon and, as far as I remember, it was not reported by the cloud providers either.
Hey, regime 🖕
(Just expressing what is left to express here, I hope you die soon)
Another reason to avoid the US.
Our most advanced tech is dependent on some of our most old tech.
It doesn’t make any difference whether they use coal, nuclear, or renewables.
If they were using renewables the rest of us would need the coal generated power to keep the lights on.
And the nuclear ?
You skipped it somehow.
you seem to have missed my point.
If humanity’s energy requirements without AI are x, and AI’s requirements are an additional y, then AI is reponsible for the worst energy sources up to the value of y.
I’m just pointing out the fact that you mention nuclear energy and then discarded it in your follow up.
What ?
I didn’t “discard” it, it’s just not a pertinent inclusion. I also didn’t mention geothermal power, or wheelbarrows.
It doesn’t matter what type of power is plugged into data centres. Turning them off would reduce coal power consumption.
I live in a country that produces 70+% of its energy through nuclear reactors.
Sure we are definitely an exception but turning off datacenters where I live wouldn’t change anything about coal.
To be clear I’m not advocating for nuclear energy nor am I saying it’s a bad option.
Every country has a different energy mix, some more “carbon efficient” than others let’s say but it is not only revolving about coal and renewables.
Anyway, I think it’s fairly clear to me the datacenters won’t shutdown anytime soon even without AI it’s gonna be a major consumption of energy in any country. So I think nuclear should definitely at least considered as an option and to some extent be part of any energy mix. I think everyone knows that only renewables is not really a realistic scenario. Coal obviously is the worst option in any amount. So yeah, I was surprised that you didn’t mention it that’s it. I do think it’s very much relevant to the topic of the ever increasing energy consumption we are all gonna face in the future. This post would probably not even exist if we shutdown datacenters but I suppose you meant it as shutting down only processing power toward AI. But still we will need more datacenters in the future no matter what.
Dude. You seem incapable of understanding the point I was trying to make.
There’s one exception - when they are self-sufficient, or even net positive, with renewables.
One example is the Google datacenter in Hamina, Finland. They build it in an old unused paper mill, built their own renewables (3/4ths of their required at this point), and they use the cooling loop for district heating for the city. That extra heat provides around 75% of the required heating, meaning the city could stop relying on their old natural gas heaters so now the district heating runs on renewables as well.It’s easy to be an energy neutral datacenter, simply pour enough money to building new renewables that wouldn’t have been built without your contributions, and you don’t tax the power grid.
I’ll begrudgingly concede that this is a good point.
Part of me wants to say “just force these assholes to build renewables without the datacentres” but I know that’s nonsensical.
I guess this is how carbon credit schemes are intended to work, but I’m aware that aside from a few specific cases carbon trading has just been a way to obfuscate carbon emissions.
Exactly, people don’t seem to realise that higher demand for energy means higher demand for all sources of energy including fussil fuels.
If doesn’t matter if this datacenter runs 100% on renewables if that means that the overall demand on the powergrid increases and now other clients that used to get (a higher percentage of) their power from renewable are getting it from coal, it’s just a green washing shift blame technique.
